[taevans1]

Hi Everyone.

Just a quick question to those living in PA

We haven't had our homestudy yet, but it is in the works...

Do we need to wait to have the completed homestudy before filing the I-600A. I know they need to have it on file.

or can we file the form, get fingerprinted, and submit the homestudy when it is completed.

I'm nervous about filing first then sending the homestudy in later. What if it doesn't get linked up with our files. Or is it not a big deal.

I don't really want to wait a month or so while our homestudy is being processed and not be able to do anything until we get it.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Tom

[boatsun]

We are in the Dallas area and we filed our I-600a and a few weeks later our Homestudy was completed. Our social worker sent the needed documents directly to the BCIS. It wasn't more than two weeks later until we recieved our fingerprint date and about two weeks after that we recieved our I-171.

In other words, your homestudy will catch up to your paperwork.

Jeff

[cliner71]

I am in Philly and received my I-171 about 2 weeks ago. I had my fingerprints done in early Feb., homestudy submitted May 4, and received my I-171 July 12, or about 8 weeks after my homestudy was submitted.

My homestudy agency was shocked that it took that long, as they had many people who received their I-171 before me, and had their homestudies submitted to the Philly BCIS office long after mine was.

I suspect that the delay was because there was such a long lag between fingerprints and homestudy submission--maybe a slow time for the paperwork to catch up with itself? BUT, this is just a guess, it could also just have been bad luck.. I live in Philly, so I started to make regular calls and drop by the office. Things moved pretty quickly after I started doing that...

[VJS6]

I am also from Philly. We waited til our Homestudy was finished before submitting the whole bundle to BCIS.

My understanding is that until all info is complete, they don't even put you in line to be processed. (From what I hear, there is only one person in charge of processing these for the whole state!) My wait from was a total of about 7 weeks.

Good luck.

[Krystyna]

Hi,

We submitted our I-600A in July 2003, were fingerprinted in Aug 2003, finalized our home study in October. Once our SW sent it to BCIS in Philadelphia, it only took 4 weeks to receive our I-171. Maybe it was because the fingerprints were already finished and waiting??

Good Luck!