Should I rely on what the online portal says?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri.
Last week, the state department mass updated a number of long pending overseas visa cases, and they updated it from "administrative processing" to refuse. Now I have my own theories on why they did that, but basically I think it was a little bit of housekeeping in that they have placed all of these cases in administrative processing and when we and other people sue them, they say, "Oh, that case was refused long ago."
And then the court asked for proof that it was refused and they never actually denoted it as refused. So I think they were cleaning up their files. But the point of this video is to look at the broader issue of the online portals, whether it be at USCIS or at CEAC, which is the State Department's online portal.
And I want you to know, I put very, very, very, very, very little stock in what the online portal say. Now, a lot of times a case will get approved and it will be properly noted. A lot of times the case will get denied, and it'll get noted as a decision has been issued. So a lot of times there's value in it, but you cannot get too caught up in what it says on the online portal.
I've had clients try to rely on what it says in the online portal to say that a case that ultimately got denied was still pending because USCIS never updated the online portal. I've also had people like last week freak out when a classification in the CEAC website, the State Department's website changed from one to another. And this is especially true in lawsuits, but generally when you're looking at the online portals, you have to take it with a big grain of salt. You have to understand that most likely the information in here is not a completely accurate or completely timely. So don't get all worked up about things that you see on the online portal.
Now if your case gets denied and you receive an official notice, that's one thing. But if you are just living and breathing and sitting by the computer every hour, logging into the CEAC website and trying to figure out everything you can about your case. I mean one of the reasons people hire us to sue them is to sort of relieve them of that need to keep doing that. But just generally I want to ease your pain. I want to ease your burden.
I would suggest that you don't live on the online portals, but when you do, take what they say with a grain of salt. Sometimes it's just a matter of the officer reclassifying it or moving the case around. Or sometimes it'll go to say refuse and that just shows that there's movement.
So I'm making this video for all my lawsuit peeps, but this is really for everybody else that you don't need to get too worked up over what it says online. Just wait for the official decision. That's when you need to worry when your lawyer tells you to or when USCIS sends you an official denial, something like that.
So we hope you found this video helpful. We hope you won't spend all your time on the CEAC website or on the USCIS.gov website. If you have questions about this or about your immigration case, give us call 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected].
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