In recent weeks we were notified that one of the service centers responsible for adjudicating member petitions has been experiencing vast processing delays – quoting  “up to 6-months”.   Thankfully, the other service center which adjudicates member petitions is still processing within about the 90-day time frame that most are accustomed to.

We have recently updated the information on our website to recommend 185 days processing time for standard processing U.S. Work Permits :: Canadian Federation of Musicians (afm.org).  While not every file will fall into the potential 185-day vortex, we do need to recommend this at the outset.

This problem is exasperated by the fact that we are required to send all petitions to the Texas Service Center, which appears to be more of a sorting house than an adjudication center.  We do not know which service center any given file has been sent to until a Receipt Notice is issued, this takes approximately 30-45 days.

The staff have been quite diligent in contacting members with petitions in process to notify them that their Approval may not be issued on time and to consider premium processing or reschedule performance dates where possible.

Going forward, you may advise members who do not have 185 days before their first gig, that they may still file but to prepare themselves for the possibility that the premium fee ($2,805 USD) may be required, and if so, the CFM office will notify them within about 35 days thereafter.   Also, we highly recommend that you advise your members to send their applications directly to our office, as even 1 day sitting in the Local office, is one day that the file is better spent in USCIS processing.

We have also been working with our lobby group to address this matter with USCIS Officials.  USCIS has gone back on its promise in connection with the recent fee increases, in that they assured petitioners the increase would bring about improved processing time and administrative practices – to date, they have failed on both promises.  In addition to juggling the files which are potentially caught in the USCIS backlog, we have also had to deal with numerous administrative errors.

Please rest assured that the staff are working diligently to keep members updated on the progress of their file.   If you or your members have specific questions on the above, please direct those inquiries to me.  For inquiries specific to an application already in process, please email immigration@afm.org , and Ari, Susan or Cathy will respond as quickly as possible.