The Obsessed Programmer

Senator Bennett,

A member of your staff called me last week asking what kind of assistance he could render us in our application for my wife Liliana to be allowed to work and become a permanent resident. I have some additional information on the case.

Our I-765 Application for Employment Authorization was rejected on August 20th for being expired (even though the form itself said it expired August 31st). The latest form on the USCIS website is indeed a newer revision, but also says it expires August 31st, 2008.

The woman I spoke to at the USCIS today assured me that although the former paper was rejected for being expired when it hadn’t expired yet, this one would not be rejected, even though it actually *has* expired.

Additionally, the USCIS says we need to have the original form they sent us for Liliana’s fingerprinting session in order to reschedule that appointment. However, the reason we did not make the appointment is because they mailed the notice to the wrong address. Last week, a woman told me she would fax me a copy of the old notice and re-mail it to us as well, but we have not received any fax and the USCIS cannot confirm where it has sent anything.

Please let me know if you have made any headway on our case, and if you can find out what is going on with the form I-765–somehow I find it hard to trust them when they say this expired form will still be accepted.

We really are trying our very best to have Liliana do everything legitimately, but it’s very tempting to just buy a stolen social security number off the street. It would be much faster, cheaper, and less stressful than actually working with the immigration office. And having just taken on some additional debt to help with the reconstruction of Liliana’s family home in Peru, we desperately need additional income from her employment.

Thank you again,

Ben Dilts
801-687-3450
PO Box 1854
Park City, UT 84060

There’s been a new, exciting development. The I-765 Permission to Work that we submitted, which expired August 31st, but which was rejected August 22nd for being out of date, is still the latest form available from the USCIS (check out http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-765.pdf if you don’t believe me).

I can’t go on writing this without debasing myself.

The other day, I sent letters electronically and through the mail to my three representatives in the United States Congress.  To me, it was sort of a Hail Mary move.  I mean, it couldn’t possibly be more desperate than trying to work with the USCIS directly, could it?

I just got off the phone with an aide in Senator Bob Bennett’s office.  He asked how his office could help.  I told him that since we sent the letter, we got hold of the receipt number we needed to resubmit Liliana’s permission-to-work papers without paying an additional fee.  But the SNAFU with the fingerprinting appointment has made it look like we might have to pay over $1,300 in fees again if we can’t reschedule it.

He collected some information about our papers and Liliana, and said he’d see what he could do to make sure we get another appointment without resubmitting all our papers with new fees.

Thank you, Senator Bennett.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

So I finally got a call in to the USCIS today about Liliana’s other two major forms–the I-130 and the I-485. The reason it happened today and not the same time as my call about the permission to work is because the USCIS won’t let you talk to them about any papers you haven’t gotten a receipt for until 30 days after you submitted them.

Well, they got the papers, all right. And they cashed the checks. And they set up an appointment for Liliana on September 16th to get fingerprinted in Salt Lake City. And they mailed the receipt to our physical address. Again.

What that means is that it was completely impossible for me to know about the appointment for fingerprinting until after the appointment had passed, since they wouldn’t even acknowledge to us by phone that they had received the petitions until after September 16th.

So the person on the phone with me said they’d write our PO Box in “big letters” now on our records. And she’d try to get us another appointment set up so we don’t have to pay another $1,300 in fees because they reject our petition because of a missed appointment.

I PAY *&$!ING TAXES FOR THIS?!