The INS or whatever the fuck they call themselves now

[Paradoxical]

@Starving Artist

Paradoxical,

I appreciate your last two posts. If the second one was meant to be an apology, I accept. It appears from your tone and lack of profanity and vitriol (which could have been expected, given what I’ve had to say about you) that I may have misjudged you.

Thank you for the explanation.

and thank you for being forgiving. I hate that we can’t edit posts, or at least a free loader such as myself can’t.

[Starving_Artist]

@Paradoxical

and thank you for being forgiving. I hate that we can’t edit posts, or at least a free loader such as myself can’t.

You’re welcome.

[ruadh]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

I never understood the reason for this restriction, but it seems to be a standard part of the process of becoming a legal resident. Still, why can’t pending legal residents from abroad leave the country and come back like anyone else?

They can if they obtain the Advance Parole document to which Eva refers, or if they are still in possession of a valid visa (H1 or L1) which allows for dual intent.

(“Dual intent” means that you hold a non-immigrant visa while seeking immigrant status. Most non-immigrant visas do not allow for this, which is why most green card applicants need Advance Parole to re-enter the country.)

[C3]

@Spiny Norman

I was told not to expect a receipt or notice when my paperwork (and about $500 worth of fees) arrived, of course, but to get an idea of whether the paperwork was being processed at all, I was advised to keep an eye out for when the checks cleared.

Oh, I love the no receipt thing. We always either take stuff in person or send it FedEx, so that at least we have a proof of receipt.

This screwed us up, though, when my son was born and we wanted to get him Australian citizenship. The Australian Embassy required proof that my husband was here legally, and the EAD wasn’t cutting it. They wanted a letter from the BCIS that his greencard was being processed. When we went to the BCIS office and asked for this, they stared at us blankly. The guy went in the back, said, “Yeah, your file is in the stack back there,” but wouldn’t give us any written document saying they had it.

The Australians couldn’t believe it. Luckily, they accepted the cleared checks my husband dug up, even though that wasn’t on their list of documents to accept. I guess their bureaucrats are actually allowed to use their common sense when processing applications.

(Incidentally, the Australian Immigration people are fantastic. With both my visa and my son’s citizenship application, we were assigned a specific person who took our case from start to finish. They emailed us with any questions they had after they received our applications. We could call (a direct line!) or email any time and were promptly answered. I know a lot of this is because we were dealing with the embassy - not the office actually in Australia, which has much more volume to deal with - but I was really impressed with them.)