I was in Cordoba for three months last year during the summer/winter, was in Bs. As. for the embassy interview. I actually live in Tallahassee, my District Office is Jacksonville.

But you are American (born in USA) right? Well, not because it is my country... Argentina is very pretty,... but I would never go back (to live) for some reason United States trapped me besides that my husband is here, and I wont leave him for anything....

I am American and my husband is Argentine. I love the USA - but I could also live in Argentina, too. One never knows where you'll end up.

by mistake I never went to the SS office to remove the conditions on my social security... now of course my green card is expired, all I have is my NOA (one year extension) you think I could go and tell them that I lost my Social and with my expired green card and NOA they would give a social with no restrictions? well... I am sick and tired of my job and I want to get out but I am concern about my social security problem..... what you guys think?

Go to the Social Security office in Downtown Miami. My husband went last year and took his greencard and they gave him a new SS card. Take your greencard and your NOA extension letter - you should be fine. I'm sure that in Miami they have seen many people with your situation.

I did same. Never applied for new Card but last week i got a very good job offer and my green card is expired. I went to SS Office and showed them my expired GC, SS Card and Extension Letter, and they didn,t have any problem with it. After reading the extension letter, she asked me that where it says about Extension (lol), So i pointed that line and after that everything fine. It was last thursday, so havent got card yet.
No need to lie, ....You will be fine....and GOOD LUCK

Thank you!!! I am going next Wednesday since I have a doctors appointment and I am taking the whole day off... seriously I hate where I work... actually I hate my bosses, it is a family business and after 4 years here I had enough! I know that pregnant will be harder to find another job, but at least I will have the relief that I could go wherever I want when I want!

Heh heh, you can bet if we get an interview, the kids are coming with us. I can only hope that our youngest has a runny nose and is in a particularly destructive mood.

He he he he

Today someone got approved after 7 months via VSC. We have seen quite some approvals over the last few weeks, none involving tSC transferees. Would this indicate that we are not on the top of their pile (otherwise how come an August filer gets approved while many of us are year long waits)? I wonder if we are checked for background or back in the men's room.

I fell like calling USCIS and ask about my case!! just to see what they would say!!!!! I do not want to believe that we are behind all these people!! why? what we have done to deserve this????? it is not fair! There is anything we can do??? I am getting bored of this!!!! This is suppose to be the first world!!!!! my country is more efficient than USCIS!!!!

We were all last touched only at the beginning of last week, which is when they probably queued us up. I would think that this latest case to be approved was already on somebody's desk. We'll probably know if they are proceeding right to us if A_C gets approved in a couple of weeks or so.

do you guys think that they've even started looking at our cases?

Agreed. I do not assume that just because we got transferred, we automatically and immediately get put on someone's desk, displacing the box they were working on. All in time.

Please add me to the list:
I-751 (Removal of conditions):

05-28-07 - I-751 sent to TSC
05-31-07 - NOA1
07-07-07 – Biometrics
01-31-08 - File transferred to VSC
02-04-08 – Touched
02-14-08 – Touched
02-26-08 – Touched

Ref. NOA feb. 1, 08 ,,, to speed up processing we were transferred to VSC, so I'm hopefull that we will see good news shortly

Welcoming/adding BBAN as a new TSC-VSC Loser®.

UserName............NOA1 Date.......Biometrics......Last Touch......Approved
A_C.................02/21/07........03/15/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
ihateemo............03/03/07........04/??/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
tweety..............03/09/07........04/06/07........02/25/08........--/--/-- (service request)
junglee069..........03/13/07........04/14/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
burs................03/19/07........04/12/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
Gaston..............03/19/07........04/17/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
moben...............03/20/07........03/28/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
kn687...............03/21/07........03/29/07........02/25/08........--/--/-- (service request)
kalstravels.........03/23/07........04/20/07........02/25/08........--/--/-- (service request)
jsouthwick..........03/30/07........??/??/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
us1415..............04/18/07........05/12/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
utopiacowboy........04/19/07........05/??/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
licianne............04/20/07........04/25/07........02/25/08........--/--/-- (senator involved)
James...............04/20/07........05/31/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
Angel7422...........04/25/07........05/24/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
smartie.............05/03/07........06/09/07........02/25/08........--/--/--
Cassie..............05/09/07........06/04/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
baunzerbrudi........05/19/07........06/14/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
rhenryv.............05/30/07........06/18/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
Pici0274............05/30/07........07/05/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
BBAN................05/31/07........07/07/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
imailin.............06/07/07........08/??/07........02/26/08........--/--/--
emmysphere..........06/10/07........07/05/07........02/26/08........--/--/--

Hi All,


I am tired of this waiting game. As my 3 year Conditional Permanent resident will be finished some time in May....i am preparing my N-400 form to apply for Naturalization. I will be mailing this application tomorrow.

I wish i have other choice, other than applying to TSC.

I posted new topic under "US Citizenship General Discussion" section, about my concerns on this application (http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=114382), anyone's comments are welcome.


Is any one from this thread applying for Naturalization ?

I don't want another encounter with USCIS any time soon. I want to wait till they get the processing under control (hopefully one day!)... waiting 12-18 months as of right now for N400 doesn't sound very comforting to me.

GL with your N400!

We were part of the original TSC Losers, but after 11 months were finally approved. My husband submitted for Citizenship at the end of January - and so now the new wait has begun. We are now waiting for his NOA and Biometrics - I can't tell you how disheartening it is to have to go through all of this again with the TSC.

I didn't know you got the aproval already.... what was your NOA date? and when you got aproved?

It's a lot more positive if you think of it this way:

Going through it ONE LAST TIME with the TSC.

Our NOA was 2/05 and the approval finally came on 12/03. A solid 10 months of grief. I believe it was actually one of the very last few applications (on this thread) to be approved before the move to the VSC.

Yes, I could view it that way, but I am very skeptical as we still haven't received our NOA or biometrics, when other people are getting their's allover the place. Having been through TSC Hell, I know what these people are capable of (or incapable of) so to speak. So, I just kind of hang my head and say "God give me strength", as I will need it to get through this one more time.

Well, I'm dealing with TSC right now... we recently filed... so here's wondering how long it's going to take.

Personally if it does take that long, I'm almost looking forward to filing for citizenship, since the time to process at TSC seems to be so random that at least with two immigration 'lottery tickets' in their system... at least one is bound to be approved eventually

Speaking of which... you notice how, despite the fact that they shipped cases that were filed Feb->Aug off to another service center... they claim to be currently processing cases filed in April.... what gives with that? They're processing cases they don't even have anymore? Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding...

I think they use people's files as toilet paper and the date stamped on the file is how they decide which date to report on the web.

Ahhhhhh! now that might explain how some people get approved so quickly... they print everything on very sharply textured paper!

Hence making TSC want to get it out of the system quickly! Not only that, but less gets flushed and hence less need for RFEs!!!!!

We might just have struck on the answer here!

Does anyone know how I can re-print my I-751 on rough-grade sand paper? or maybe on a cheese grater?

My wife is eligible to apply now but her English ability (or lack thereof) concerns me. She got a "break" when we went for her AOS interview in San Antonio because the interviewer spoke Spanish. I am hoping that her English improves enough in the next couple of years but I could be unrealistic. She's been here four years already and can barely speak English so I don't know what's going to change.

I see you live in Texas, and I'm sure that with your wife being from Columbia, she can get by in Spanish - all the time. It is what I call the "Miami Syndrome". Everyone in Miami speaks Spanish - if you don't speak Spanish it can be very hard to get by. Thank God I'm fluent, as we lived in Doral, the most Spanish-speaking city in America - 91%. If I went into a market called Sedano's - forget it - hardly anyone spoke English. So, what happens is that Spanish-speaking immigrants for the most part have everything available to them in their own language - even Miami-Dade County will provide it in Spanish or Creole, too. Thus, there is no incentive to learn English. I want to clarify, I am not knocking on anybody for speaking Spanish, as we speak it in our home all the time, and we'll teach our children to speak it, too. But my husband is so dedicated to learning English and he (the Argentine) says to everyone, "you're in America - learn English". As he puts it, how could you come to a country and make no attempt to learn the language as you need to get by. He says this with all conviction though as he speaks 9 languages and has lived in 6 European countries.

Get her into some ESL classes STAT!!! - they're typically free or even buy her Ingles Sin Barreras. My husband attends two ESL classes a week at our local library and a citizenship class offered at the Baptist Church (we're Catholic), but we thank the Baptists greatly for the class. My husband was telling me that there is a lovely Chinese woman in his citizenship class that is almost 69 years old and has paid more than $1200 dollars to take the citizenship test twice. She has been able to pass the questions portion of the exam, but when the IO asked her "What color is my shirt?" she just blinked at him. Test failed.

Actually, Hialeah Gardens and Hialeah are the two cities where Spanish is most spoken in the U.S., at over 90% -- Doral is "only" about 75%. (You can plug a town or county in here to get the percentages: http://www.mla.org/cgi-shl/docstudio/docs....ap_data_results). Miami-Dade as a whole is about 60%, so I know what you're talking about. Happily, my wife already had relatively decent competency in English, and she has continued to work on it by taking classes . . . she also tries to make a point of only watching TV in English (something hard to do with all of the Spanish language TV offerings). The good thing, obviously, is that she fits right in with the majority down here.

We're in no rush for citizenship -- she can apply in April, but there is obviously no way she will get it in time to vote in November. So why throw another $700 at USCIS just to hurry up and wait for something she doesn't need right now.

Sorry about the Doral thing - it was a statistic that had been published when I was there - oops! One thing we do in our house aside from all English television - plus only Univision is offered in Tallahassee - is my husband likes to have the closed captions on the TV so that he can read as well as listen to the broadcast - it has helped him a lot to train his ears. Also, we are applying for citizenship because he is interested in a federal job and would need to be a citizen for that.

Aside from that, there are a few things I do miss about Miami - easy access to products from Argentina and South America, and also a really, really good Argentine bakery on Flagler St. Don Pan for a couple of baguettes - one for the ride home, and one for the house. And Mario the Baker Pizza - always good and a good deal. I almost forgot - the most important thing - a really, really good Cafe con Leche from any Cuban vendor - OMG!!! Yes, I love Starbucks, but I do miss Cuban cafe con Leche. ;-)

I live in Miami.... it's been 8 years already.... when I first came here my English was poor... but I was only 16 years old back then... so.... I finished high school here and then I meet my husband... pure American from New Hampshire... you could just imagine he could not even say hi in Spanish... same how I learned English... my spelling still a little bit bad... but I can speak perfectly... After all I started working on an American restaurant where the customers and bosses only spoke English (Jewish restaurant) and I learned even more... when we had our interview back in 2005 we had no problems my English was perfect....I
think the same way... I mean! if you came to the States do not expect Spanish in every corner... It makes me bad (embarrass…better say) when we go to supermarkets and people talk directly in Spanish to my husband.... and I HAVE TO Translate!!! no! try in English first...
In Miami if you are not bilingual you have fewer chances to find a good job....

Have we seen anyone being approved from the loser list yet????

nope.

My wife did take ESL classes for a couple of years after she got here. Her ability to read and write English is passable, her problem is with oral communication. In spite of this, she has a good job as a production supervisor at the Toyota plant in San Antonio. Luckily for her, the Japanese can't speak English any better than she can!

I occasionally get this sinking feeling that we're being treated as if we had just filed at VSC, and all the time we spent at TSC counts for nothing.

I agree, James! If we continue seeing original, non-transfer VSc filer approvals from Sept/Oct , I think we are in for another 7 months. Maybe if VSC posts official times beyond March 1st, inquiries can help as we would be outside the processing times!

I think that is the way VSC works. Our petition was signed for on 12/14 in Texas. Our NOA date is 12/28 for Vermont. I thought it was always supposed to be the day they originally received it. It worked that way way back when we filed for the K-1 and it got transferred to Cali. I keep watching you guys because I think the way Texas works is, well, crap. I hate when we have to file anything to that blackhole. Who knows what will happen!

Twila

*sigh*

sigh.... one year now and still no card

well im going to hit 6 months this week at VSC, is this normal??? does anyone think that an approval will come soon? my wife and i were tlaking about it the other day and for the price we paid and the service we're getting, its really slow! lol

Happy anniversary, tweety!!!!!

Yeh it looks like VSC has slowed down some... I have been waiting almost 7 months.... it could well be that they have put us all to one side while they work on the TSC transfers.... so it could be another 4 months + before we get approved....

Makes me sick when I see people get approved in just a few weeks at CSC....

oh well

Kez

methinks this thread is giving us the answer......

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=115124

Just got this email.
Current Status: Card production ordered.

On March 10, 2008, we ordered production of your new card. Please allow 30 days for your card to be mailed to you. If we need something from you we will contact you. If you move before you receive the card, call customer service. You can also receive automatic e-mail updates as we process your case. Just follow the link below to register.

If you have questions or concerns about your application or the case status results listed above, or if you have not received a decision from USCIS within the current processing time listed*, please contact USCIS Customer Service at (800) 375-5283.

aye, I know, and although it pleases me on your behalf, it makes me sad on my and my fellow Losers' behalf.

so VSC is happily processing on into September. Great! That means we only need to wait another 6 months as we JUST FILED in FEBRUARY (that is how they treat us)

if we get more later filers reporting getting approved, and nothing happens to us, that's the only thing we can assume is happening

This is beyond absurd, unfair, undue process. Maybe VSc is going to slow down and we will be transferred over to CSc as "brandnew cases" next christmas!!!!

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww James .. could you keep an eye on Nebraska too please?

Triple the charges and double the time .. is that math?