An acquaintance of mine in NYC is having an immigration problem. I’d love to help the guy, but I don’t know how. If the great and all-knowing Teeming Millions could give me some suggestions, I’d really appreciate it!
Mo, this guy I know, is Yemeni. He’s living in NYC, where he’s managed to open a small grocery store, with the help of some of his relatives. His wife and children are still in Yemen.
Things in Yemen are pretty bad right now, and Mo is trying his best to get his family into the USA. The US has issued visas, but the embassy in Yemen has been closed. The visas were routed to Egypt, but his wife and kids can’t get into Egypt.
He’s now trying to get the visas sent to Malaysia, where he and his family could go. So far, the Department of State doesn’t seem to be listening.
Mo isn’t exactly rich, so scraping together money to pay a top-notch immigration lawyer probably isn’t an option. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this situation? I’d love to see Mo get to see his wife and kids again, after at least a couple of years of separation.
AFAICT, most legal aid services don’t see this kind of thing often, so they’re probably not going to be all that helpful. (If Mo were being evicted, they could help, but in this situation, I’m not sure they’d be all that useful.) If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
Doper Eva Luna is an immigration expert. You might try sending her a PM. Also, the Department of Justice’s website has a listing of providers who offer free or low-cost immigration legal services.
Am I understanding right when I conclude that the basic problem here is picking up visas that have already been issued (and remain valid), but are physically located in Egypt? What exactly is preventing travel to Egypt? Can his family not enter Egypt without an Egyptian visa that they can’t get? Is it more because they can’t afford tickets to Egypt but could afford tickets to Malaysia? Are they afraid of violence in Egypt?
Ideas:
Can he, or his family, appoint an agent who can travel to Egypt to pick up the visas at the US Embassy on their behalf and then mail them to Yemen, or fly on to Malaysia to meet the family and hand over the visas?
Are there policy-based reasons why the visas cannot be transferred to Malaysia, or is this more or less a problem with getting through to the embassy (all our operators are currently serving other foreigners, please stay on the line…) and motivating embassy workers to do their job?
Well, I’d definitely start with the list of legal services providers (and a Google search may reveal others in NYC that provide immigration services - I"m not sure to what extent the list on the Immigration Court website is restricted to people who handle only court matters vs. the full range of immigration matters). And don’t assume that a religiously based nonprofit will only serve people who belong to that particular religion - Catholic Charities, for example, can be awesome.
My hunch is that if they already have visas available to them, getting their cases sent to another consulate is going to be the best way to go. Why can’t they enter Egypt? Visa problems? Do you know what kind of visas we are taking about (immigrant, nonimmigrant, refugee), or your friend’s immigration status?
And yes, the National Visa Center is a huge pain in the ass - it is next to impossible to get through to them on the phone (and how is your friend’s English?). There are e-mail addresses, but we have a hard time getting answers that are actually responsive to the question being asked. He might try contacting the visa unit in Malaysia first, though, to see whether they will agree to accept the case - that might help. And even before the Embassy in Yemen was closed, I read all kinds of horror stories about that Embassy, especially if it’s a case involving a claimed family relationship or a fiancee visa - there are fraud issues, and the Embassy tends to take more than a healthy degree of skepticism about such matters.
That’s not going to happen - the family will need to appear at some U.S. Embassy or another in person.
Mostly the problem is the National Visa Center (the Dept. of State function in the U.S. that deals with immigrant and refugee visas, which I’m guessing is the kind of visa we’re talking about). They are a huge PITA to deal with and it’s almost impossible to get through to them on the phone to have an actual exchange of information. I could rant about them for days!