I-134A: Why is my I-134A form being delayed?
Why are we seeing I-134A form delays?
There are many possible reasons why you may see irregular delays in your petitions, or observe people who filed later than you have their petition be granted before yours. While it would certainly be fairer for everyone if USCIS adjudicated cases in the order they receive them, truth is that USCIS will distribute their work amongst its many offices and officers, who each have their own unique way for resolving cases. Some simply work faster or slower than others. Compounding the issue is the fact that USCIS is a relatively small government organization with just 19,000 employees, dealing with millions of immigration cases of various types every year. This makes them vulnerable to being overloaded with work whenever an incident or a trend leads to a significant increase in cases that they deal with regularly. Recent delays regarding I-134a processing--a case that should only take a month at worst to process, is likely one such example of USCIS being overloaded.
Unfortunately, there is likely very little that can immediately be done in such a scenario. Increases to processing times, whether officially through USCIS' publicly available statistic (see here: https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/ ) or through trend of notable delays often reflects reality of situation at USCIS offices, rather than being arbitrary.
What can I do about my I-134A form delay?
You could send USCIS an inquiry anytime to request an update on your case, but USCIS may not respond to yours by its criteria. Your inquiries are dispatched to individual USCIS officers, who decide whether to respond based on their personal discretion.
If your application type is not listed in the processing time table on the website (https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/), USCIS asks applicants to wait six months before submitting an inquiry. Meanwhile, you can also visit Lawfully Community and share your timeline with other users with the same form application so that you can pick up a hint from them. In exceptional occurrences where there is a sudden delay, sharing information in such a manner may provide much greater insight than relying on established information.
