I live two hours from Indianapolis and within that great city somewhere resides my local INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). I have been trying for quite awhile now to try to contact the illusive office there. They have no listed phone numbers, and the national office has no record they exist. BULL SHIT! The address for the office is listed right in the INS website, yet some call rep. who obviously just recieved her green card tells me she can’t find them. Then she has the nerve to ask me why don’t I just go to the office if I know here its at. I live two hours from Indy, I can’t just drop in. Plus they have those fucked up government hours 8am to 2:00pm mon -thurs. Whats up with that? I finally called the public relations dept. (the only number I ever found) and told them I was a reporter. I told them I was doing a report on how screwed up our immigration system is and I needed the number to the Indianapolis office, she gave it to me. I called them and they promptly told me I would have to come in a take number. So now I have to take a day off work to have some simple questions answered. Damn it. Is it really that difficult to be helpful? If there is anyone out there who is trying to get a foreign girlfriend into the states, you are in for a drawn out ordeal. Its full head aches, really stupid people, and missing mail packages with you life in them. Okay, now that I have bitched, I feel better. Let this be a warning to those of you who thought about bringing a girl to the states (everyone elses immigration services are probably fine), it will have to be true love.
Ah yes, your tax dollars at work. Somehow I do not think efficiency will improve with the advent of the new administration, given W’s total inability to see beyond the US (or even Texan) borders.
I’m a European citizen, I’ve been in the US since 1995 on an H1B visa that expires in a couple of weeks. I’ve been fucking around trying to get a green card since 1996 (meantime paying US taxes, making US industry more profitable, contributing to worthwhile causes, and trying to be a good non-citizen), and have finally given up wasting my time on fruitless paperwork and lawyers. My house in the States is up for sale and I’m going back to Europe for good in May, to return only as a tourist or business visitor. That’s my reward for paying over $110,000 in income tax alone during my time here - to get kicked out.
Thank you to our many American friends and colleagues who’ve helped us while we’ve been in your country, it’s been a wonderful experience living here.
Having said that, the US immigration system is one huge inefficient fuck up, and you (we) are all paying for it. I really wish more Americans had the first idea just how incredibly hard it is for genuine, qualified, hardworking people to move to America and contribute.
I’m learning Deep Thought, I’m learning.
Three weeks from now is SuperNationals. The biggest chess tournament in the country. I’m volunteering at it and my old high school team will be participating in it. They’ll be missing a player. One of the teammates will be deported back to Somalia in about two weeks.
This kid has seen war up close. He’s seen the fighting in the streets, he’s seen a man having his face smashed in with an axe, his family literally risked their lives coming to America. Now they’re being sent back.
I don’t have all the details. I don’t know if they’re all important anyway. There’s a group fighting this, writing to senators, the INS, and the Embassy. So far, no luck, but there’s still time left.
Aahh, a pit rant I can agree with whole-heartedly. The INS are the biggest bunch of assholes in the U.S. Government, the IRS could give them nice lessons. I spent 9 years in Korea, my wife is Korean. I have heard numerous horror stories about the INS.
A friend of mine married a Korean 2 months before leaving Korea. When they went to the embassy to get a Visa, they were told “No, we don’t believe this is a real marriage”. My friend argued with them for hours and basically told them " I’m not leaving without one". That was over ten years ago, they’re still married and have a kid.
There was an article in Stars and Stripes a few years back about a guy in the U.S. Army who wasn’t a U.S. citizen. (he was Filipino). His wife was also Filipino. He was being sent back to the States because his tour was up, but his wife couldn’t go with him. I never heard how it worked out but they had Congressmen, Senators, and the Stars and Stripes involved.
Deep Throat, you being a European (and therefore effectively not subject to per-country quotas), I’m having a hard time understanding why you would be unable to obtain a green card having worked on an H-1B for six years. It really isn’t very difficult for most H-1B workers (slow and time-consuming, but not difficult), unless you have a shitty lawyer or some extreme personal circumstances, or both.
Fugazi, the embassy people your friend dealt with in Korea would have been State Department, not INS.
And mighty_maxx, you think the US system is bad, you ought to see Ireland’s.
That said, the INS is run extremely poorly, the laws are stricter than (IMHO) they need to be, and nobody has more horror stories about the people working for it than I (and others who’ve had to work with them on a daily basis) do. But as I say every time this subject comes up here - as long as most Americans are more concerned with keeping Mexicans out than with allowing skilled workers and family members in, the agency is never going to get the funding it needs to perform its duties efficiently and to stop hiring only charm school dropouts with two-digit IQs.
I hear you. There’s no love lost between me and Canadian Immigration. I got all my ducks in a row before trying to enter the country (for an extended visit, not even citizenship or employment), and upon trying to cross the border, some disgruntled Immigration officer decided it would be a laugh to stamp a big NO WAY on my forehead and open the trapdoor instead of waving me through.
The whole experience of dealing with Immigration was just totally surreal. It was like some sub-par remake of Brazil without the comic relief. I can’t imagine how immigrants without any of the resources I had (time, money, freedom to research requirements) deal with the process. They’ve obviously got survival skills that I can only dream of.
It makes me laugh now, but at the time it was like the end of the world. The aforementioned Immigration officer noted in my file that I was “highly likely to have criminal intent” (Why? I will never know.) so I had to post a bond to enter the country in an amount that magically equalled 100% of what I had saved for the trip. That bond only allowed me a very short stay, far less than the length of time I had planned. So when I finally got in, I immediately applied for an extension. It would be summarily denied due to my “criminal” status, but bizarrely, while the request was under review, I was allowed to stay in country. Time to review my request? Same length of time I’d originally planned to stay.
That’s leaving out the dozens of phone calls and office visits where I got conflicting information every step of the way and my goal shifted from “find out the proper procedure and follow it” to “strategically exploit a series of exceptions you learned about from off-the-record advice given to you by Immigration people who took pity on your sad dog’s dinner of a life.”
Ah, government agencies. Their bureaucratic capriciousness is the ultimate vehicle of divine intervention. How deliciously ironic. Who says you don’t have to run the gauntlet to get the princess?
-fh
I’ve had that same thought in our dealings with the INS. My husband came over from Australia on an H1B in '94. He decided to apply for his greencard in '95. By '97, it still wasn’t sorted out. We got married and applied for a “marriage greencard.” They told us it would have to go to the same office the original greencard application went to (Texas). We sent it there. They sent it back, saying it needed to go the Charlotte office. We sent it to Charlotte and they sent it back, saying it needed to go to Charleston. We sent it to Charleston and they sent it back, saying it needed to go to Atlanta. We sent it there and they sent it back, saying it needed to go to Charleston again. We personally took it to Charleston and they said it was missing a form (which we had included in the original package, but which had gotten lost along the way). We hand delivered that form and my husband finally got his work authorization document (he had still been working on an H1B). We still haven’t heard anything back about the actual greencard and it actually says on the form that if you call to inquire about your case, everything will be delayed.
If we didn’t speak English and have college educations, I can’t imagine that we would have been able to navigate this system. Plus, we have enough money to afford getting a lawyer to help us out when things needed a little pushing. While we were at the INS office waiting for my husband to get his employment authorization card, I watched as an American woman with an Hispanic husband tried to get answers from the clerk about how to fill out a certain form. The clerk was completely rude to her and basically told her to go home and try again, instead of helping her to do it correctly. The clerk was all sweetness to my husband and me and I can’t help but think it was because he’s white and speaks English.
Also while we were sitting there, a man who didn’t speak English was trying to ask the officer there a question. The officer told him to sit down and that if he didn’t behave, he’d get him kicked out of the country. He said it with a smirk on his face, so I imagine that he was “joking”, but that isn’t something you say to someone who has probably sacrificed everything to get to that office. Of course, even the people who understood him (me included) are so cowed by the system that you don’t feel like it’s safe to say anything to the officer to let him know what he said was offensive. Who knows - they could just “accidentally lose” your application.
Anyway, we’re still waiting for the greencard…maybe next year sometime.
You people are frightening me. I just applied for an H1-B on my way to a Green Card application. I’m in the US on a TN visa now. Should I not bother?
I started this thread last July about my frustration with the INS, in re my girlfriend “Kim”:
I Despise the INS with Every Fiber of My Being
It is a very long OP, which I will not recount here. Suffice it to say that the pretending that the offices do not have phones, making you fill out the same forms over and over, Brazil-like bureaucracy, and much more is so very true.
In fact, “Kim” has just been summoned to submit for fingerprints for the fourth time in the last two years. I think that whenever the INS runs into any type of hitch, the default position is “get fingerprinted.” That way they can ignore you (or mislead you) for another 6 months.
Anyway, read my OP on the link, if you have the stomach for it.
:mad:
ruadh - that’s THOUGHT not THROAT. Now I know you were genuinely an immigration lawyer 
I don’t have any “extreme personal circumstances”, but the company I work(ed) for changed “leadership” people dozewns of times, so my stuff got pushed to the bottom of the pile over and over again. I also understand that at least half of the H1Bs issued do not get converted to green cards, for any number of reasons.
Eventually I wound up trying to do most of the work myself, but just got totally sick of the endless bullshit. Anyhow, I’m genuinely ready to get back to Europe where I’m a citizen and the establishment can’t fuck with me quite so easily or treat me like second-class shit all the time.
Kamandi - you will be OK, even renewing your H1B after 3 years is easy. I would advise you to get on the green card trail the second you arrive, and kick the crap out of 1) the company you work for and 2) your lawyer CONTINUOUSLY to get the process moving. Both parties are notorious for letting things slide (no offense).
Good example of shitty treatment - even though I pay local taxes like anyone else, even after 5 years I still have to pay the “out of state rate” at the local college, just because I don’t have a green card. Doesn’t matter that I’ve given and given to both the Fed and the State. It has been a very good time here on the whole, but now I’m glad it’s over. The INS needs to learn a few lessons - it would be really good to tape a few of their “interviews” and general behavior, and show it on national TV like they do with “COPS”, only this show would be called “US Nazis”.
…you CAN work with the INS to get a foreigner into the country, depending on how you handle it and how much crap you’re willing to put up with. My wife is British and came over on the fiancee visa - since then we’ve been through conditional residency and finally her green card. It was a serious pain in the ass, but when I think about the folks who marry just to get into the USA (and yes, I know of one person who did just that - or so she says - her husband was gay, what does that tell ya?) - anyway, when I think about these folks cheating the system, I realize it is also difficult for a reason.
However, when it comes to not giving you phone #s, or not being able to answer questions, that’s just crappy service. I’m not sure of the funding that INS receives, but suffice it to say that the Atlanta office lost one of our applications - so they said - when in reality it was sitting in the mailroom because they ONLY HAD ONE MAIL CLERK IN THE ENTIRE MAILROOM FOR THE ATLANTA OFFICE! (I was told this by an INS agent with whom we spoke)
Anyway, if you want to talk off-SDMB about the process, or for moral support, or whatever, just holler.
mighty maxx, you have my total and complete empathy.
I took almost 2 years to get my husband here on a fiancée visa. He has now been here 11 months. Last month (that’s 10 months after he arrived), he was finally given a work permit. We would still be waiting, but I got so pissed off at the INS taking donkey years to do anything that I got my congressman to write them a letter (Hastert rocks). In case anyone is wondering, we did absolutely everything right, submitted all required paperwork the first time, paid all the fees etc. It still took 10 frickin’ months and a letter from my congressman for them to issue the work permit.
Of course, it expires in one year and he’ll have to apply again. See, he can’t get a permanent work permit until he gets his temporary Green Card. We filed for it last May, but the processing time is 26 months. Yep. They cashed our $265 fee a couple of days after receiving his application, but they won’t be able to get around to the rest of the paperwork for a couple of years.
Did I mention that it’s 26 months to get the temporary Green Card? That’s only good for two years. Then we get to pay more fees and he gets to apply for his permanent Green Card, which will take another couple of years to actually materialize.
In the meantime, he’s not allowed to leave the country. So, during the two years that they are fucking around with his temporary Green Card paperwork, he cannot visit his family in his home country (or vacation abroad, but I don’t expect much sympathy on that front). Actually, I’m not being fair. There is a form we could fill out to apply for permission to travel, but the filing fee is $95 and the INS will not give any guidelines as to under what circumstances they will grant permission. So, it’s send in your fee and take your chances. Since the INS agents I spoke to gave the distinct impression that the INS does not actually like to issue these permits, I think we’ll save our money.
Have I told you about my step kids? I filed applications to bring them here as soon as my (now) husband arrived in the US and we married. That was last May. Two months ago, the INS sent me a response requesting a document that doesn’t exist. I had explained to them in a letter I enclosed with the original application that the document didn’t exist (my husband’s from Nepal. It’s very Third World and they don’t have records like we do). I also explained in my letter that I had a letter from the US Embassy in Nepal verifying the information they were requesting, and that I had spoken to an INS agent prior to submitting the application and that he told me the documentation I had was fine. I guess they hadn’t read that, since their response simply made another request for the document. I wrote to them again and explained that the document does not now, nor did it ever, exist. They responded by sending me another request for the document and extending the deadline by which I had to submit it.
So I called. Like you, Maxx, I couldn’t get the number for the service center that’s actually handling my case, so I called the National Help [not] Center. They told me that there is nothing they can do. I asked how I was supposed to communicate with the people processing my case since they are obviously not reading my letters and they don’t take calls from the public. I’m not asking for special treatment here-only instruction as to what I should do since the document they want doesn’t exist. He told me again that there was nothing he could do (and he was rude about it).
So, I still have no idea what to do to get the concept of THERE IS NO DOCUMENT through the thick heads of the INS. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
And that’s not the half of what we’ve gone through with these sadistic fucks since our love first bloomed all those years ago. But I won’t bore you with the details.
Just a warning Maxx----you ain’t seen nothing yet.
On a serious note, I’ve just been through all this so if you want some specific advise about K-1 visas and what we did, feel free to email me.
Yup, that’s neoliberal globalization for you.
Capital, corporations, products, fresh water, hell, toxic waste? Send it on through.
People? Now wait a second.
Everyone I know who has successfully gotten a loved one through the INS process did it by calling a senator or congressman and getting them to make waves. You should probably try that, Lucky.
Man, I thought my INS horror stories were bad (a 120-180 day waiting period for a document that has to be renewed EVERY FREAKIN’ YEAR), but Lucky, you are frightening me.
Please, please, please let there be a job for me back in Canada when I graduate…
OOPS!!! Sorry. Friends don’t let friends post before coffee
Anyway, yeah, company takeovers and the like are problems that aren’t sufficiently addressed in the US immigration laws, so I can see why you might have had a problem. But I do still think that’s an unusual enough circumstance that it shouldn’t deter people like Kamandi.
Lucky, remembering your earlier posts about trying to get your husband here I have to say you have a seriously inappropriate username I don’t remember where you live, but 10 months really is a long time for an I-485 applicant to be issued a work permit - it’s definitely not typical for the country as a whole.
**** this is not legal advice ****
Formerly, the INS would not issue travel permission (advance parole) for I-485 applicants except in emergency circumstances. The recognition that I-485 approvals were taking forever has led to some changes in their policy. It really is a bit messed up as employment-based applicants are now granted it routinely whereas family-based applicants still have to give a reason. However, in my experience, simply putting on the form that one has a family emergency that one needs to attend to in the home country rarely fails to result in it being issued in a reasonable amount of time. The parole is good for a year, so it’s worth the $95 to apply for it now if you think you’re going to want to use it soon.
ENugent, I have gotten my congressman involved, which is how we got my husband’s work permit. I will probably enlist his aid again in getting my step kids here as I’m having zero luck in trying to work with the INS. My congressman was a great help, but I also contacted my senators who never bothered to reply to my emails, so while I would advise everyone to try appealing to their legislators, it may not always work.
ruadh, thanks for the great information about advanced parole. I really appreciate it. Perhpas we will give it a try.
The ten month thing on the work permit was insane. First they told us he’d get a work permit upon entry at the airport, but they didn’t issue it. I called the INS the next day and asked what to do. They advised me to file for a temporary permit, which I did ($100 fee). When I didn’t hear from them after 3 months, I called and they told me to wait another month. I did and called again. Then they told me that I wouldn’t hear from them and that I should just go down to the Chicago office. I demanded to speak to a supervisor and told her that I had been given all this conflicting information and needed to know what to do. She told me, and this is an exact quote, “M’am, you can do whatever you want” and then hung up on me. The next day I got a letter denying the temporary permit because temp permits are only good for 3 months (which they didn’t tell me initially) and my husband’s fiancee visa expired before they processed the forms. It was at this point that I enlisted the aid of my congressman who submitted the second application for me (with another $100 fee) along with a letter asking them to speed things up. The congressman also told me that the INS knows full well that temporary work permits are never granted becasue it takes longer to process them than the visas they’re associated with are valid for, and that they are not supposed to be telling people to do this. Regardless, our $100 fee was not refundable. Then, after all this, they told us they couldn’t find his second application and I had to get a copy of the money order they cashed to prove they recieved it.
So, yah, it took 10 months. Bastards.
And Math Geek, you should be frightened. I have only barely scratched the surface of the crap we’ve had to go through with the INS. Sadly, it has given my husband the idea that the United States government is just as bad as the unbelievably corrupt Nepali system he left. I am saddened and embarrassed that my country makes such a lousy first impression.
God, I hate the INS.
the INS had been a kafkesque (SP?) nitemare for my wife and I.
I am an american but we live outside of the US. My wife had a 2 year conditional green card. Tried to get the status changed in late 1997 as it was about 6 months before expiry. Remember spending two HOURS on hold from Hong Kong trying to get an INS person on the line to ask some questions. “Sorry the computer is down, you’ll have to call back.” Guess how much that international phone call set me back? Wrote letters, had my father go in person in Sacramento, wrote my congressman, you name it I tried it. Finally, got an INS person on the phone that said it was being processed and to wait for a written reply.
Guess what, I just got the letter from the INS last month. Pretty good. Only took FOUR FUCKING YEARS to get an answer. In the meantime, we had to re-apply for the green card, and got it.
Here’s what I have to offer in the way of answering the O.P. I had the 1-800 number in my files from when the Wifestrocity and I went to Naturalize our two Korean born adopted kids ( I know, Clinton made that a non-issue, but this was pre-dating that law by several years). To wit:
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.
1-800-375-5283
According to the information provided at the US INS home page, there is an office in Indianapolis. On the left hand area of the home page is a selection for “Field Offices”. You can find it by state indexing. In case you are too angry to go and look at that page, here you go :
Look, we had a tough time getting a human on the telephone, too. Lots of people have angry and bitter stories about the INS, but I have to be honest here. The O.P.'er either didn’t take the time to search the Internet ( I found this web page in less than thirty seconds ), or wanted to rant and yet NOT FIND the Field Office. Either way, here is the Straight Dope on the INS field office in Indianapolis. I don’t mean that as a slam to the O.P.'er either, I can more than relate to the anger. But…a question WAS posed here.
Hope you work it out with them.
Cartooniverse
…teach ME to read the ENTIRE O.P. before posting some “help”. Mea culpas, Mighty_Maxx. You know where they are already. I’m really sorry I searched and wrote before I finished your Posting. Bad form.
<------bending over, because in Singapore this would be cause for Caning. <whimper> g’wan, cane me a bit. You’ll feel better 
And again, Mighty, good luck with 'em. When I DID get a real human? She went 110% out for us, AND we got to meet her the day the kids became citizens. Lovely gal, and always kept me up as we wound our way through the mazes. She’s a credit to Civil Servants, and I mean that without a shred of sarcasm.
Best to ya ( sorry again, dammit … )
Cartooniverse