[This message has been edited by Michael B]
INS (I know, some of you are going to say 'BCIS', but it was still INS when I filed) has been sitting on my K-1 petition since Jan 21. (Feb 14, according to them, amasing how it took it 25 days just to get from the mail room to the person who puts the date stamp on it). So Yesterday (19th) I went to my Congressman's office. They were real polite. Absoulty USELESS, but real polite while being useless. The lady in charge of immigration cases asked the date of my petition and when I told her she just said "Well, they're suppossed to be working on K-1's from November 2002 right now, I know if I call them they'll just say 'this one's not late, they're not late unless they're six months older that what we say we're currently working on'". I asked "Doesn't that bother you?" --"Does what bother me?"--"That they don't do their job and if you call them they just tell you 'yeah? so what?'"--"Well, sir, with homeland security and blah blah blah" I said "Don't let them tell you that, I worked for the State Department 20 years ago and had to deal with them, they couldn't do their job back then either"--"Well, they're working as fast as they can..."--I said "Yeah, processing TPS's and H1-B's comming here to do my job for half wages, but no K-1's for months in neither California nor Texas, meanwhile Vermont is knocking them out in two or three weeks, say, can you transfer my case to Vermont?"--"Oh that's quite controversial, many people have suggested that they even out the work load between the centers, but they say it would only slow them down more, so they won't do it". I said "So then why don't they make those H1-B people wait awhile and handle K-1's and K-3's first?" --"Oh, no sir, they put all family based cases ahead of everything"--"Oh?, so how is it then that they brag that they handle 99% of the 'employment based' petitions within 30 days?"--"You misunderstand, sir, the employers PAY for that service".."Yeah? Well I paid for mine too, and they didn't seem to have any trouble cashing it" ....After listening to little bit more of her "I understand your frustration" platitudes and outright refusals to do anything about my case, I finally left. She did have the 'helpful' suggestion though that I could just go back to Colombia (of course she didn't volunteer to buy the airfare), get married there and file for a K-3, since they all go through Missouri and right now are taking 'only' 3 to 4 months instead of the 'additional 4 to 6 months that yours is probably going to take'. I said that if I went back to Colombia and got married, I'd just do DCF. She was suprized that I even knew the term and told me that I couldn't, so I asked her why not and she said that the embassies wouldn't let you do DCF unless you were a bonifide resident of the country. I said "Not so, it's up to the indivual embassy, the embassy in Colombia lets you, as long as you got married in Colombia, you just have to get the Colombian equivlent of a K-1 (or bribe a notary, but I didn't say that to her) before they will let you get married there"...she said "I'm sure you're mistaken about that" And I said "No, I know guys who did it, within the last month or so, got their wive's here in two or three weeks". She didn't beleive that was possible and said that I had been "misinformed". Anyway, I finally left (for a trip to the pleasant and efficient license tag agency).
Now, the conversation may look worse in type then it sounded in person, like I said at the beginning, the lady was very polite (neither of of raised our voices or anything like that), she was just bound and determined that she either couldn't or wouldnt DO anything for me.
What the hell is with these people? La Migra can't keep illegals OUT and can't let legals IN--and the Honorable Michael C. Burgess, MC (or at least his staff) doesn't seem to care. (Their families are ALREADY here, why should they care about US? After all, we're only taxpayers)
End of rant--thank you
