INS Part 2

Well, I didn't have anything to say Wednesday, because I didn't actually have an appointment Wednesday. The Infopass system is not very user friendly (and I'm no computer whiz), and I thought I had completed making an appointment for Wednesday, but I was wrong. So I showed up Wednesday and was told I was not in the computer. Apparently, if you don't get a printout you don't have an appointment. OK. Whatever. So I made an appointment for today and tried to have a good attitude. After all, my mistake. So today we had to go all the way back to New Orleans, which is not so bad, because we were at my parents' house, so it's only about an hour. We went "on the way home" today. Not actually on the way home, but better than it could have been. Only about an hour out of the way. So in I went and up to the window with my stack of papers--the papers the INS email told me I would need. And she says, "I'm not sure if we'll accept this." It seems I need to file a 290B form with these papers, which wasn't mentioned in the email I got and probably is why nothing ever happened with the papers I sent in mid-February. Yeah, February. I emailed a few times to ask about it, but got no response, by the way. So, I fill out the form, and she says there's a $585 fee with that form, but if I want to wait until August to redo the form, I can do it for free because I'll be within the 90 days before it expires. No thanks, I'm leaving in May. I'll just have to suck up the fee and do it now. Oh, and I need to make a fingerprint appointment while I'm here, because my fingerprints expire in June. Oh, you can't do that. We'll just mail you a letter when this goes through and they'll redo it. (Did I mention I'm leaving in three weeks?) Can I do it today, since I'm here? No, you can't just walk in and get fingerprints, you have to make an appointment. (I would like to mention as a side note at this point that I was one of 3 people in the waiting room--they were SO swamped!) So can I make an appointment today? No, you have to do it in writing. If I sit down and write it can I do it today? No, you have to mail a letter. Besides, when they get this to do your I-171H again, they'll send you a fingerprint appointment in the mail. Just wait for that. And on and on and on...

We went around that circle about 4 times. Finally I gave up. I left and figured that I would email someone about getting a fingerprint appointment. An hour later, Officer Hines from New Orleans Immigration calls me. She say: I am looking at your petition to reopen a case, and I was about to issue your new I-171H (WOW) and then I realized that it won't do any good, because your fingerprints are about to expire. I couldn't figure out why you didn't just make an appointment to get that redone while you were here today... At this point I actually screamed in her ear. I quickly explained in no uncertain terms that I had tried, but the bright lady at the desk had prevented me from doing so. And Officer Hines gives the extraordinarily helpful, "Well, now you'll have to mail a letter here and hopefully we can get you an appointment this month."

I love INS...