What happens after I file my NOID or RFE response? Hi. I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington DC. When you file for an immigration benefit your main goal of course is to get the case approved. The one thing that's going to slow that down and possibly alert you that the case is off tracks is if you receive what is a NOID, a Notice of Intent to Deny, or an RFE, a Request for Evidence. If you receive a NOID or if you receive an RFE, that means that the case is on hold. It has stopped. There is no further processing going on of your case while the NOID or RFE or the Notice of Intent to Revoke, any of these types of forms are in your possession. You are on the clock and the government is off the clock.
So you want to make sure that when you receive a NOID or an RFE that you file that response as quickly as possible, but more importantly than quickly, you want to file it thoroughly. You want to make sure that you're going to win and that the case will go back to processing. So many people get frustrated when they receive a NOID and they also get frustrated when they send in their response to that NOID or the RFE and nothing happens. The USCIS portal doesn't change. It just says, "A NOID was issued," or, "An RFE was issued." It doesn't even seem that they have began processing your case again. And so this is one of the reasons why you want to make sure that you send your response back by federal express. If there ever comes a question that you did file your RFE or NOID response on time, you want to have proof that you sent it back to them in a timely fashion.
Now what happens exactly when you do? Now your case will be at the National Benefit Center usually is where your case is being processed. Now you might receive a NOID or an RFE from the local field office, but either way, your case is waiting for that RFE, it's waiting for that NOID response, and sometimes USCIS doesn't do the best job of matching up a NOID response or an RFE response with the actual application or with the actual NOID or RFE. So this is one of the problems that happens when you get a NOID or RFE. It's just getting the cases to link back up again. And then, of course, there has to be processing. Somebody has to read what you've submitted. And then the question is, did you overcome what was stated in the NOID or the Request for Evidence.
Now Request for Evidence is not as combative, it's not as dire, and in fact, you can receive a Request for Evidence before you receive a Notice of Intent to Deny. And with the Request for Evidence, they're just asking for more stuff. With the Notice of Intent to Deny they're saying, "Hey, pal. We don't like your naturalization case. We don't like your green card case. We're probably going to deny this case. We're leaning that way." So when they get your NOID response, they have to ask themselves, "Are we convinced that the submission has overcome what we thought was headed towards a denial?" And so you're not going to get a lot of updates. You're not going to be able to get them to move quickly. The processing of a NOID or RFE response can take many months. So don't hold your breath. Don't be clicking to click, trying to get answers every single day because you're just going to drive yourself crazy.
The fact of the matter is that once you receive that NOID or that RFE, your case is definitely going to slow down. And of course you want to give them that timely response, but you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for the next response to come, the approval to come. They'll take their own sweet time and I think they actually go a little bit more deliberately and more slowly after a NOID has been issued and received. Hope this makes sense. Hope you're not as frustrated as you could be when you receive that NOID or that RFE or that Notice of Intent to Revoke. But if you are and you need our help, give us a call 314-961-8200. Email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called immigrant home. If you like this video, we ask that you please do two things, share it out on social, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and then join us on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually at noon central, where I'm answering as many of your immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
