This article was written by Ned Brickley

In all the debate over “illegal aliens, undocumented workers, undocumented immigrants, etc.” people seem to have forgotten those who have immigrated to this country legally. These people wanted to come to America live and work as Americans and eventually become Americans.

How does the United States treat those who want to obey the law?

With bureaucratic incompetence, stupidity and delays.

This is the story of one such person who has followed all the laws and policies to immigrate to the United States, and the problems she and her American born husband have had with the United States bureaucracy.

My wife is an immigrant from China. She came to the United States under a K-1 visa. This is also known as a “fiancée” visa. The application was prepared by a lawyer and submitted to the Vermont Service Center in early August 2003. The normal processing time is 45 days. At the end of that time my lawyer received a request for additional documents. My lawyer complied and then informed me of what had happened.

It seems the documents requested had never been asked for in the past, and in fact should not have been asked for in the first place. We had the documents available and were able to send them in. My lawyer was very angry over this. When we spoke she told me that “I called the service center and actually spoke to a real person!”

3 months after the submission the paperwork was sent to the National Visa Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They processed the paperwork in a timely and efficient manner, the only agency to date to do this.

Next the paperwork was sent to the consulate in Guangzhou, China. The procedure there is to send out additional forms for the K-1 beneficiary. My wife, (Fiancée at the time), did not receive her forms and after two weeks I emailed the consulate to find out what the hold up was. They replied that the mailing address supplied came back as invalid, and that the packet sent out had been returned. This was interesting considering the fact that both my lawyer and I had sent letters and packages to this address.

The consulate then asked that I send my wife's address in Chinese to them. I had my wife send me her address as requested and sent it in through their form on the consulate web page. Another 2 weeks past and my wife still has not received the forms she is required to fill out. Again I contacted the consulate and they replied that they could not read the Chinese characters and would I FAX them the address. My wife did this and a week later she received the forms.

It took about a month for her and a translator to complete the forms and then mail them back in. Once they arrived I checked the consulate's web site and found that their call center had been raided and closed down by the police. No information was provided, but I found out through friends that the call center had been outsourced and this company was charging callers $7USD for the first 12 minutes up front. This took another 6 weeks to straighten out.

Once that problem was resolved I contacted the consulate to find out when my wife could expect her interview for her visa. I didn't ask for an exact date, only a ballpark estimate. The answer received was not what would be called Customer Service friendly. It was basically “We'll get to it eventually.”

At this point I felt that I needed to get my Senator involved again. The first time was when my wife's paperwork was stuck in the Vermont Service Center. Shortly afterwards Senator Gregg's office informed me that my wife could expect her interview at the end of September or October. She was interviewed October 29th, 2004 and received her visa the following week.

I went to China a month later and my wife and I arrived in the United States December 9th. We were married on February 19th, 2005 and I submitted the forms for her work permit and Adjustment of Status in March. My wife received her first request for fingerprints in April.

In April we traveled to the Manchester NH office of the USCIS and waited about 15 minutes for one of the people there to call my wife in. She was printed and we left. In May my wife received her work permit. Once we received her work permit I filled out the application for her Social Security card.

This began yet another odyssey.

I had the forms ready to go and they were signed by my wife and submitted within a week of the arrival of her work permit. Everything I had read told me this should take no more then 6-8 weeks. In fact it took many trips to the local Social Security Administration office, intervention from Senator Gregg's office and the assistance of an employee of the SSA in Maryland who gone through the immigration process with his wife. In the end my wife waited 6 months and ended up with two valid Social Security cards with two valid but different Social Security numbers. We finally had all this corrected the day before Thanksgiving 2005.

After we completed our trip through the Social Security maze we assumed that my wife's Adjustment of Status, (Green Card), would be forthcoming. We were in error. Mid-summer we were notified that my wife's case had been transferred to the California Service Center. There was no explanation from the USCIS, but the general opinion was that the local office was overloaded and that this would speed things up for us.

In November we were notified that we needed to provide more evidence or information regarding my wife's AOS. The letter with the details arrived a few days later and it was a request for $75USD for the fingerprint fee. This confused both of us since I had paid that fee at the very beginning of the process and my wife had her fingerprints taken the previous spring. Rather then argue the point and further delay things I sent the check in. A month later we received another letter with the check. The USCIS had determined that we had already paid the fee and didn't need to send in more money. Shortly afterwards my wife was notified to go to the Manchester office and have her fingerprints taken again. We did this in December of 2005.

Meanwhile my wife's work permit was due to expire in May so I had filled out a request for renewal and sent that off in January. We received a notice to appear to have my wife's fingerprints taken yet again. Who knew that fingerprints would change so often? We went back to the Manchester office in February 2006 and had that taken care of.

And we started waiting again.

While we were waiting my wife spoke with some people in her English class. They had also come to the United States on K-1 visa's and had received their green cards 6 months after applying. At this point it had been over a year for my wife. My wife then told me to contact Senator Sununu's office since he had assisted one of her friend when she had an immigration problem. To say my wife was frustrated would be like saying the Titanic had a small leakage problem.

I contacted Senator Sununu's office by email and also by telephone. They said they would look into things. About a week after I spoke to them we received another notice that we needed to provide more evidence or information. In our optimism we thought this might be the appointment for the interview we have to go through to get my wife her Green Card. Silly us!

A week later my wife received the letter and opened it. When I came home from work she was in tears. The letter said that we needed to send in our marriage certificate as proof of our marriage. My wife was so frustrated and angry that she was saying she would go back to China. She also thought I had forgotten to send the certificate along with all the other papers we had to submit. I kept copies of everything along with a list of what I sent. That mollified my wife slightly. It is obvious that the marriage certificate, probably the most important document, was lost by some bureaucrat in the USCIS. That or they just plain missed it. We had another copy of our certificate and I had that in the mail within the hour.

And here we are, waiting for the United States Government to grant my wife permission to permanently reside in the United States and be able to travel to China and visit her family. Without a Green Card or an Advanced Parole form, my wife, or any person waiting for their permanent residence status, may leave the U.S. But can't re-enter.

Meanwhile the Congress and the President want to reward those who broke our laws and entered illegally with amnesty. Can you see just how frustrating it is for those people who obey the laws of the country they want to be a part of? What is the point of spending thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours and waiting for years to legally reside in the U.S. When all you need to do is waltz across the border?

Is this how our elected representatives represent us? By giving criminals who don't belong here more rights then those who are born, naturalized, or otherwise are legally in this country? Something is very very wrong here.

If our elected officials grant this amnesty people like my wife will go right to the bottom of the waiting lists as the USCIS struggles to handle the massive influx of people and paperwork. Where is the fairness in that? Is this why I paid all those fees and taxes?

I think not!

It is time to contact our representatives and remind them who they work for. It isn't people who don't want to be bothered with obeying our laws. If they won't listen then we must vote them out off office. We must also push for a reformation of the process to come into this country legally. The guest worker program is the last part that should be dealt with. Clearing up the huge amount of paperwork and the uncertainties of the process must be a priority. If we do not fix this problem then we may as well call it a day and dissolve the union.

UPDATE: Mr. Brickley's wife's green card was approved on Tuesday.