Immigration Forum / USA Marriage Base / November 2005

If I were in your shoes, I would make an InfoPass appointment
and find out what's going on before I would file for anything else.
You might not need it, and you could save yourself the filing fee.
But that's just me!

My wife and I find ourselves in a similiar situation.

We were interviewed in NYC on 2 June for her AOS (she was also a K1).
They had never scheduled her to be fingerprinted, so obviously she
could not get her passport stamped.  The DAO implied that everything
else with our case was fine, and made a fingerprinting appointment for
that very day.  We went, and she got fingerprinted successfully.

4 months went by with nary a peep from CIS...

We had an InfoPass appointment yesterday, and the lady we talked to at
the NYC office said that my wife's case was approved by the NYC office
on 30 June.  She said that on that very day they shipped my wife's file
to the MSC, appearantly for production of the Green Card.  She said
that they could do nothing further at the NYC office because the file
had already been shipped to the MSC.  She suggested we write a letter
to the MSC to ask why, over 3 months after approval, my wife still has
not received her card.

When I check for status online, the last update I see is from March,
when they sent the interview letter.  It shows the case was "touched"
on 11 July, however.

Assuming the lady at the NYC office was giving correct information...
does anyone know what kind of black hole we've fallen into this time?
Is there a backlog in card production?  Or is there some additional
step between approval and production of the card?  Our case has been in
the works since Oct of 2002!

If they did manufacture the card and mailed it but it was returned to
the CIS for some reason, it would be sent to the PONDS Unit at the
Service Center where the card was manufactured. Most of the PONDS Units
(at the various service centers) will keep the card for 6 months. If it
is not claimed within those 6 months, it is destroyed.

If the approval happened in February, then lets assume they manufactured
it, mailed it, and it was returned to them when....? My guess is that if
it was sent to a PONDS Unit, there is probably a pretty good chance it
has not yet been destroyed.

If you have an attorney working for you on your case, ask the attorney
to contact his AILA Liaison (if the attorney does not have the proper
contact information for the service center to do that herself) and have
the liaison contact their person at the Service Center and ask them to
go check in the PONDS Unit.

Good luck.

The USCIS has posted this announcement regarding where to file the I-90
if you never received the card.

http://uscis.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/newsrels/I-90_050908.pdf

Mr. Udall ...  I'm assuming that the receipt of the I-90 by the Service
Center would tell the PONDS unit that someone is looking for the card.