New USCIS 5-day Procedure to correct mistakes

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has established an expedited process for reviewing and correcting decisions resulting from certain administrative errors. This process enables customers to request an expedited review of their case and correction of the decision where data entry and/or an administrative error resulted in a denial or rejection of their petition or application.

A customer or his or her authorized representative may contact the National Customer Service Center (NCSC) at 1-800-375-5283 to request that an expedited service request be created if he or she believes that an adverse adjudicative action fits within certain enumerated criteria.

I am actually very happy to hear this news. The process of correcting a mistake on an application, that has been made through no fault of the applicant but is simply an admin error, has been excruciating. You are faced with the option of wasting hours at the USCIS office to file your motion to reopen with an officer who was not the one who handled the case and knows nothing about it or spending enormous filing fees filing the motion to reopen through mail and then waiting months on end for a decision.

These things happen pretty often for example the USCIS will forget to send out a Request for Evidence or they send it to the wrong address and then the case is denied(and all the non refundable filing fees along with it). With this new procedure, USCIS is promising to resolve the matter within 5 business days by merely placing a call to the 1-800 National Customer Service Hotline. I had a few disappinting experiences with this hotline when it first was provided but recently I made an inquiry and i was able to obtain an answer pretty quickly so they must have worked out the kinks in the system.

More information about this new expedited 5 day procedure is available here.