Your case is past its inquiry date: what you can actually do

What this page does not tell you

It does not say how long your case should take, and it does not say whether your wait is normal. Those depend on your form, your service centre and a queue nobody publishes, and any page claiming otherwise is guessing about you. What follows is the published machinery instead: the date at which you become entitled to ask, the four routes available, the threshold on each, and — said early because it is the part most often misunderstood — what none of them can do.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

The date that matters is your case inquiry date, not the posted processing time

USCIS publishes a case inquiry date for your specific case, and it is not the same thing as the processing time shown on the website. DHS directs you to enter your receipt date on the USCIS Check Case Processing Times page to see it, and states that the case inquiry date "may be different from the processing times USCIS posts on its website". You find it under the heading "When can I ask about my case?" after choosing your form category and USCIS location. This is the date the rest of this page turns on, so read it off the page rather than calculating it yourself.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

What none of these routes can do

The CIS Ombudsman states plainly that it cannot "compel USCIS to take action on a pending application, petition, or request". It also cannot give legal advice, cannot replace the formal appeal or motion process or change an appeal deadline, and — in its own words — filing a case assistance request "does not extend any USCIS deadlines you may face". The Ombudsman can bring an issue to USCIS and recommend a solution; only USCIS can approve or deny anything. Read that before you build a plan around any of this, because a route that raises attention is not a route that produces a decision.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

Route one: ask USCIS, and the order is not optional

DHS sets out the sequence. Check your case status online with USCIS, and enter your receipt date to find your case inquiry date. Then contact USCIS to try to resolve the issue: submit an e-Request, send a secure message through your USCIS online account, ask through the Ask Emma chat feature, or call the USCIS Contact Center on 1-800-375-5283. This step is not merely advisable. It is a precondition for the Ombudsman later, so doing it and noting the date is what keeps the next route open.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

The one deadline that runs the other way: a missing receipt notice

Most of this page is about waiting long enough to be allowed to ask. A missing receipt notice is the exception, and it has its own address. DHS says to email the USCIS Lockbox at lockboxsupport@uscis.dhs.gov if more than 30 business days have passed since your package was delivered to a USCIS lockbox, or since the lockbox cashed your filing fee cheque, and you have still not received a receipt notice. Without a receipt number there is no case status to check and no case inquiry date to reach, so this one is worth acting on early.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

Route two: the expedite request, which is not about how long you have waited

USCIS considers expedite requests case by case, generally requires documentation, and describes the decision as within its sole discretion. The criteria it publishes are severe financial loss to a company or person; emergencies or urgent humanitarian situations; a nonprofit whose request furthers the cultural or social interests of the United States; government interests; and clear USCIS error. Note what is absent: a long wait is not itself a criterion. USCIS states directly that "the need to obtain employment authorization, standing alone, without evidence of other compelling factors, does not warrant expedited treatment" — which is the single most common misunderstanding of this route among people whose work permit is the thing that is late.

Source: USCIS — Expedite Requests

If the wait is an H-4 or an H-4 work permit, premium processing is not the lever

Premium processing cannot be bought for either half of an H-4, and the two halves fail differently. USCIS lists the Form I-765 categories it will take at premium — (c)(3)(A), (c)(3)(B) and (c)(3)(C), every one of them F-1 optional practical training — and the H-4 work permit category is not among them. The Form I-539 classifications it will take are the F, M and J ones, and H-4 is not among those either. What USCIS does publish is that the status half rides along with the principal: an application "properly filed together with a Form I-539 for derivative H-4 or L-2 status will be adjudicated at the same time as the principal's Form I-129", so long as the I-539 "is packaged together with and properly filed at the same time and in the same location as" it. Read that promise closely before relying on it, because it covers the H-4 status and says nothing at all about the Form I-765 behind the work permit — which is the half most people are actually waiting on, and the reason one spouse's status can arrive with the H-1B while the employment authorisation does not.

Source: USCIS — How Do I Request Premium Processing?

The service centre email addresses being forwarded around are not published by USCIS

A list of five service centre addresses circulates on Instagram and WhatsApp, one each for California, Vermont, Nebraska, Potomac and Texas, under a template letter asking for an H-4 and H-4 EAD to be expedited. USCIS publishes no such list. What it publishes is a telephone number — "If you have already filed Form I-907 and you need to contact the service center, call 866-315-5718" — and one sentence about email: "the toll-free number and email address listed on the receipt notice for Form I-907 are only for users who have already submitted a request for premium processing." So an address exists, it is printed on your own receipt notice, and it belongs to people who paid for premium processing. Two things follow. If you filed Form I-907, the address you want is already in your own paperwork and is better than a forwarded one. If you did not file it, USCIS's own wording says that channel is not yours, and the four routes on this page are the ones that are. The posts sharing the list say plainly that they do not know whether it works; that is the most accurate sentence in them.

Source: USCIS — How Do I Request Premium Processing?

Route three: a congressional inquiry, and the waiting period it starts

Members of Congress and their staff may submit a case assistance request on behalf of an applicant or petitioner, but written consent from the applicant or petitioner is required before anyone can be communicated with about the case. Going this way starts a clock against the Ombudsman: DHS cannot help "if it has been fewer than 45 calendar days since your congressional representative made an inquiry to USCIS". So these two routes are sequential rather than parallel, and choosing the congressional route first means the Ombudsman is closed to you for those 45 days.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

Route four: the CIS Ombudsman, and the two thresholds on it

The CIS Ombudsman is an independent office within DHS and states it is "not part of USCIS". Where the only issue is a processing delay and USCIS has not approved an expedite request, it can help only if two things are both true: you submitted a case inquiry to USCIS through one of its customer service tools in the last 90 days and have given the agency at least 60 days to respond, and your case inquiry date has already passed. Requests go in on DHS Form 7001. An attorney or accredited representative must include a signed Form G-28, and DHS says it will close a request where the contact email appears to belong to a legal representative and no properly signed G-28 was uploaded.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

When the Ombudsman is closed to you

DHS publishes the refusals as clearly as the openings. It cannot help before your case inquiry date, save for two exceptions: where there is a statutory or regulatory processing time requirement — it names Form I-360 for Special Immigrant Juveniles, Form N-400, and Form I-129 for L-1 petitions — or where USCIS approved your expedite request more than 60 days ago. It cannot help where there is no published processing time for the form type and fewer than 6 months have passed since you filed and submitted a case inquiry. It cannot help if USCIS recently denied your expedite request. And it can only work on issues involving USCIS.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

Undelivered notices are a separate category, and a stronger one

Alongside delay, DHS lists issue types the Ombudsman helps with directly. Undelivered USCIS notices or decisions is the one this audience hits most: receipt notices, requests for evidence, appointment notices or denial notices where USCIS systems indicate one was issued, or where the Postal Service returned a card or document to USCIS as non-deliverable. The others include aging out of eligibility, improper rejections due to clear errors of fact, typographical errors in green cards or employment authorisation documents, expedites USCIS approved more than two months ago, and delays sending approved petitions to the Department of State. If your problem is one of these rather than plain waiting, say so — it is a different queue from a delay complaint.

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)

Where people get this wrong

Source: DHS — How to Submit a Case Assistance Request (CIS Ombudsman)