sjoefl01

We took a 6 hours trip and they wouldn't do bio for our daughter. We begged them and there was no way. It ended up being 7 months later when we finally got biometrics for our daughter (another 6 hours drive in the opposite direction). We had to get an infopass after the whole process came unraveled. They did the bio there.

I hate to bring bad news, and other people have manged to get them done, but just in case. Get yourself ready to leave completely frustrated and angry.

They couldn't have cared less. If we had made too much noise we would have been removed by security.

Be sure to come back and tell us how it went for you.

Brazillianwife,

You need to go to the AOS section of this web site. The removal of conditions that are here are for the 2 year to 10 year green card.

First, I don't trust your lawyer. He has no control over how long this process takes. If he promises 90 days for the card he can't be trusted. You should have him write in the contract that if you don't have the card in 90 days his services are free.

Your husband can't be forced to sign the I864 or support the process at all. Given your removal proceedings, the case becomes even more complicated. I wouldn't want to give bad advice so I will suggest the AOS section again. There are some heavy hitters over there that understand the law much better.

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showforum=130

Sorry this took so long. I just happened to be wandering around and saw it. Angelica is 19 now. She came with her mom when she was 15. The removing of conditions did not work together and we had a lot of problems, the first being that we are 6 hours away from any kind of USCI office. We beegd them to take the bios and they refused. Many months later we got a letter from USICS saying my wife had abandoned the petition because she did not come for bio ( we did we had the stamped appointment letter. It was not until the infopass appointment that we got somebody nice that did the fingerprints for our daughter.

They wouldn't do bio for our daughter without a letter.

How old is the daughter? Our Mathew is 5 and he just got the extension letter, but nothing for Biometrics. We took Mathew anyway when Ruchie had her Bio and they said he didn't need to be there. It is hard to find out anything when it comes to Biometrics for the kids...

BTW..... Hello Cora. Glad to see you on VJ!!!!

They wouldn't do bio for our daughter without a letter.

We had an infopass in Jacksonville on Friday. This is the second time we have been there and both times they were really nice to us (unlike New Orleans, we hate that office).

We gave them the "you are now illegal" letter and the proof they made a mistake. The lady asked us to have a seat and left to a back room for about 10 minutes. When she returned she explained what the problem was. She was obviously annoyed with the person who was adjudicating our case in Vermont. She had called them on the phone. Because we had so many problems filing the 751 in the first place our case had been added and cancelled 4 times. That part had been done properly. She explained that when they are adjudicatin the case and something like fingerprints aren't there they should have checked about 5 different software packages. She was able to find the fingerprints in about 30 seconds but Vermont had obviously kicked us out a nasty letter after having only looked in one place. It is all corrected now.

After we fioxed that we told her that our daughter had never been fingerprinted nad we really hated to drive another 12 hour round trip to New Orleans. She hooked us up so Angelica was fingerprinted there in Jacksonville. The lady was so nice.

We went to another lady that did the fingerprints. When she finished she came and explained to us that we will probably get another letter telling us to come for prints. She warned us not to call the 800 number. They would tell us that we had to come for the prints and when we got there the office would tell us that the trip was a waste of time. She showed us 3 numbers on the form to check. If they agree just ignore the letter.

I am fairly sure we will get cars in the mail pretty soon. Both times we have gone to the Jax office we have had a good experience beginning with the guard. Even he is really nice. When the cars come I am going to write a letter to our Senator explaining how abnormally professional andcourteous the people in that particular office are.

Out standing thank you so much,

I would never have thought to take passport photos with us. We are really hoping it works out that way. We have had so many problems and we are hours away from anything to do with immigration. It's a shame they can't do real work on the telephone. Most of the problems we have had could have been resolved easily if they just had a real phone number and someone that had authority and skills to do something.

@sjoefl01

When you go to the infopass, make sure you have 2 (I think), photos so they can issue the temp I-551 on a separate sheet of paper which you will then carry with you. This is the procedure for people whose passport has expired.

Good luck!

The consulate says they can only issue passports in person. This a 24 hour round trip. We are going in December. We have the infopass Friday. We called the consulate and it must be done by appointment which they say takes a couple of weeks. For some reason the consulate seemed to think that the USCIS in JAcksonville might be able to help with the passport and another national identification card from Colombia. I think that kind of like our USCIS friends on the telephone the guy didn't know what he was talking about.

We have to go for an infopass appointment where we are hoping to get stamps in a passport. We have let the passports expire becuase we had hoped to have a US passport long ago. (It's a long story)

We are also trying to make arrangements to renew the passport. We have crazy drives and it looks like the infopass will come before the passport.

Will the Colombian embassy transfer all the USCIS docs and stamps to the new passport? Do we get to keep the old passport?

Our Senator was Mel Martinez. He has done a lot of work on this I751 already.The problem is he quit and was replaced by some guy named Ledieux who is an absolute idiot. He has no web site and when I called I gota message saying his answering machine is full and then they hung up. Our governor put this guy in office with absolutely no experoence in politics ever. His only qualification was being a cuz buddy to the governor. It is know that the governor plans to run for senator when his term is done and he knows that his buddy will step aside and campaign for the governor to replace him. Unfortunaley the people of Florida now only have one sSenator to represent them for another couple of years.

Bill Nelson is a cool guy. I called his office this afternoon. The problem is he soesn't understand that we have been fighting this thing for a year and a half now. I'm going to FAX him some stuff this weekend but hopefully we can get this all worked out at an infopass if they ever get their web site back up.

Thanks for the link. That will be a huge relief for my wife. I hope they can sort this mess out with my daughter also. We have never had a single process through USCIS that did not happen with problems and take forever.

The wife has been studying and we were fixing to file for citizenship before this came up. Lucero has no great desire to become a citizen except that it is the only way we can get out from under USCIS.

It's so sad to me that all immigrants first interaction with this great country has to be dealing with this bunch of morons!!!

We began filing the I751 to lift conditions for my wife and daughter in June 2008. For some reason they had a problem with my daughter and we had to involve the Senator and send the application 4 times. This was finally accepted in October. My wife got the 1 year extension in November and my daughter in December, a few days after her mom got the biometrics letter. We wnet for bio in February and begged them to take bio for my daughter. For us it was a 12 hour round trip. They refused.

In about June or July we sent another letter to our Senator and he checked for us with the reply being to sit tight. We stil hadn't gotten the bio letter for my daughter.

Today we got letter telling us that the petition was abandoned by my wife because she never showed up for the bio. They said we had no right to appeal but we could send them $585 and ask to reopen the case.

We have the NOA for bio that was stamped in New Orleans.

Also our Senator has quit and the new guy has no web site and when I tried to call I got a message saying his machine was full.

I can't even seem to get the USCIS web site towrk to make a infopass for another 12 hour round trip.

The letter we got was really harsh. It say that all rights she gained from PR status were stripped including residence and the right to work. We have until 14 October to pay them the 585 bucks and ask them to bring the case back to life.

Our local college did the same thing to both my wife and daughter. I solved the problem quickly by being agressive. They were trying to push my wife and daughter around so I had to handle it. I went to the school for my wife. I didn't have time so I wrote a letter for my daughter and told her to make them read it.

1.Remember, your problem is not with immigration. Your problem is with the school. They have some cheesy rules that are designed to prevent foreign students from overstaying visas. Some idiot clerk is misreading the rules. Make them print it for you and give you a little time to study it before you go in.

2. You are an American and this man is your husband. He is a "PERMANENT" resident that can only be removed through a lengthy legal process. When his card expires he will be a "PERMANENT" resident with an expired card.

I came at them with the attitude that my daughter would be going to the school, and would not be paying international tuition. I printed out some law about discrimination because of LPR status. In reality, what I had printed applied to the workplace but I knew they wouldn't read it anyway. The intent was to scare them into thinking that they had a bigger problem than they did. I implied that this was an opportunity to solve the problem before the lawyers had to get involved. ( Of course we don't have a lawyer, and wouldn't even consider paying one what this would cost)

When you talk to people begin by asking their name and position. Write it down. It always freaks people out when you write down their name. I think it goes back to elementary school. Always ask them who their boss is. Let them know that they are in for trouble and probably don't want to be the one that said "NO". They might want to shift this reponsibility to their boss. After all, we are talking about violation of federal law and discrimination based on race and residency status.

Don't be scared, make them scared. My daughter gave the letter to the lady who had told her that she couldn't enroll. The lady read the letter, got quiet, made a few phone calls, apologized and enrolled her in the college. That was a year ago. We still don't have the conditions removed but the school never asked for proof again.

Of course, you can see if you can get anything out of an infopass. For us that is a 6 hour drive,one way. I wasn't about to put us through all that just to please some office idiot at the local junior college. It was actually kind of fun. It is what I alwasy wanted to do with USCIS but couldn't.

We went for the bio appointment for my wife and begged them to take bio for stepdaughter (6 hour drive one way). They would not do it. My step daughter still hasn't gotten bio and that was back in February. She got the extension letter back in December. She is 18.

My wifes one year letter is about to expire. Her passport is expired also. We thought filing the N400 might save us some trouble. She could become a citizen and get a US passport instead of driving over 12 hours one way to get hers renewed. We also didn't want to drive 6 hours one way to extend the one year extension. Would they even stamp an expired passport? Would that passport be a problem for USCIS in the citizenship process? She has a drivers license for identification.

We still haven't gotten the 10 year card but it has been 3 years on the 2 year card.

Can somebody explain the pros and cons of filing the N400 now?

You're not the only one, but you have to prove to the USCIS you are a LPR and show them the proof they gave you that you are a LPR. This may seem kind of crazy, but it's up to you to take the pains to maintain your LPR status, and if your one year extension expired, have to go to the same field office and wait in the same waiting room as you would when going in for your N-400 interview. Apparently those that do that N-400 interview and can even be the same person that handles your expired green card for all you know, don't know whether you are a legal LPR or not.

In all cases when applying for the N-400, you send in a copy of your green card, a copy of your one year extension, whether that is expired or not, but if expired, also send in a copy of your I-551 stamp in your current valid foreign passport book, or a copy of the I-94 they gave you.

The people that really seem to know about your LPR status is your employer, sorry, you are dismissed, I will be severely fined by the state if I don't dismiss you, people at your DMV, we can't renew your driver's license unless you can show proof that you are a LPR, ones we ran into know nothing about that one year extension, the I-551 stamp, nor the I-94, that creates problems, and if you are coming back into the country at the POE, they won't let you back in, but most are aware of the other forms of evidence.

Maybe your I-751 application with tons of evidence was "misplaced" like ours were. Only your senator seems to have the power to tell the USCIS to look around. Ombudsman is totally useless as is calling the USCIS.

Sure gives reason to apply for USC to get it over with, but make damn sure you have copies of your certificate in a safe place in case the DOS looses yours, can't even seem to get a replacement from the USCIS, if you can't provide them with a clear legible copy.

We filed for my wife and daughter about 13 months ago. They kept sending the package back tellin us that my daughter wasn't eligible. We finally wrote to the Senator and miraculously my wife got biometrics and my daughter got her one year extension letter. Since then we have heard nothing. My daughter still hasn't gotten fingerprinted. We wrote to the Senator again and the USCIS claims that the clock didn't start running till November so we should sit tight.

It's about 6 hours (one way)drive to our service center so we have been sitting it out for now till we have some consequences.

The wife has been studying for citizenship and she is ready.

It sounds like we may be making things worse by filing right now. Maybe we should just write the Senator again.

This really sucks. We have had problems with this immigration every single step of the way. Nothing has gone normal. We are alwya late for everything.

We still haven't gotten the 10 year card but it has been 3 years on the 2 year card.

Can somebody explain the pros and cons of filing the N400 now?

Congratulations Motu. It's finally over. I know it must be a relief.

Thanks for putting this quiz togehter. I passed it on to my wife. It is an excellent study guide.

Collie,

I agree with Nick that there is no need for clases for you. But I know how you feel. I felt the same way. In my case I decided to create a little help in form of a simple online quiz. I'd say, if you spend some time with it you will soon see that you can go thru all 100 questions with out any problems. If you want to check my quiz tool out you can do so here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/amaruk/tests/NewCivicsTest.html

The questions are random but no question is repeated until all 100 questions have been shown.

Good luck and relax. You'll be just fine!!

They don't do name checks before they take the money.

We have had several things sent back on our journey. It usually takes about 3 weeks.

I find the post a little cryptic. He diod use te word "rejected". He really doesn't say that there was not a letter. I see he hasn't been back since he posted and started getting answers. I would like to follow this experience to conclusion.

I may be wrong, But I think I read the post to say that the check had already cleared the bank. My guess is they had already grabbed the check before they realized there was a problem. I would simply correct the problem and send the package back with a letter explaining what happened.

I think you are worrying about something that is not a problem. Just correct the mistake.

Would somebody please cut through this and explain how the test works. I can determine that they choose 10 of the 100 civics questions and spend a few minutes making sure you know some English. I can't find much past that. I see something about a reading, writing, and history portion.

Could somebody please spell this out for me? I am not that bright and I have been searching around and can't seem to find a single answer. How does the test work?

How cool is this? It's the first time I have ever seen a human side to USCIS.

That is a really fast timeline. I was looking at the processing dates for Jacksonville and they claim to be on November 08. Is this normal?

My husband did not have his 10 year card when we filed. I typed a letter of explaination as to why we did not have the card, attached a copy of the NOA 1 and took the copies of the CR-1 card that we had and attached to the petition. No questions were asked and hubby got his citizenship.