Missed biometrics appointment by 3 months!

[jess100 53]

We somehow missed the notification about the biometrics entirely and filed it away with our papers. I don't have any idea how this happened. We JUST found it about an hour ago and our appointment was June 1. If anyone has experience about what to do please advise.....

We already know we can be found to have abandoned our visa-we already know we screwed up. Pointing this out to us won't help so much at this point- we cannot change it now...

Wondering what is the best course of action?

Call them on Tues?

Get our lawyer to help (she is officially done with us)?

Just drive to ASC and beg for forgiveness?

..so please if anyone has any direct experience please let us know.

[prenouveau 46]

I think the first thing to try is do a walk-in, explain what happened, see if they can still do it. If not, hopefully they could advise you of next steps (try reschedule or an infopass appointment). I've seen other posts on here where people missed and had successful walk-ins, though not 3 months late, so it's hard to guess.

[jess100 53]

I thought I'd report on what happened for future VJers who miss their biometrics appointment. Hopefully you won't miss it by 3 months as we did.

First, we took the above advice and scheduled the first InfoPass appointment I could get (which was for tomorrow at 11) and today we showed up at USCIS Syracuse office at 8 AM -as soon as they opened. (Monday was a holiday) I thought the InfoPass appointment could be used to determine if our case was still open, and if we didn't need the appointment we could cancel it.

When we arrived the guard (who was exceedingly helpful) advised us that our case might have been denied. When my husband was called to the window the officer said the same thing, and told him to try to schedule an Infopass appointment on the kiosk in the lobby (he didn't know we already had an appointment for the next day). If we couldn't log in with our case number it would mean the case had been denied. I'm not sure why it couldn't be checked on their computers-but there is probably a reason. Scheduling an appointment is apparently their way to determine whether it's been denied.

We went to the kiosk and it did take our information and scheduled an appointment. So we were good to go-not yet denied. The officer told us we can go ahead and do the photos and prints. In retrospect I think we were not yet denied because we had an RFE in early June and that delayed the case enough to keep us in the game. A denial probably happens much sooner in most cases.

The biometrics guy had us fill out a paper and then took my husband to a room for prints and photos. He was very nice and spoke clearly and slowly. While I waited for that, the officer offered to cancel both of our InfoPass appointments for tomorrow so we wouldn't need to go back to the kiosk on our way out to cancel. A minute or so later my husband was done. When we left the guard shook both of our hands and wished us luck!!!

My understanding from reading about ASC on this site was that they just take prints and photos and forward them to USCIS-but don't know anything about your case. So it seemed ASC would be in a different building than USCIS (as it is in Cuiduad Juarez) and even if we were able to get the biometrics done, wouldn't know the status of our case until our InfoPass appointment (the following day). But it wasn't like that at all-it was small and informal there-the biometrics guy was sitting right next to the officers, and it was small enough that the guard, the officers and biometrics guy could all hear each other -so everyone knew what was happening. I guess technically the ASC guy couldn't access our case, but the officers were able to determine it was still open, and help us to clear things up.

I can't say enough about this office and the people working there. Every person was kind, helpful and friendly. I I would highly recommend using InfoPass in Syracuse if you're anywhere near there. Also no lines, no waiting. Not at all what we expected.

[TBoneTX 43,058]

What a relief for you! Thanks for your valuable, detailed report and analysis.

[jess100 53]

What a relief for you! Thanks for your valuable, detailed report and analysis.

You are not kidding!