Revenge of Immigration Services

[davidn]

Yes, it's time to open the "immigration" tag again. Hooray.

Part of why America and I have never got on is because as a complete entity it seems to resent me, either by dragging more and more money out of me with surprise fees like some sort of Nigerian scam or by trying to reject me altogether. And I'm one of the luckier ones that comes from a country that you'd think they got on with at the moment, being one of the few that doesn't actively hate them these days. It's now two months away from our second anniversary, meaning by extension four months until my not-so-permanent-after-all resident card expires, so we have to make contact with the unmatched incompetence of the Customs and Immigration Services again or they'll initiate "removal proceedings" with pointy sticks.

I am hoping against all previous evidence that we can do this in Massachusetts like any normal sane humans would do rather than booking a round-trip flight over to California to have a photograph taken as before, because it's the start of a different process and we can choose the office we want to deal with again instead of sticking with the same one despite our location. The process is said to take 120 days, and apparently involves paying them the modest fee of $465 (plus $80 "biometrics", whatever those are) for them to take a look at a two-page form with a mountain of documents that are supposed to prove we're still married, followed by an interview to make sure I'm not a Russian mail-order bride, and possibly something else (depending on whether we have a Quality Control Check) to begin the Naturalization process. Doesn't this sound slightly like I'm a carton of milk?

We do, of course, still have the immigration lawyer from last time we had to go through all this - the last I heard of her we paid $3000 to her to help me finally get conditional permanent residence, and the government office then decided that as I had gone through the fiancee visa process I could get one at increased speed anyway. So I think we may still have some of that fee left over to pay for the form I mentioned above and any other nonsense we have to submit just so I can stay here.

But I wouldn't be too hopeful.

Comments

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Of all of the different immigration authorities that I have to deal with, the American one is the only one that annoys me more than the incompetents formerly known as the Home Office (they've rebranded themselves as the Border and Immigration Authority). Where I work, there are employees and students from all over the world, and some of them come from countries which nobody wants to have visa waiver agreements with, so I have to help out with their applications to get permission to go for a one week conference/research trip/holiday. The European countries all have an consulates in Edinburgh where you can make an appointment for some time later in the week, show up with a form and supporting documents to show that you can pay your way and have a job or degree to come back to in the UK, and somebody talks to you for ten or fifteen minutes. Then they charge you a fee ranging from £20-40 and usually they can issue the visa straight away, or if it'll take a few hours they'll tell you to come back later, which isn't a big deal because most of them are about 15 minutes away from work anyway.

Not so with the Americans, who insist that you call up a £1.50 per minute appointments line to book a slot three to four weeks away, at a place in London where they will charge you an exorbitant fee for their services on top of what you pay to get there in the first place. They need photocopies of everything you have ever signed since you moved to this country, twenty bits of paper with the university stamp, a doctor's note, and a character reference from your landlord's next door neighbour's cat. And after all of that they can refuse to give you a visa if you've cut your finger recently, because it means they can't have a full record of all of your biometric information. Even then it's a "we'll let you know", and about half of the time they don't make their minds up until after the date the person needs a visa for anyway.

[davidn]

I've been to said embassy in London. It is a terrible place, haunted by the souls of the damned who are eternally watching the large screens at the front waiting for their number to be called. (The rest of the experience, well, I don't care to recall it.)

I think we only got a visa as quickly(!) as we did because we had that immigration lawyer around to help poke people along. It wasn't cheap, though.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Every time I help someone with a US visa application I am eternally grateful that I don't have to actually go and apply for it myself. I have no idea about how the American system works, but in the Home Office there is no way of prodding people along unless you personally know someone on the inside, and I'd have to say that once you've done a couple of work permits you kind of get the hang of what they will or won't accept, so you could probably get away with asking an experienced layperson to look over the forms for you.

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

For a country that is supposed stand against government control of the individual, we do seem a bit obsessed with putting pictures of your irises in various databases. Be safe in the knowledge that if you ever run a red light, Uncle Sam's gonna TRACK YOU DOWN!!!

[kjorteo]

Also be safe in the knowledge that if that database ever gets compromised, you're completely, irrevocably screwed. At least if someone steals your wallet, you can cancel your credit cards and get new ones and such after politely explaining to the companies. Exactly what are your options when someone steals your eye patterns? Get new eyes?