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.
keifel – i don’t know if you know about the horrorshow my friend keri has gone through over the last 5 years. she adopted a girl from siberia (aged 12 at the time) and found out the girl had a sister. immediately set to adopting her. several million roadblocks later, anya aged out of the orphanage system.
she still doesn’t have her.
our government barred her from entering the united states on a student visa in december 2009. after our government advised keri to bring her in that way for a 6 month stay.
it’s all a fucking nightmare. i told keri we should fly her into guatemala or mexico, and have her just walk in across the border.
i hope your daughter can get her situation fixed and everything works out ok. keri has been trying for 6 years to get anya here to the USA to the ONLY family she has on the planet.
i fucking hate governments.
i lied.
the blog address on the above comment is wrong.
amusingsbnl.blogspot.com until i change it over to amusings.net again… while i build the archives i’m keeping the old site open.