Can my senator have my case expedited?

Congressional representatives, including United States Senators from your State and the U.S. House Representative from your Congressional District have designated members of their staff who maintain communication with the USCIS, which is the agency that processes administrative applications such as spouse petitions and employer-sponsored petitions. These members of Congress and their staff cannot expedite a case, however, they are often successful at learning the status of a case that seems to be stuck in processing and in requesting that action be taken to move the case to its conclusion. It is important to know normal processing times before contacting your Congressional representative, because assistance will likely be declined in cases that are still within normal processing times. It is also important to know whether there is a serious problem with your case before contacting your Congressional representative for help, because sometimes, a case is held up in processing due to a fatal flaw with the applicant’s ability to be admitted into the United States. In such cases, the Congressional intervention serves to call attention to an inadmissible case and may result in the applicant being placed into removal proceedings once the case has been reviewed as requested. Members of Congress can only request that a case be reviewed, they cannot lobby the USCIS to make a favorable determination for an applicant. In very rare and compelling cases, a Congressional representative may choose to sponsor an immigrant through private bill legislation, which is a special law passed to benefit one particular person so that he or she may achieve lawful immigrant status. A recent example is that of the foreign widow of a US Citizen who was killed in Iraq while employed by a private security company. His widow faced deportation when he was killed because she did not have the same privileges under immigration law as if her husband had been a member of the U.S. Armed Forces. Therefore, her late husband’s U.S. Senator sponsored private bill legislation to allow the widow to apply for U.S. Citizenship rather than have her face removal from the Country and separation from her young children.

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