USCIS Rejected My Green Card Years Later: 'Reject After Ingest'

A caller on the June 4 Immigration Answer Show filed his employment-based I-485 in July 2022. USCIS took his biometrics, issued him and his wife work permits and advance parole, interviewed them in January 2023, and sent a request for evidence. Then, more than three years later, the agency rejected the case. Its reason: his priority date was not current the month he filed, so it should never have been accepted in the first place.

The error traces to two different charts in the monthly Visa Bulletin. Each month USCIS announces whether applicants may file using the “Dates for Filing” chart or must wait for the “Final Action Dates” chart. His lawyer filed off the wrong one, and nobody at the service center caught it at any point: not at intake, not at biometrics, not at the interview, not in the RFE. Applicants hit with this are calling it “reject after ingest,” and the caller said he has found a dozen others in the same spot.

A rejection is not a denial, but the practical damage is worse. Because the case is treated as though it was never properly filed, the pending I-485 that kept the family’s work authorization alive disappears. Both spouses lost their EADs overnight and could no longer legally work.

Jim Hacking’s read is that USCIS violated its own rules by sitting on the case and then rejecting it without notice.

That regulation is 8 CFR 103.2(b)(16), which requires USCIS to disclose derogatory information the applicant is unaware of and give a chance to rebut it before deciding. The visa-availability rule the agency invoked is in 8 CFR 245.1(g), and the underlying right to adjust is INA 245.

The caller’s fix runs on two tracks: refile the I-485 now that his date is current (his priority date went current in January 2026), and file an APA mandamus suit in the District of Massachusetts over the way the first case was handled. He also asked whether nunc pro tunc, treating the refiled case as if it went in on the original date, would rescue him. Hacking was skeptical that the doctrine can cure a filing that was defective from day one.

If your employer’s lawyer filed your I-485 the same summer your date went current, pull your receipt and confirm which Visa Bulletin chart was in effect that month. The lesson from this wave is that a receipt notice guarantees nothing about whether the case was properly filed. As with any employment case, when the I-140 and I-485 go in matters, and the 180-day portability and grace windows only protect you if the underlying adjustment was valid to begin with. If your case has been quiet for years, a lawsuit, not another service request, is usually what forces a decision.