The I-824 form may be used to request more than one I-797 approval notice or to notify more than one consulate, port of entry (POE), or pre-flight inspection facility (PFI) of an approval.

On occasion, you may need multiple approval notices (for petitions involving groups whose beneficiaries will apply for visas at more than one consulate). You will receive the I-797 approval, which can be submitted to one consular post, while others may accept a fax copy. Otherwise, though, at least for the time being, your safest bet may be to ask for multiple I-797s to be issued. For this purpose, you will have to include one I-824 and applicable $340 fee per additional I-797 required.

One complication to the problem of multiple consular notification is that USCIS wants to know which beneficiaries will be applying at what post. Accordingly, petitioners should supply an extra copy of the beneficiary list for each added consular post to be notified, marking each copy with the specific post’s location and highlighting the beneficiaries going to that post. All beneficiary lists should be placed at the same spot in the petition. Place any I-824 itself, with fee check, separately, in back of the petition. Do not include any other documentation. Simply note in your cover letter that you have included one or more I-824s, with fees and additional beneficiary lists, to remind the CIS examiner of their presence.

In general, the service center premium processing units act on I-824s at the same time as they adjudicate the underlying petitions. However, it is not clear that they do so in regularly processed cases, and it is clear that if you file the I-824 after the fact, it will receive the lowest possible processing priority, meaning months and months, if not years of delay. I-824s cannot be premium processed by themselves.

If you are premium processing and need more than one I-797 or other notification, consider contacting the Service Center’s Premium Processing unit before or immediately after filing to confirm its willingness to issue added I-797s without accompanying I-824s.

If you are using regular processing, whether or not you seek a traditional expedite, include an I-824 for each extra I-797 or notification you desire.

Note: With the advent of the Kentucky Consular Center (KCC), more and more consular posts will wean themselves from reliance on paper I-797s in favor of electronic verification, at which point no I-797s should be needed for visa application purposes. Until this system is more robust, however, and consular posts more facile at using it, stick to paper!