Filing I-600A before choosing agency?

Dawn, my local homestudy agency helped me answer these questions. Do you already have a homestudy done? I had these same questions and learned that it depends on where you will be filing your CIS. I sent my I600A in with the wrong answers and it was sent back, so I didn't really save any time! The I600A can take about three months, but do you suspect that you'll have a referral before then? If not, this is not necessarily something you need to do right away. Anyway, here is a website where you can learn about local filing procedures:[url="http://uscis.gov/graphics/fieldoffices/distsub_offices/index.htm"]http://uscis.gov/graphics/fieldoffices/distsub_offices/index.htm[/url] Choose yours and you'll be able to figure out some of this stuff. Good luck!

[font=Arial]We are waiting for our I-600A to be processed. I recommend doing it before you settle on an agency. We did. It's been a month and they haven't even gotten around to it yet. You can leave the agency information blank. In your cover letter, address that you will supplement the agency information at a later date.[/font][font=Arial]I am unsure about how to fill out the rest of block II for Guatemala as we are working with another country. There are a lot of great people on the Guatemala board and I'm sure if you posted there they would be able to help you very quickly.[/font]

We submitted our form before we chose an international agency, but did get help from our homestudy agency to answer some of those other questions you had (I don't want to touch those, because I am not sure of the answer, and wouldn't want to tell you wrong). Something to think about, here in Colorado (saying that because I don't know how other states work) they don't process the I-600a until your homestudy is done and to them (as well as your fingerprints and whatever else your homestudy agency provides). The homestudy is part of their requirements for how they approve you, so they wait, and wait...... So, getting the form to CIS now is good, but is best timed to coordinate with your homestudy (at least thats how it worked here!). We submitted ours on the day we set up our first homestudy, and then two weeks later got our approval for fingerprints, got those around our final homestudy, and then waited a month for the HS to be completed and sent off. Everything sat until our homestudy was given to CIS (the first steps of it all being out of your control, and having to wait on your HS agency). But the good news is that we got our approval (the I-171H form) 2.5 weeks after they had received all of our information (so not too bad!!). Good luck, and congrats on your decision!! Carrie

Here in my state, the feds also don't process your I600A until the home study has been received. Once your home study is in, you quickly receive a letter for your fingerprinting appointment. In our case, we mailed our I600A application some time in the winter. Only after our home study was finished (around mid May) did we receive a letter regarding the fingerprinting appointment (which was scheduled for two months later).

I want to clarify that I do think we were among the minority by getting fingerprinted before we had completed our homestudy, but I do think that this helped to shorten the turnaround time once CIS got our homestudy (since they had already theoretically run our fingerprints). So for those of you that have submitted the I-600 and haven't heard back yet, I wouldn't worry until you know that they also have your homestudy in hand to finish out the processing!! Our total time from sending off the I-600 to getting the 171h was 2 months plus a couple of days. But that was with having our first homestudy within a week or two of sending off our I-600.