Hi guys, I was hoping some of you here who have experience already with contacting state senators might have an idea what I can do at this point. My husband emailed Richard Burr about a month ago regarding the backlog in the Montreal Consulate with CR1/IR1 visa. Within about a week he received a response via snail mail with two Privacy Act forms and instructions to fill out a form and send it back, and his assurance that he would then look into our case and see what he could do.
I only found out a few days ago that there were two Privacy Act forms in that envelope, so thinking that there was only one, I told hubby to fill one out with all his info, then to send it back in. The instructions also never said to fill out a second form with my info or anything like that, but now I'm wondering if the second form has anything to do with why we haven't received any more news from the senator.
Did anyone else receive two Privacy Act forms, and if so, did you fill them both out? I'm not sure if the second copy was just a back-up incase we lose the first one, or if we wanted one for our own records. I also don't want to fill out the second one now and send it in if there is a chance I might confuse them with extra irrelevant info

Anyone have any ideas?

I tried emailing Senator David Vitter when I was still in Canada. I got no response. Now I know he was too busy screwing hookers.

I would recommend writing to your US representative for help instead of a state senator. State senators deal with in-state matters. US Senators and US Representative are national.

You can find your US rep here:
http://www.house.gov/

in the upper left corner.


Good luck.

You are correct but I believe Richard Burr is one of two representatives to the US Senate from North Carolina.

Now can you tell me how many touchdowns the Spartans will beat the Wolverines by?

Heh. Sparty on.

I've predicted since day one this year that UM will be Big Ten Champs.

UM 28 MSU 10

Only if Appalachian State isn't in the Big Ten. What do they say in Ann Arbor? O yeah, Go Home Blue

MSU 35, UM 14 (half-time score)

Don't feel too bad, Mom's a big IU fan. Now those folks have something to cry about.

I think you might do better by contacting your U.S. Senator

I was thinking maybe Misty1979 should contact both senators not just Richard Burr, how about Elizabeth Dole? Dole is a class II senator so she will face re-election in 2009, might make her more receptive.

We contacted one of the North Dakota senator. We never filled out a privacy Act Form but then again I wrote a "real" letter and had my husband sign and date it. I went through our entire situation from start to finish and included my MTL case number. It was super quick for their response and then getting an interview date.

I don't know about the two privacy forms. I would think they just want something in writing with a signature on it to cover their arse b/c anyone can fire off an e-mail to them requesting info about someone.

Alright, so judging by the responses here, the best course of action was to contact the other remaining US Senator; Elizabeth Dole. We emailed her a few minutes ago and will hopefully get a little more activity from her office than Richard Burr's.

The letter is the only way to go. Most elected officials don't read forms too well and a constituent writing a letter has much more gravitas.

U.S. Senators deal with these issues and can get results

How dare you high-jack my thread with football banter?! This is the Canadian forum, if you are going to hi-jack anything, it should be hockey or Tim Horton's related only!!!!

Kidding
Thanks for the responses though, I wrote an email to Mrs. Dole herself a few minutes ago and am hoping for some good news within the next couple weeks.

Elizabeth Dole's office was extrememly helpful to us when we were navigating our way through all this crap. All my husband had to do was fax the form to her office and the immigration liase took it from there. We never spoke directly with Ms. Dole at all, only her employees.

Call Burr's office and ask to speak with hte immigration liase. It is entirely possible that they have not rec'd your privacy form yet. I bet you could fax it and have faster results.

Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose...

I contacted my state senator, Senator Levin, directly by calling his Detroit office's number, and within a day I had sent back the form. I only had to have one form since my wife and I were already married. Within a week they had already contacted the California Service Center and found where my case had been misplaced, and then I used them a few months later when the Montreal Consulate was being awful after a bogus denial.

As far as the backlog goes, you'll probably not have much luck getting it moved along, as everyone has to wait for their turn unfortunately. My senator's representative and our lawyer said that they can only help when the case has hit a "snag", but usually don't do anything when it's just administrative processes taking longer than what was posted. Good luck!

Just wanted to add another little tidbit about when we wrote the senator. As a return address I used husbands current address here in town. When we received the reply from the senators office it was addressed to his parents/the family farm address not the return address on the letter. Me thinks that this is probably the address that he has been registered for voting and that they actually looked him up to check if he was a registered voter. Just a bit of food for thought for everyone to ponder.

I never write anything by mail, I went to my respective Senator/Representative's website, download the privacy forms and faxed it in. I then called to confirm that they received it and then waited for a response by email.

I contacted them about the backlog in MTL for 3 offices:

Senator Barack Obama - Turns out they are too busy to care or look into the issue. They told me their immigration person is swamped and that they couldn't do anything for me. I don't care if he's running for president, his staff still has a job to do.

U.S. Representative Melissa Bean - Took 4 weeks to mail me a response that they looked into the issue but I had to just wait.

U.S. Representative Judy Biggert - I LOVED THEIR OFFICE. They cared about my situation, sat and talked with me about it, emailed Montreal many times on my behalf only to get short and to the point responses from MTL. This was an office that really wanted to help me out and tried, but had no power to do anything about the backlog.

Good luck and let me know if I can provide more info.

hey Misty

you may have gotten through by now, but if not... I just called my senator and never had to sign any privacy form. they might not want to talk to you since you're calling from a Canadian #, so have your hubby call and ask to talk to the immigration person. most of the time the senators are pretty helpful in finding out why something is taking too long. hopefully making Montreal deal with a bunch of Senator inquiries will kick the correct ###