Greetings Jorge Rivera immigration attorney.

If you are wondering how long your specific case will take with immigration, the answer is that different cases take different lengths of time. There are specific situations that take less than a year to resolve such as, for example, the work permit which is one of the fastest procedures compared to others that are more delayed.

For example, the residence can take from one to two years, the sorry within the country is taking from two to three years, and the U Visa is taking approximately five years. So, there are big differences depending on the type of case you have, but how do you find out what the wait times are, how fast immigration will approve your case?

Case number

The way to find out is with the number of cases that appears on the receipt that immigration sent you when you applied. The receipt is automatically sent to everyone, it is the proof that you paid the fee to immigration. They even send you a receipt for cases that are not paid, because it is proof that you have a pending case with immigration.

I recommend you not to be worried about the amount of time your case is going to take, if you don't even have a receipt with a case number. If you don't have it, you should be claiming your immigration lawyer finding out what happened.

Immigration Receipt

That receipt arrives in 30 to 90 days, and then comes the fingerprinting. The fact that you have been fingerprinted does not determine how long your case will take: it is something they do automatically to everyone. This does not indicate that it is going well or poorly and does not affect the waiting time either.

So, the key is that when you have the number, for example, the residency is the "I485" this would be the form, the family petition is the "I130", the travel permit is the "I131" and so on: this information is given to you by your lawyer and he says "look your process is this, this is your case number"; and it can be checked in two ways:

• First, with the number of cases you can go to the official immigration website and it tells you that it is either pending, or they are processing it, or they asked you for more proof, or they approved it, or an appointment is pending: in short, they tell you what is going on.
• Second, the other is according to the case type: There we see what the service center is. The type of case appears at the top right on your receipt. Now, the service center where it is located is listed on the bottom left and that is how we can find out how long it takes because there are different cases that are processed at different immigration service centers (there are in California, Nebraska and Texas).

So, you can obviously ask us, we'll say "look, your case is taking so long", we'll check it out for you on the spot and that's the advantage of having a lawyer. We would love to help you find out and tell you how long it's taking.

Immigration Lawyer

If you want to know more, you can call us and we can answer you at 888 578 22 76. Jorge Rivera provides all types of legal advice to immigrants throughout the United States.

If you are looking for an immigration lawyer in Miami, you can find us at 5820 Blue Lagoon Dr, Miami, FL.

It also provides counseling for immigrants in Houston.