It’s about frickin’ time something went my way! Three cheers for Congressman Hastert—Hip, Hip—maybe I should tell you what I’m talking about first.
In May, after a year and a half of processing, my finace (now husband) was finally granted a finace visa to come to the US so we could marry. My husband has 2 kids form his fist marriage and our intention was always to bring them as well but we didn’t want them to come at the same time he did. Our reasons were that I have only a small apartment and we had no idea when the visas would be granted. We needed time to get a bigger place once we knew they could come. Also, my husband wanted to have a chance to settle in a bit and get a job to help support the little buggers. Lastly, we wanted to coordinate their arrival with the break in the school term to keep the disruption to a minimum.
So, during the processing of my husband’s visa, I asked the INS numerous times if it would be possible for us to bring the children after my husband arrived. “No problem”, they told me. Just list them on the petition and as long as they follow within a year, they can come on K2 visas (which are issued without any of the hassle and delays of regular relative petitions). Great, we thought.
Fast forward to June. Hubby is here and we call the embassy in Nepal to ask what we need to do to begin the processing for the kid’s visas. They tell me that we can’t get K2 visas for the kids becasue we already married. “Huh?”, I said. I told them that I had asked INS repeatedly if we could do this and they said we could. The embassy basically said “tough shit”. I told them that I could not find anywhere in the law or in any documentation we had from the INS or from them where it said that we had to get the K2 visas before we married. Again, they said “tough shit” and offered no other help.
So I called the INS. They said that the embassy in K-du made a mistake, but that it would likely be a cold day in hell before they did anything about it. Their advise was that we file regular relative petitioins for the kids. When I protested that this type of petition typically takes years to be approved they, too, said, “tough shit”.
Not being one to take this sort of crap lying down, I wrote to my congressman (who also happens to be Speaker of the House). His office called me back in a day and a half. Now that’s service. They asked me to send them some documentation and said they would see what they could do. Four days later, I got a letter from them saying they had contacted the embassy in Kathmandu and would let me know as soon as they heard anything. Two days later (today), I got a phone call and fax from Congressman Hastert’s office. The embassy in K-du answered their inquiry, saying that we should have the kids come on down and they would process their K2 visas.
I am, of course, delighted at the result but I am also really pissed off that it took a letter from my congressman to get the people at the embassy to do their job. I am fed up with the unmittigated gall and complete lack of helpfulness on the part of the employees of the embassy and the INS. It’s a disgrace that they would give me incorrect information, refuse to justify it with the law and leave me, average Joe Citizen, twisting in the wind. It’s pitiful that it requires a letter from the Speaker to get them to do their job. Hell, just to make them follow the law. It is a sad state of affairs.
But, as indicated in the topic, sometimes the government does work. I’m really impressed with the immediate attention my situation got from Congressman Hastert and his efforts to solve the problem so quickly. He will (again) get my vote.
Now, if I could just get someone to make the INS understand that it is not acceptable for them to take 2 years to process our marriage certificate (during which time, my husband is not allowed to travel, work or drive–but that’s another story).
