On the recent stakeholder call, USCIS acknowledged that its posted processing times are not accurate. USCIS said its “average” processing times are:

I-526 – immigrant investor – 11 months
I-829 – removal of conditional residency – 11 months
Currently, the USCIS website states processing times as:

I-526 – immigrant investor – 9.9 months
I-829 – removal of conditional residency – 20.8 months
All of these numbers include both direct investment and regional center petitions.

We have recently had a few regional center I-526s decided in 7 months. Most “direct” (non-RC) investment I-526s are decided in about 6 months.

Electronic Filing of Petitions

On the February stakeholder call, USCIS also announced the availability of electronic filing for I-526 applications. This week we filed our first two direct (non-RC) applications using this new system. From our experience, the system needs much basic work and many levels of refining to be a helpful tool.

It took support staff experienced with I-526s more than five hours just to upload the application and supporting documents.

There were many glitches requiring extensive phone calls with the USCIS help desk, which was unhelpful. USCIS’s help desk operators are ill-informed and lack the ability to access the case you are attempting to file to provide any case-specific information or support.

The process is supposed to work like this: The application and supporting materials are uploaded to the USCIS system. We provide the case password, and the client, through his/her profile, is supposed to be able to see the entire submission, review it, then sign the electronic signature page and pay the filing fee.

It didn’t work this way. Among the many problems encountered, the client could only see the application, not the supporting documents, even after many tries using creative solutions.

The system may work better for a regional center case. We will try one soon.