Good news and bad news

I am extremely tired, and I had a three hour nap this afternoon.  I don’t know how you regular people keep a schedule, because the whole idea seems torturous.

The quick version of my day was, I was given a temporary work card.  It will allow me to seek employment for the next year while I wait to receive a Green card, and if necessary, it can be renewed.  While I’m happy to have cleared one hurdle, today was supposed to be my, “I’ll finally get legal permanent residence status” day, and that didn’t happen.  The first problem was that Homeland Security hasn’t completed my background check (the one they started the day I had my biometrics done in early July), and I can’t be issued a visa until that’s done.  I’m told that some checks are taking as long as a year to complete, and checks on people from places like Pakistan are taking as long as two years, so I don’t know when I’ll see the light at the end of that tunnel.  It seems to be a very unorganized process, with no central computer database.  The second problem I encountered was that the “visa priority date” for my immigration category was rolled back last month, so suddenly, a visa is unavailable for me.

The whole “visa priority date” concept is a bit confusing.  Most immigration categories have quota limits on them, for example, my category of “unmarried sons and daughters of US citizens” has an annual limit of 23,400 (the number of visas which can be issued in a fiscal year).  As there are always far more applicants than there are visa numbers available, a person can end up waiting many years for their application to finally hit the top of the pile.  The “visa priority date” is the method the government uses to indicate which applications are being processed in a given month.  In my case, my application was submitted in March 2001, so that’s my priority date.  I needed the government to process every application prior to March 2001 so they could reach mine.

My priority date hit the top of the application pile in the fall of 2005, but then I had to wait to be scheduled for things like biometrics and interviews before an actual visa/Green card would be handed to me.  Today was supposed to be the day I finally got my visa, but sometime last month, the government ran out of visa numbers—they hit that ceiling of 23,400 visas per year.  Not only did they run out of visas for this year, they suddenly seem to feel they’ve run out of three years worth of visas, because they’ve rolled their current priority date back to January 1998!  That can be roughly interpreted as them telling me that I’ll need to wait three more years, again, until my application hits the top of “the pile”.  How did this happen?  I don’t know.  My lawyer didn’t seem to know.  He thought they were probably overestimating the problem, and hopes that the dates will roll forward again in October, the start of a new government fiscal year (and the release of the next crop of 23,400 visas).  I could face the same problem again if my priority date becomes current after October and my biometrics still aren’t completed—I could watch another fiscal year fly by me while I sit and wait.  If I get to July 2007 without a Green card, I’ll need to have those biometrics and the medical exam done all over again, as they’re only good for a year.  Then the biometrics will have to be checked again, and I’ll enter government purgatory.

I’m happy that I’m done with the interview process—I was promised I won’t have any more interviews.  That’s a consolation, I suppose.  Don’t get me wrong—the work authorization is wonderful.  However, it still doesn’t allow me to travel outside the country (ah, the irony; I want to be a permanent resident so I’ll be able to leave).  I also can’t apply for citizenship until five years after my Green card is issued, so everytime that’s delayed, it delays my citizenship application as well. 

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Now that the details are out of the way, I can talk about other bits and pieces of our day.  In bullet points:

  • Getting up so early was nasty, and as always, the pets were noisy and bothersome all night to ensure we didn’t sleep very well.
  • I’d never met my lawyer before (he’s from California), but I immediately liked him when we picked him up at his hotel to drive to the interview, and he was very personable and chatty.
  • I didn’t feel nervous like I thought I would—I think I was too tired to feel nervous.
  • The building where the interview was done is emblazoned with a huge “Department of Homeland Security” logo on the front, and I wish we could have taken a photo, but we were afraid we’d be arrested.  We had to pass through a metal detector to go inside.
  • The woman who interviewed me had an accent, possibly something from the Caribbean.  I thought it was interesting that the two people from the government who I’ve dealt with closely (the biometrics guy and the interviewer) have both been immigrants themselves.
  • My lawyer did a whole “body language” thing in the interview where he seemed to be trying to intimidate the interviewer.  I guess it worked, because she messed up one thing (which would have been to my advantage if my biometrics had been in order).  I think it’s a game they play, as he also threw in some comments about how he was suing the government on behalf of a couple other clients, and it seemed like very calculated “casual chatter”.
  • After we dropped the lawyer at the airport, we went to Bellagio for the breakfast buffet.  Despite our fatigue, it was wonderful.  So many choices of breakfast items (just about everything you could think of, from cereal to pancakes to smoked salmon to, yes, curried cauliflower), plus a fabulous array of fresh fruit.  Flippy and I each ate a bowl of mixed berries—blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries, plus Flippy had a bowl of sliced strawberries.


When we got home, we fed the birds and then slept the afternoon away, then we relaxed in the pool for a while.  Tomorrow real life has to start up again, but it was sure nice to spend a good chunk of the day just goofing off.

My apologies if any of this entry doesn’t make sense—my brain is feeling pretty convoluted and it doesn’t want to make sentences.  I didn’t think I was overly stressed about today’s events, but I’m so exhausted after them, it must prove there was a lot of tension bubbling under the surface.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 08/23 at 06:34 PM

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  1. Congratulations on the work permit!!  Yay!  It sucks that you didn’t get your green card (meh) and I hope that’s remedied reaaaaaaaaaally quickly, but.. I’m still dancing around for the work permit. smile Immigration is SO EMOTIONAL for me - I’m glad you followed it up with a breakfast buffet.

    Now I’m just getting all dorky. Let’s just go with CONGRATULATIONS and I HOPE THE REST GOES SMOOTHLY AND QUICKLY!

    Posted by Dana  on  08/24  at  04:45 AM

  2. Work Permit = Yay!
    No Green Card = Boo!

    It seems the visa issue is also whacky, I’m so sorry that it’s causing such headaches.

    I hope things get resolved and go more smoothly as the process moves along. It sounds like the buffet was lovely though.

    Posted by prajantr  on  08/24  at  06:35 AM

  3. A big congrats on the work authorization.. but I so understand the deep frustration you must feel with the remaider of the process.  My goodness.. how do you keep your sanity!!

    Posted by Coll  on  08/24  at  08:29 AM

  4. Yeesh! My eyeballs were spinning, trying to keep up with all the beaurocratic silliness. It’s not your writing that’s confusing, it’s the whole system!
    Congratulations bigtime on your work permit. But does this mean you are essentially trapped in the US without being able to leave and re-enter until you get the green card??

    Posted by Carina  on  08/25  at  12:32 AM

  5. Sorry, but what can you expect with the waves of illegal immigrants flooding over the U.S./Canada border daily.  Don’t you see that the integrity of American Culture is at risk from all you foreigners?

    Seriously, what a trying day.

    Posted by Nancy  on  08/25  at  05:11 PM

  6. why don’t you guys move here and we can all hang out all the time and avoid this whole mess?

    but yeah, what a suck your will to live kinda’ day.  the bellagio is yumtastic though.  i want it right now!

    Posted by jenB  on  08/26  at  08:35 AM

  7. Thanks for all the support smile I feel better about the experience now that a few days have passed, and really, I *am* very excited about having my work card.  The rest of it just requires patience, patience, patience!

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  08/26  at  07:50 PM
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