Many Indian Green Card applicants see a sudden status change pertaining to their case.
Reddy said most of the affected applicants are Indian nationals in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories and many have their priority dates from 2014 and 2015. Many of these applicants have final action dates that are not even current, which means USCIS cannot approve or deny their cases on the merits right now. USCIS has not announced any change in processing of Green Card s that might have caused the status change, Reddy said urging Indian Green Card applicants to not pay heed to social media speculations.
Several Indian Green Card applicants reported an unexpected change in their status online which says their case “requires USCIS to send a notice”. Immigration attorney Rahul Reddy said this has led to a great deal of anxiety but this is most probably a glitch in the system and there is no real reason to panic. A status change of this scale and uniformity reflects a system-level update, not a problem with your file,” Reddy said. “Continue to maintain your status, keep your employment and contact information up to date, and do not file anything with USCIS in response to this online message alone,” Reddy said.
Families waiting for their Green Cards for years are worried that something has gone wrong with their applications now but this might not be the case. “When USCIS has a genuine concern about an individual application, it acts on that specific case. What we are seeing now is the same status message appearing across thousands of pending cases at the same time, regardless of priority date, filing date, or case history.
“On August 21, Judge Vargas ruled that the 75-country visa freeze was illegal. They asked Judge Vargas to pause her order while they appeal and gave her a deadline: September 25,” he said. “The State Department can’t finalize the October bulletin without knowing what’s going to happen to those 43,000 cases. If the court rejects the pause, 43,000 cases flood into adjudication visa numbers expand, priority dates could jump.
Because of the reversal of the 75-country visa pause, legal consultant Bhumireddy Sai Srinivas Reddy said he believed that the visa bulletin has been delayed. Because of that freeze, she ordered the State Department to reconsider 43,000+ visa applications that were denied solely.
The State Department is literally waiting to know which scenario is happening before they can publish accurate cutoff dates,” he said, adding that it was his personal analysis of the situation. But the government is fighting back. If the appeals court pauses the order, the cases stay on hold visa numbers stay tight, priority dates move slowly.