Once your USCIS petition has been approved, the documents gets sent to the National Visa Center for further processing. This is a flowchart of how the system works at the National Visa Center or NVC.
Understand your Case Number
When the approved I-130 petition arrives at the National Visa Center they will issue the petition a case number. This case number has 3 letters and 10 digits. The 3 letters tells you where the overseas embassy that will deal with the matter later. For example, BNK would be the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
The 10 digits will tell you a number of others things about the application since the letters told you which embassy will be dealing with it. Lets make an example for you to understand:
National Visa Center Case Number: BNK2014747003
We know from the letters that this application will go to the US Embassy in Bangkok. The 2014 tells you the application was made in the year 2014. The next 3 digits tells us the month and date of the application. You take 747 + 500 to get 247. This is the 247th day of the year which makes it the 4th September 2014. The last 3 digits tells you which case it was for that day being in this matter 003 which makes this the 3rd application for Bangkok for that day. Now you know how to read and understand your case number from the National Visa Center.
If you have questions about the National Visa Center, please feel free to contact our office.