Congratulations!! 🎉🥂

@K A thank you😊😊

congratulations

my opt is about to expire forever too! been pending since early nov. can you explain what happened/ what you did please?

@laura v open an expedite request through Emma or call them. They will send you an email with instructions. pretty much you need to gather evidence that you will be in severe financial loss(bills, letter from work, cover letter explaining your situation). let me know if you need more details.

@child of grace thank you 😭

i have savings from my job so not sure if i qualify :/ my monthly expenses have only been 40% of my salary- do you have genuine financial hardship? im more concerned about falling behind in my career (our promotion windows are limited and if you arent promoted youre fired so its very competitive in my industry) but theres no expedite for that

@Sept 2022 how long did it take before you found out the expedite was approved?

@Elisha B. i faxed my documents on May 29 , and got response on June12th

@laura v don’t mention savings, just mention your bills and dept if you have. in my case I said that my spouse was only making 35% of our household income. maybe mention that you make more than your spouse too?

my spouse makes more than enough to cover our bills- we pay $36k/yr for our rent in nyc and his base salary is $110k/yr and since we have no children or debt it just isnt reasonable to say we financially need to fill the gap. its tough because unpaid leave will impact me a lot long-term career wise and im getting so anxious because it means i keep missing out on opportunities but thats just not something uscis care about. i know im in a privileged position but i also worked really hard to get here- i held jobs throughout college to make sure w that + financial aid i could graduate debt free, my spouse and i worked really hard to get through a competitive job process to secure highly paid jobs and now i have all of these setbacks i could probably get around if our jobs paid less or if id taken out loans in college

@Sept 2022 thank you!! I faxed my evidence last Friday so fingers crossed I’ll hear something next week

@laura v you could also file an expedite with a letter from your work, where they state the impact on them if you are unable to work (severe financial impact for employer)

@Elisha B. @laura v yes! it’s worth trying. In the worst case scenario they say No but you tried.

@Elisha B. my company wont do that for legal reasons :( they have thousands of employees who all do similar jobs and because its a big organization they wont exaggerate anything for me or write me a letter like that

ill try putting another expedite request through when my next one comes back