Visa Lawyer Blog
Form I-751 Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence is a form that must be filed by conditional permanent residents to remove their conditions and receive the ten-year permanent resident card.
Previously, USCIS was taking approximately 7 months to adjudicate the removal of conditions application and would issue receipt notices automatically extending conditional permanent residence for a period of 12 months while the I-751 application was in process.
As of June 11, 2018, USCIS began issuing receipt notices automatically extending conditional permanent resident status for a period of 18 months. This change was made because current processing times for Form I-751 have increased over the past year.
USCIS is now taking an average of 12 months to adjudicate the removal of conditions application, irrespective of whether the petition was filed jointly or as a waiver of the joint filing requirement.
This increase in processing times is owed to multiple factors including an increased workload, the burden on USCIS offices to review these applications, and the volume of applications received by the respective service centers.
There is however a silver lining. Although the processing times have increased for the I-751, USCIS recently announced that under certain circumstances an I-751 applicant may not be scheduled to appear for an in-person interview.
