Yesterday my wife and daughter received letters from the Texas Service Center (I would have thought they would be coming from Miami) informing us that they have been granted permanent resident status (conditional for 2 years), and that they would be receiving their cards (the infamous "green" card?) in about 3 weeks.
I thought they needed to have the I-551 stamp in the passport too. I wonder...
This was not due to any help from my congressman's office, who had just told me last week that they had still not heard back from the Miami INS and it could take 12 weeks to hear from them. I guess Congress is powerless too to do anything about this disgrace of a organization that handles immigration for our country.
Throughout our ordeal since they arrived in America in November 2001, they lost our documents 2 times (this wasn't an honor bestowed on just us, we know other Russian-American couples here in South Florida whose papers were "lost" as well), missed appointments twice, failed to respond to countless letters and phone calls, including those from our Congressman's office.
To me, it is unbelieveable that they can continue to operate as they do in such an arbitrary and inept manner and have no accountability for their actions.
If my story had happened in Russia, well, I would have expected as much. But here, in America? In South Florida, our elected officials have bungled national elections and continue to bungle local elections (they can't seem to fire Miriam Oliphant, our Supervisor of Elections, and she won't resign) as if we were living in a 3rd world country. (My in-laws in Russia couldn't believe it when they heard all about it on their TV news. So, who is your president, they asked me on the telephone at the time. I said, I know it's unbelieveable, but we still don't know!) The problems with the INS, however, exist everywhere in our country, even if they are the worst in Miami. It's no wonder we were so vulnerable to attack. What scares me is that the INS seems no better at handling our country's immigration today than they were before Sept. 11, 2001.
God help us!
John
