USCIS - Employee of the Year! (longish)

The BBQ Pit
1

So my lovely wife and her kids have been trying to become US Citizens for nearly a decade now. Actually, that’s not true, because my wife and son recently became citizens, a mere 8.5 years after we started the process. My daughter, on the other hand, was “lost” in the bureaucracy, and was not included with my wife’s petition for some reason. We’re not sure how she could have been lost, since her name appears on EVERY FUCKING PIECE OF PAPER THAT WE HAVE EVER SUMBMITTED, but lost she was.

So we’re having to restart the process for her. We will have to pay the $400 filing fee again. We will have to pay for all of the miscellaneous filing fees for other forms again. In essence, we get to start from scratch, because the employees at USCIS are, apparently, incapable of READING THIER OWN FUCKING FORMS.

But here’s the capper. The absolute fucking capper that makes me think that the employees at the USCIS office are simply fucking with me at this point:

Yesterday my daughter received a letter from the idiot who is supposed to be helping us straighten out the case. It reads in part:

Dear Welby’s Daughter:

In order to process your request for a new green card, we need a copy fo your form I-751. Please send us a copy by such and such a date so that your request can be processed. Enclosed is a copy of the form so that you know what we need.

Sincerely,

Fucked in the Head
Assistant to the Asssucking Fuckhole Office Director
USCIS

And attached to the back of the letter was . . . . wait for it . . . a copy of my daughter’s I-751!

That’s right! We just got a letter asking for a copy of the form that they just sent us a copy of.

I fucking hate the USCIS. I hate you all. But the one I hate most is Fucked In the Head. I hate your mother for giving birth to you. I hate any doctor that ever trated you for disease unstead of letting you perish. I hate any person that swerved out of the way in the nick of time instead of running you over. In fact, I hate every person that has ever not taken the chance to set you on fire and dance around the flames like Aborigines on a dream trip.

Now you’re just fucking with me, and I understand that. Perhaps its because I contacted my congressman after you told me that you weren’t sure what documents I needed, but you were sure I didn’t have them. It could be because I have written some 35 letters to your bosses, and thier bosses, about the general incompetence of the USCIS staff, and your general incompetance as well. Be assured that another is on the way, with the attendant copy of the form you wanted a copy of.

In fact, I sincerely hope that you ARE just fucking with me, because if you aren’t it opens up a whole new vista of terror for me. If you are that fucking stupid I worry that you live in the same city as me, and drive a car. I wonder if you have reminders on your calendar to breathe. Then I hope that you do have them, and will forget to look at your calendar today. You are such a useless waste of space, air, energy, and thought that technically, you really shouldn’t exist.

But you do exist. I hope you find that one of the four different letters, each containing a copy of the copy of the form, contain what you need to do your job this time.

If not, send me a letter.

2

I agree with you in that dealing with the USCIS is an exercise in how much frustration and pain can you deal with before your head explodes. The sheer level of incompetence and opaque byzantine procedures is breath taking. Also painful is the way that they change forms every year with a newer version that your version of Adobe Acrobat may not support.

Are you and your wife dealing with this yourselves? If so, it might be time to hire a good immigration attorney to sort this stuff out. When we applied for my wife’s green card, we hired a good immigration firm to do this and it made the process so much less painful. We got her greencard in approximately one year. This year she can apply for Citizenship and we are going to handle the process ourselves but if things get too screwed up, we will hire someone to get it done.

One thing I’ve found helpful for sending mail to them is to send everything certified mail, return receipt or Fed-Exing the items to them. At least it creates a record that the items were received. Additionally, we send things with a cover letter stating exactly what we are sending them. I don’t know if it forces them to pay attention to our stuff but it has helped with quite a few matters.

3

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Come on, you’re just making that up.

4

Having dealt with them before and known other people who’ve dealt with them before, I am not the least bit surprised.

5

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Are you colluding in the joke?

Because otherwise, you’d have me believe that there are morons in the employ of the US government. Which can’t be so.

6

Actually, morons run the U.S. government, and have done so my entire life. And just to be clear, I am more than 6 years old.

7

Nope TDN, I wish I were making it up. These people take stupid to an entirely different plane of existence. They make DMV workers look like Einstein.

Caffiene, we haven’t hired anyone - yet. We’ve decided to see whether my daughter’s card comes in during the appropriate time frame. If not, we might just hire an attorney. Oddly enough, the congressman’s office has been immensely helpful. After they contacted the USCIS people, my wife and son got thier problems handled almost immediately.

I DID send a copy of the letter to the congressman’s office with the observation that I felt like I was being targeted. Maybe it’ll help.

8

Another useful person to contact is Senator Warner’s office. When we petitioned to remove the conditions on my wife’s green card, the USCIS got our application and then did nothing. By this point, her green card had expired and we needed the extension letter that they send out which extends her residency for a year while they get around to processing the application. We needed this letter so we could finalize our mortage so we could close on our home. We filed our petition when we were eligible to do so since you can only file it within a certain period of time prior to the expiration of your green card.

I tried calling the USCIS. You call a number in Vermont and talk to someone who has no idea about what is going on. I kept talking and got an immigration officer, who told me to send a fax to a number and maybe then they could issue the letter.

Finally, in desperation, I called Senator Warner’s office. They called me the next day, I explained the situation and the staffer who I spoke to said she would see what she could do. Thirty minutes, later she calls me up, asks me for my fax number, faxes me the letter and says we should receive a hard copy in the mail in the next few day. Problem solved.

9

I suggest you leave the country. Seriously. My husband was five years and counting in his attempt to get a greencard while we lived in the U.S. We finally moved to Australia (where he’s from) to attend to his ill father. We recently restarted the greencard process. It took the consulate in Australia 6 weeks…yes, SIX WEEKS…to complete the process, start to finish. They apologized for taking so long. They looked confused when I burst out laughing. I am in love with them. We’ll be home in November.

10

I feel for you. 10 years I’ve dealt with immigration here (still no green card). Of all the bureaucracies I’ve dealt with they are by far the worst.

11

I suggest you take whatever documentation you have–especially that moronic letter–to your congressperson’s office. In my experience (with the congressperson for Monterey, California), immigration foul-ups are taken very seriously and bumped to the top of the list of things to do by the staff. Time after time, the ol’ INS local folks would do the deer in the headlights thing when “expeditious naturalization program*” was mentioned. It took the assistance of the congressperson’s staff to get them to follow the rules of the program. You would think that after the first time, the INS folks would’ve figured it out. Oh, no! As I said above, “time after time.” And that was for a number of cases over four years.

*Expeditious naturalization program is a special program so that resident alien immediate family members of US citizens who work for the US government can be naturalized immediately without regard to their length of stay in the US provided the US citizen is being posted overseas in connection with his government employment (to include military service) and the family member agrees to join the sponsoring US citizen overseas immediatley after naturalization.

12

I have a student who is in the middle of the naturalizatoin process (well, I have lots who are, but one that I am telling the story about). Things are going just fine for her, so far, but her mother ran into a speedbump when they got to the fingerprinting part.

She has no fingers.

This has been a nightmare that has held things back several years. They want documents saying she has no fingers, that she will never regrow fingers, that no fingerprints will grow on the bits of her fingers she has left. After all that has been done, they still get letters wanting to know why her fingerprints aren’t on file, and they have to start the whole process over again.

It’s morbidly funny, of course, but also truly frustrating for them.

13

Look the functionary dead in the eye and ask them to read out loud to you the instructions on the fingerprint part. You know, where it tells the fingerprinter what to do when the person he’s fingerprinting doesn’t have fingers.

14

Wow, I’m sorry you guys had (and have) to deal with such morons! I had the completely opposite experience with the INS. They didn’t screw up my application, and they had my work permit and my green card to me several months before they were scheduled to arrive. The whole process took about 20 months. I haven’t heard from them since. I hope it isn’t going to go all weird when I apply to get the green card renewed in three years.

15

I deal with these morons for a living. There are many, many stories I could tell, but nobody here has that kind of time.

One of the most Kafkaesque recent ones, though, was when they returned a petition to me because I hadn’t paid the fee. However, stapled to the front of my petition was a check for the fee, issued by my employer (a major financial institution). It had previously been attached to a different sheet in the package, as instructed by USCIS (they even have a preferred order each supporting document should be in).

Someone had unstapled it, flipped it over, stamped “For Deposit Only” on the back, crossed out the stamp, disassembled the entire petition, put everything back in a completely different order, stapled it again, and stapled the marked-up filing fee check to the front. Before returning the whole package to me (which had been filed via Fedex because it was a rush, though we file everything via overnight mail so it’s trackable) via regular mail, although I had included a prepaid return Fedex label and envelope, because “the appropriate filing fee was not included.”

Sigh. Sometimes I wonder why I ended up in this line of work.

Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal

16

I will buy you a beer and commisserate next time I see you, Welby. Although our process hasn’t been a nightmare, it’s been stupidly expensive, slow, and holy FUCK are the people at the INS stupid. Don’t ever call the information line, because they’ll flat-out lie to you.

17

Any wonder the legal immigrants are upset that that Congress wants the illegals to get amnesty? Holy blue fuck, folks, but you should be citizens just for putting up with that nonsense! Patient, law abiding, and dutifully paying the fees and filing everything in triplicate, while some criminal gets to elbow to the front of the line.

Ditto on calling your congressman. Good luck. You may also want to contact the local TV stations…I bet their Consumer Action Teams would love this.

18

I actually hear that this is the best way to go.

My Australian husband and I probably won’t be moving to the US soon, but when/if we do we will definitely migriate via the consulate in Sydney.

Cheers,
G

(And I have my own issues with DIMMIA, but that’s another thread. :wink: )

19

Wow, welby, I’m sorry to read about all the hassles you and your family are enduring. That goes for the rest of you too.

I will add my voice to the chorus of contacting your Congressman. I would also go ahead and contact that immigration attorney. I’m sorry, but I gotta say that “story” about them losing your daughter’s paperwork is total bullshit. I have to believe that if the right people contacted them, they could find it ALL in a hurry.

Take care.

20

Sheesh! Geez, almost feel guilty it only took **Mr. Silver1 ** five years to get naturalized back in the nineties. Hell yeah, it took umpteen reams of paperwork, and IIRC he had to send in some things two or three times, but eventually the process actually worked (don’t know how, but it did) and he got naturalized. I remember each time he got a letter asking for this or that we’d do endless eye-rolling - uh, we just sent that and we made copies of what we sent by certified and registered-up-the-ass mail. :rolleyes: And you still didn’t get it??? :eek:

Wait a minute welby, I think I can deciper the letter from Sir Fucked in the Head:

"In order to process your request for a new green card, we need a copy fo your form I-751. Please send us a copy by such and such a date so that your request can be processed. Enclosed is a copy of the form so that you know what we need.

Sincerely,

Fucked in the Head
Assistant to the Asssucking Fuckhole Office Director
USCIS"

They want you to make a copy of the copy, keep a copy for your records (in case they lose it again, which they will) and send the copy back to them, then wait for the next letter telling you to wash, rinse and repeat. This way they can stall while they search for their asses with a flashlight.

Glad you sent a copy of the asshat’s letter to your congressman. Maybe something will get done now.

I’m sorry to say it sounds like they are probably fucking with you at this point, maybe a small little bureaucrat’s idea of revenge for being called on the carpet. And you’re right - the alternative is frightening - that someone could actually be that monumentally stupid.

So sorry for all the buttmunchery over this. Hang in there.