Rollercoaster

As you know, I’m scheduled to go on vacation on Friday, but recent events almost dictated that I may not have actually be going at all. I hope you like stories, cause this one is a doozy, one of those kinds you wouldn’t believe…

Flashing back to May 25th, that was supposed to be the date of my final residency interview, Robyn and I were told it was pretty much a formality, and indeed it was when we got to the USCIS office, they didn’t even need to look at the mass of information we provided to prove our marriage was real, but we were also told there was a slight problem as my fingerprints hadn’t been taken, but it would be sorted out quickly if I went to the fingerprint office that day, which I did. We were then told it should only take a week or two before we would receive the receipt to come to the main Atlanta USCIS office downtown so I could get my passport stamped to I can get back into the country should I leave…

Well it’s been almost 3 weeks later and we had received nothing at all, and as we are due to leave on Friday we were kind of stressing about this small issue oh so slightly, so our lawyers arranged an appointment for us Tuesday at 2pm, or what we thought would be a sit down appointment where we could ask what was going on, but instead it was the immigration equivalent of the deli counter, take a ticket and wait your turn, and to say there was at least 50 people ahead of me in the queue would tell you how busy this place was… So by 3pm (and 27 people still ahead of me) I had to leave to come back to work for a meeting, I then arranged the earliest appointment I could for yesterday morning, which was 6:30am. So I get downtown at 5:45 and even then I’m like 10th in line.

And once I get seen, the person behind the desk basically ignored everything I said explaining my situation and said if I don’t have the proper receipt, I don’t get the stamp and sent me on my way…

So I call Robyn and she’s stressing something chronic now, so she calls the USCIS hotline and they suggest getting an Emergancy Advanced Parole document, but apparently this would take up to 90 days to get, pretty much negating the emergancy part… But at the 11th hour the lawyers came through and arranged for my passport to get stamped at the USCIS office in Sandy Springs.

Sure, it’s all sorted now, but for a few days I was cursing everyone involved in this near miss… Now I can relax and go back home tomorrow.