Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Answer more confusing than the question

Our request for assistance from the CIS Ombudsman Office has served to confuse me more about immigration and the logic that is not employed by the government in general. I received the first response on Tuesday of this week, in the form of an email requesting a signature to authorize their pursuit of information. The email did not actually have the form that needed to be signed attached so I found in on their website, signed, scanned, and emailed the completed document back within the hour. Thinking that my portion was done, I thought to myself that I would be lucky to hear back before I leave for Mexico and moved on to my mountain of paperwork.

The next day I had another email waiting patiently for me in my inbox. This email explained that it was not my signature that they required, but that of the 'applicant' who will be referred to henceforth as my husband. In a state of extreme agitation, I forwarded the email to our attorney Lance. He responded quickly that they should not need Alberto's signature as we are inquiring on the status of the I-130 petition and not of the I-601 waiver as they had mentioned in their email. With this response in hand I emailed the CIS Ombudsman office that we needed help with the I-130 and not the I-601. Within minutes my phone was ringing. A little bewildered, I answered to discover it was the assistance of the individual that I had just emailed in the CIS Ombudsman office. They were already calling me about the email I sent not 5 minutes ago? She said that her supervisor had told her to call me and explain that it was not the I-130 petition that was 'holding up the process', but rather they were adjudicating of the I-601 waiver. Since they needed to check the status of the waiver, I needed Alberto's signature. I said I would do my very best to obtain his signature in the week they were giving me, and that was the end of the conversation.

I called Alberto's cell phone 3 times without getting a hold of him, so I settled for a text message and a Facebook message for the moment. I emailed Lance again, telling him exactly what the assistant has told me. If nothing else we had discovered what USCIS was actually doing with our file and it was not making paper airplanes to launch at the pacific from the roof as I had mused. I had probably used up Lance's store of patience with me so I didn't hear back from him. On Thursday morning I sent an email off to Diana about this new and interesting revelation. Later in the day when I still hadn't heard anything from Lance, I sent the same email off to Molly and Daniela so we were all in the loop.

Here's what I don't understand; the CIS lady said 'adjudicate' in reference to the I-601 waiver several times and very clearly. USCIS calls the process in which an I-601 waiver is reviewed and a decision rendered as 'adjudication' What exactly are they doing? Are they reviewing the waiver and verifying the decision made was correct? Are they reviewing the waiver searching for additional denial reasons to tack on before letting us move forward? Are the simple fucking with me because they figure I deserve it for making them work harder? I can hardly begin to guess, but the idea of 'adjudication' is now so tantalizing that I am trying my hardest to keep from getting my hopes up.



My current mantra is, "it's ok if they look at it again, because if they re-deny us we're no worse off and anything that comes of it will be an improvement."



Ciao

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