INS Prevented me from Blogging Yesterday

Yes, that’s true because I wasted a full day at an INS office. And all because of a mistake by INS. What happened was that my fingerprints on an INS document (done by INS officials themselves) were not identifiable. Why didn’t the INS officer who got those fingerprints checks them? I have no idea. Anyway, I had to go again to redo the form.

So I reached the INS office at 8:30am. The office had just opened and there probably had been a long line since 6am or earlier. I had to stand in line for 45 minutes outside in the cold. I could only wonder at the people who had been there earlier braving the cold. Finally, they took us into the building at 9:15am. But this wasn’t really inside, it was a small room where we lined up and waited to pass security. At 10am I was actually in the building. Now even though I had a letter from the INS, it didn’t say which room to go to, so I had to go with everyone else to the information desk. That was a big room, all filled up with people waiting in line and 4 INS people at counters helping them. It was going to be a long wait. After waiting for 2 hours, I made it to the counter. All they did was give me a wait number with estimated waiting time (until 2:18pm) and a room number to go to. So off to the new room and waiting for 2 more hours. There were 10 counters here but only 5 were being manned. I waited and waited, bored out of my mind. My turn did come around 2:15pm. I gave the INS officer my documents. Here, a mistake of mine surfaced to cause me further delay. I needed a couple of photographs and one that I had brought got ink marks from writing my name on the back (as instructed by INS). However, the INS officer told me I could get new photographs from a nearby place and return immediately. She also marked my letter so that I could get back in since the regular entrance was now closed. I ran outside and got the photos. I probably wasted 30 minutes due to this stupidity.

However, when I returned, that particluar INS officer had disappeared and I wasn’t allowed to do my paperwork with anyone else. So I waited another hour until her appearance. Finally, done with my part of the paperwork, I had to wait for them to run it through their system. I was there till 4:15pm. If you think my mistake about the photos cost me a lot of time, please consider that the guy ahead of me in the line who had similar paperwork to do got done at 4pm. At 4:15pm, waiting for the INS officer to appear with my paperwork, I was escorted by another INS officer to another floor. This was unusual since everyone else got their things back in the same room. I asked her where we were going and she said where my papers are. She took me to a small waiting room and disappeared. There was a couple over there and the woman was constantly crying. On the window, there was a notice “No Bonds accepted after 1pm”. I became a little worried at 4:30pm since INS closes at that time and I saw a lot of people going out. Finally, another INS officer came in to see me at 4:45 and asked me some really useless questions. Let’s just say that the information content in those questions and my answers was exactly zero according to Shannon. He took me back to the room I had done the paperwork in to finish the stuff, but it was closed. So he told me that half of the work is done but for the other half (not directly related) I will have to return tomorrow. There was no way I was going to waste another day, so I told him that I could wait for that part. He was OK with that since if INS does their job fast enough, I might not need it at all. I left the INS office close to 5pm. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and my wife was worried as well.

Now for some constructive criticism. INS definitely needs more staff. They cannot handle the number of people that come to their office and the amount of paperwork they have to handle. This is becoming more apparent with the special registration and other requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act. Another thing they could do is separate people who have come for information, to file applications, and as a response to an INS letter. They already separate people with appointments (the appointments are assigned by INS and cannot be requested). If they separate these categories, then a lot of the people don’t have to waste their time and the INS information counters’ time trying to find out what room to go to; instead they can go directly to the office corcerned.