5445: Impossible
Lemme give y'all a peek into the world of immigration, 'cause that may be relevant to one of you. (literally one, given my audience size now)
I spent all yesterday busting my butt trying to clear e-mails, and I got down to 500 e-mails remaining for September.
I spent all today busting my butt trying to clear e-mails, and I got down to 800 e-mails remaining for September.
...NOT A TYPO.
See, there's this magical date in US immigration called "September 30" that, for what reason, is when like 50%* of visas expire. ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY. It's like Christmas but for making people file for extensions or go away.
Why the rush today? Well, we have a system that sends out 90-day, 60-day, 30-day, 15-day, 7-day, 1-day, EXPIRING, and EXPIRED e-mail alerts. We did get a huge hit on July 2, but not as much of a spike as August 1, August 31, or today. If I can't clear more of them by the 23rd, I'm gonna be suffering.
The other issue is October 10. Same sort of thing, but for what reason, sometimes people get their I-94 forms extended at the port of entry (or not even there), so there's a ten-day delay on some of the 9/30 expiry dates. It's not just 9/30 dates--any visa has some potential to be extended by ten days for [no idea what reason, something I need to decipher in terms of who/what to ask]. Anyway, easily 25%* of visas expire on 10/10 for any given year such that I roll my eyes in pain whenever I see either date anywhere.
I've been meaning to ask the others to help reply to e-mail when they initiate an extension, but it feels like asking even more from them when EVERYBODY's stretched at the moment, as well as it being a self-fixing problem (most of the e-mails are from people who don't realize they don't need to follow up with us at EVERY alert).
Also, I still want to smack upside the head whoever decided an "I-94" should be a thing used to prove work authorization for an "I-9" form, especially for lots of folks who already don't understand English that well.
*possibly an exaggeration, but I'd have to remember to check against my update spreadsheet to get a better idea, even though it is never going to be 100% accurate to all expiry dates despite having a relatively good sample size
Edit: I checked how many cases I had recorded... not counting ones I had moved to a separate spreadsheet to keep the size down, about 3700. I filtered out ones that didn't have a 9/30 expiry date... that left about 1800 |='
49.9% when I did the math on the actual numbers... a bit horrified how close my guess was, but I guess that explains a lot. (~16% for 10/10, so *slightly* exaggerated that, but still a huge percentage of the calendar for two suspiciously specific days)
I spent all yesterday busting my butt trying to clear e-mails, and I got down to 500 e-mails remaining for September.
I spent all today busting my butt trying to clear e-mails, and I got down to 800 e-mails remaining for September.
...NOT A TYPO.
See, there's this magical date in US immigration called "September 30" that, for what reason, is when like 50%* of visas expire. ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHY. It's like Christmas but for making people file for extensions or go away.
Why the rush today? Well, we have a system that sends out 90-day, 60-day, 30-day, 15-day, 7-day, 1-day, EXPIRING, and EXPIRED e-mail alerts. We did get a huge hit on July 2, but not as much of a spike as August 1, August 31, or today. If I can't clear more of them by the 23rd, I'm gonna be suffering.
The other issue is October 10. Same sort of thing, but for what reason, sometimes people get their I-94 forms extended at the port of entry (or not even there), so there's a ten-day delay on some of the 9/30 expiry dates. It's not just 9/30 dates--any visa has some potential to be extended by ten days for [no idea what reason, something I need to decipher in terms of who/what to ask]. Anyway, easily 25%* of visas expire on 10/10 for any given year such that I roll my eyes in pain whenever I see either date anywhere.
I've been meaning to ask the others to help reply to e-mail when they initiate an extension, but it feels like asking even more from them when EVERYBODY's stretched at the moment, as well as it being a self-fixing problem (most of the e-mails are from people who don't realize they don't need to follow up with us at EVERY alert).
Also, I still want to smack upside the head whoever decided an "I-94" should be a thing used to prove work authorization for an "I-9" form, especially for lots of folks who already don't understand English that well.
*possibly an exaggeration, but I'd have to remember to check against my update spreadsheet to get a better idea, even though it is never going to be 100% accurate to all expiry dates despite having a relatively good sample size
Edit: I checked how many cases I had recorded... not counting ones I had moved to a separate spreadsheet to keep the size down, about 3700. I filtered out ones that didn't have a 9/30 expiry date... that left about 1800 |='
49.9% when I did the math on the actual numbers... a bit horrified how close my guess was, but I guess that explains a lot. (~16% for 10/10, so *slightly* exaggerated that, but still a huge percentage of the calendar for two suspiciously specific days)