Our family coordinator recommended that waiting families should be prepared for the possibility of receiving an RFE. Well, it is a good thing that we were. Last week, we received an RFE letter. AWAA is working to gather or edit the documents requested by NBC. The length of time it can take to obtain or amend documents depends upon what documents are requested and what specific edits need to be made. It looks like we actually submitted all the documents in question, but the reference numbers are not on three of the original Amharic documents to link them with their English translations. Considering that the NBC does not have a translator on staff, it's easy to understand the question. We are awaiting more information from AWAA. In the meantime, we're praying that the matter will be resolved quickly and agreeing that God already has it all worked out.
During a conference call a few weeks ago, USCIS shared statistics on the time frames they have experienced for cases submitted to PAIR from September 2013 – February 2014. These give us a general estimate to our wait time and anticipated travel dates. We received our referral on November 27th. Our I-600 was received on January 21st.
Average number of days from receipt of the I-600 at the lock box to being assigned an officer 30
Average number of days from receipt of the I-600 at the lock box to a family’s visa interview in Ethiopia 125
Longest number of days from receipt of the I-600 at the lock box to a family’s visa interview in Ethiopia 229
Average number of days from initiation of the I-604 investigation to approval from NBC 23
If our case continues as they project, we could ALL be home around June 1st. For this, I pray.