Immigration – the bureaucracy that penalises for doing the right thing

i am surprised that i would ever have to use the immigration tag on a post again. i thought after two, three, four, i honestly lost track, years of dealing with the multiple name changes bureaucracy that is the INS i was done and i would have to mention them again. not so lucky.

the story is a follows, all those eons ago when victoria and i were filling out form after form after form, they all required you put in the names of your children. no problem, right? well it shouldn’t be, except lo and behold yesterday my younger daughter presented herself at the us embassy in trinidad to get her student visa so she could take advantage of a scholarship and the consular officer declared that there is an immigrant visa application associated with her name so he’s denying her application on those grounds.

i don’t even know where to begin with this. actually i do. one of the cornerstones of my job is to assume positive intent. i tried, for about 30 seconds i tried and then i realised that if this particular consular officer had taken the same 30 seconds that i gave him to do his job right i wouldn’t be typing this post.

in 30 seconds he might have seen that it was an 8 year old application for her parent that was processed and approved. in another 30 seconds that the child had a visitor visa issued within that 8 year period and had travelled to the us and returned, twice.

so here we are with two weeks before the child is due to report and we have little recourse. our congressional consular liaison sent a request for the embassy in trinidad to reconsider and approve the application and the school is also attempting to get them to reconsider. barring that we can throw more money at the embassy, reapply and hope for a different officer and a more sensible response.