U.S. immigration applications often involve long waiting periods. Even worse, if your immigration application has been backlogged for years and you want to inquire about it but do not know where to start, WorldWay provides 12 ways to contact the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) here, hoping that at least one method can help you check the progress of your case.
Method 1: Online Status Check
If you already know your receipt number (usually found on the USCIS receipt notice), you can check the progress of your application online. You can check a single case or create an account that includes multiple immigration cases. You can also set up automatic notifications so that the system will send you an email when there is progress on an application. Many people learn about their green card approval via email. Online checking is a very convenient method, but the information provided by the system is sometimes irrelevant and lacks important details, such as FBI name checks. Some key stages, such as whether an RFE has been received, are not necessarily updated in the system. Therefore, although online checking is convenient, it has many drawbacks and is not very useful for long-backlogged cases.
Method 2: Using Infopass to Meet with an Immigration Officer
This provides an opportunity to meet with an immigration officer. If you have a fairly urgent issue or your situation is complex, this face-to-face discussion can be very helpful. USCIS officers participating in INFOPASS are professionally trained and can access more information, including FBI name checks and other case details that cannot be obtained from the online system or general customer service. However, some officers may be reluctant to tell you everything, and some may not provide any details at all. You can do nothing about such a result and can only try again next time to see if you encounter an officer with a better attitude.
Of course, USCIS does not want you to use INFOPASS for every little thing, especially to ask how your case is being processed, so the website is vague, implying that you can only go under a few special circumstances. In fact, you are a paying customer of USCIS, so you can certainly raise questions if you have them. However, if your case is awaiting a background check, the immigration officer cannot help accelerate this process.
Method 3: Calling USCIS Service Centers (TSC, NSC, CSC, or VSC) Directly
USCIS hopes that if you have questions, you will call the National Customer Service Center (800-375-5283), but after calling a few times, you will find that its effectiveness is quite limited. If your situation is urgent and you cannot go to a local USCIS office, calling the service center directly may be a better approach because your case is being processed at that center, and they can access quite a few details. Because of this, you must navigate through a maze of phone menus to reach the case service center.
For example, if your case is backlogged at the TSC and has exceeded the processing time published by USCIS, you should call:
1-800-375-5283-1-2-2-6-1-(receipt#SRCxxxxxxxxxx)-1-1-3-3(or4)
Even if you successfully reach the service center, your call may be automatically transferred back to general customer service. But if someone picks up the phone, you should try to explain your situation as briefly as possible to see if they can help check your case. Their system is very comprehensive and connected to many databases, so you can request a lot of information. However, in most cases, the other party may express that they are unable to help, be vague, or even refuse directly. WorldWay kindly reminds you: no matter how furious you are, please try to restrain yourself. If the other party is unwilling to help, please call back later.
Method 4: National Customer Service Center Phone
As mentioned above, the U.S. USCIS National Customer Service Center phone (800-375-5283) is not very useful. The main reason is that the information accessible to customer service staff is very limited. However, if you have some minor questions, especially those unrelated to case progress, the customer service center can still provide help. Moreover, the letters USCIS sends you often only provide this phone number, so you have no choice but to call 800-375-5283 first and then seek help according to the specific situation in the letter.
Method 5: Formal Inquiry for Backlogged Cases
USCIS publishes the processing progress of each service center every month. If your case has not been processed 30 days after the deadline, you can call customer service (800-375-5283) and request a formal inquiry. The service center where your case is located will explain via mail, usually after a few weeks, why your case has not yet been processed. For most people, the answer is usually "in progress" or "awaiting security check."