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Let's Talk About NOIDs Meaning And Tips For Avoiding Denial

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Let's talk about NOIDs meaning and what you can do to avoid denial. 

Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, an immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, Missouri, and San Diego, California. If you're old like I am, you'll remember when Domino's had this annoying little character called The Noid. The Noid would go around and take people's pizzas and screw up their orders and all this stuff. I think they took it from annoyed. Speaking of annoyed, you may be annoyed by receiving a NOID, a notice of intent to deny. 

Read on to learn more about:

  • The meaning of NOID
  • The process of applying for an immigration benefit
  • The role of an immigration lawyer in dealing with NIODand avoiding denial

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What are NOIDs?

A notice of intention to deny is the last step from USCIS before they issue a denial on your case.

Now, if you receive a NOID, I want to walk you through what you need to do. But before I do that, let's go through the whole process of what happens when you apply for an immigration benefit. 

How to Apply for an Immigration Benefit

First, you'll fill out the application. Then, you'll pay the filing fee and get your receipt notice back. Depending on what benefit it is, you’ll then get fingerprinted. Lastly, the USCIS will begin processing your case. It could be for an overseas case, it could be for a case here. 

But while the case is at USCIS, there are different things that they can do.

  • They can approve the case
  • They can deny the case
  • They can issue what's called a request for evidence, an RFE. You've heard us talk about RFEs before, that's just something where USCIS feels like there's some missing information from your application, so they issue you this RFE, this request for evidence. 
  • They will send you a notice of intent to deny. 

In lots of application categories, the USCIS is required by law to issue you a NOID before they actually deny the case. Now, sometimes they don't do that, so that's a hook that we can use to try to get them to reverse their decision. But generally, they are supposed to send you a notice of intent to deny.

What Does NOID Look Like?

What a NOID looks like is a letter from USCIS, and it will say notice of intent to deny. 

They'll outline the following:

  • Your immigration history
  • The benefit that you were applying for 
  • What evidence or relevant documents they want you to submit, or what issues you need to overcome in order to get your case approved

Now, if you receive a NOID, I think you're obviously on a track to denial. And the idea that you're going to be able to convince them without a lawyer, and to win your NOID, to overcome the notice of intent to deny, I think the chances of you doing that without a lawyer are very slim. 

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The Role of an Immigration Lawyer

If you get a NOID, the first thing you need to do is contact an experienced immigration attorney. Even before you start working on it, you want to get that going because, a lot of times, you only have 30 days to reply to the denial notice. If you miss it, your case is over, and you're going to get denied.

We have overcome NOIDs. We have won cases where a NOID was issued. It's not easy, and I would say it happens in less than 50% of the cases, probably about 25-30% of cases can overcome a NOID. It depends on what the issue is or what they're complaining about. 

So we've had good success with NOID in several cases:

  • On H-1Bs, where they said, "This is not a specialty occupation. Here's a NOID, we're going to deny this." We've overcome that. 
  • In the marriage-based context, where they say, "Look, we sent you a request for evidence, you sent us further evidence, and this is not enough," or, "Your affidavit support isn't sufficient, so we're going to issue you this NOID," and we have been able to overcome that. 

It usually involves a clean legal issue. If it's something that's subjective, that USCIS has a lot of discretion on, then those are harder NOIDS to overcome.

Final Thoughts

A NOID can be overcome. You can still win your case. Just because you got a NOID doesn't mean you're going to lose, but it does mean your case is on the ropes. You're getting pummeled by USCIS, and they're coming at you, boom, boom, boom, and they want to deny your case. So a NOID is a serious, drastic thing that needs to be addressed immediately and thoroughly and quickly.

If you have questions or if you've received a NOID, or if you are annoyed by a NOID that you received, feel free to give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, it's called Immigrant Home, we'd love to have you in there. We also have our YouTube channel, which you're probably watching this video on, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. We put up a new video every single day. Also, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually at noon central time, you'll find me live in our Facebook group, answering as many of your immigration law-related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and we'll see you next time.

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