Do I have to wait for USCIS deadlines? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego and Washington DC. In today's video, we're going to talk about delays at USCIS or at the State Department at an embassy overseas. And the question comes up, if I'm thinking about suing them, do I need to wait for them to get back to me on a timeline that they selected? In other words, I've contacted USCIS over and over and they tell me, "Give us 60 more days. Give us 100 more days. Give us 6 more months. Give us another year". Do I have to wait? Am I bound by those deadlines? Do I have to sit and wait until I sue them? Or can I just go ahead and sue them? And the answer to this question is those dates are completely arbitrary and completely made up.Just like the processing times that you see on their website. These are absolutely ridiculous and not tied to reality.
The whole question is whether or not an administrative agency like USCIS or the State Department has adjudicated your case in a reasonable amount of time. Now, the question always comes up, what is reasonable? And that is in the eye of the beholder. It's actually up to the judge to decide if you sue them, what's reasonable and what's not. That's assuming that they fight back and try to say that you haven't been waiting long enough, but I just want to make this video to educate you and teach you that these deadlines or these postings that they have of processing times based on this service center or that service center, it's all BS. It's all crap. It doesn't mean anything. None of those dates mean anything. These are just arbitrary dates that they literally pick out of their butt and just throw it up there on the website. Or you're on the phone with a tier two officer and they say, "Give us 60 days and you'll get a response". But you know what that response is going to be, the same old BS keep on waiting response that you've been getting over and over.
Now our lawsuits don't work in every single case, but I will tell you that it does cause them to act in most cases. In most cases when we sue them, they don't ever come back in and say, "Oh well, we told you we were going to take another six weeks to decide your case. And you should have sat tight and how dare you sue us?" They don't do that because they know that their stated processing times are bogus and arbitrary and completely unconnected to reality. So you do not have to listen to their stated processing times. You do not have to listen to when they tell you to keep on waiting. You have power, you have control and you have agency and you can take advantage of that by filing a lawsuit against them. A lawsuit under the Administrative Procedures Act and a writ of mandamus asking a federal judge to compel them to act.
They don't have the right to sit on your case forever. They can approve a case. They can deny a case, but they can't sit on your case forever. So enough with the, "Oh my gosh, they told me they were going to do this". Or, "Oh my gosh, they told me they were going to do that". It's all BS. Don't listen to them and take control of your life and your case and do what you want to do. If you want to sue them, sue them. You certainly don't have to wait for them to say, "You've waited long, now you can sue us". That's just ridiculous thinking.
Hope this makes sense. If you have questions, give us a call 314-961-8200. Email us info at hackinglawpractice.com. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. If you liked this video, we ask that you please share it out on social and then subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
