When we talk about expediting your case, this happens after a filing has been completed or submitted with USCIS and several different steps along the way. It is a multi-faceted response, as with everything in immigration.
An expedite is possible in most cases that would be relevant for us within couples-based immigration. The cases where it is not possible are those that have premium processing. In general, those are work-type related visas. Those types of visas already have premium processing which allows them to speed up the processing of their case to the extent possible.
When Can You Expedite Your Case?
But as far as expediting for our purposes, there are five different reasons:
- Severe financial loss
- Emergencies and urgent humanitarian reasons
- Non-profit that’s in furtherance of some sort of social interest or cultural interest that the US has
- Government interests
- A technical error on the behalf of USCIS
The first two are the ones that we see most commonly; severe financial loss and emergency or humanitarian reasons. These can come into play in many different avenues. A job loss in and of itself could be determined to be a severe financial loss enough that it would expedite a case for instance. The other most common one or just emergencies or humanitarian reasons. This could be severe illness or death in the family.
The discretion is there for them to decide to expedite your case so it doesn’t hurt to do that if in fact you have a valid reason and can back that up with documentation.
What Type of Documentations Do You Need?
There are lots of different ways to expedite a case and a lot of times, that really involves pleading the client’s case over the phone with a USCIS officer. A lot of times they will request additional evidence either on the phone with them, fax to them while they wait on the phone, fax to them later, or in an additional appointment.
Let’s say we’re expediting a travel document that the client needs to show up at a physical location they’ll need to bring documentation that supports why we are looking to expedite. In the event of humanitarian reasons, we’re looking for lots of medical documentation. Those would all have to be translated just so that the officer can review them.
Job loss or severe financial hardship needs mostly financial documents or evidence. You have to be creative sometimes with the evidence that you provide to make sure that is shown to USCIS or that they can review it and make a determination on your behalf. You want to put your best case forward.
Expediting your case can only happen so often so it’s definitely something you would want to get guidance on. You can’t just call and request expedite every week or so with USCIS. USCIS can have several different responses. It’s probably a positive sign if they actually respond to the request.
There is no requirement for USCIS to respond to expedite requests and they look at that as just an efficiency standard. If they had to reply to everyone who requested, then that would even cause more backlogs. Sometimes, they just ignore the expedited request and you wait for 30 days or so and see if that situation changes.
If there’s any additional evidence that you can gather in that period of time that would highlight the emergent and humanitarian reason to need to expedite or the severe financial hardship, USCIS can request further information. They can ignore it or they can go ahead and proceed with that. Since they don’t provide us with an answer, the next thing you know that party is getting their travel document or whatever we have expedited.