Detention! Or: my latest visit to immigration

[samedi]

My work visa expired last week, though with all the things our academy director is dealing with at the moment it wasn't until today that he realized that we needed to visit immigration to take care of it

Comments

[emma2403]

Wow, you sound so cool :D. I'm having knots in my stomach only by reading this...

3 hours is pretty much the average waiting time over here whenever you need a passport, new ID, change of place notice, etc... Luckily, there are plenty of seats so with a good book, it's bearable.

[samedi]

I have a lot of trust in my academy director and knew he would do everything he could to get me out of any trouble. Fortunately this just meant finding the closest bank -- I have no idea what would have happened if the process would have taken two or three days. :D

There are lots of seats in the new immigration building but I'm still not over how long it took. I'm tempted to go back at another time to see if it's always like that or if we just picked a bad day to go.

bring a book

[ext_126865]

I was lucky when I went back to immigration - going early in the morning is best, when the lines are light, and when I went back to get my F-visa, the clerk who'd told me to find her back again was in one of the spots that had a shorter line.

But the time before that, I DID wait about four hours - I advise people always to bring a good book and a diary or somesuch when they visit immi.

Thanks for telling your story.

[samedi]

There really wasn't all that much I could do about the situation other than wait. True, it took ten times longer than any other visit to immigration, but that's still better than some of the stories I've read about the bureaucracy in Italy.

It also beats K's ordeal in Kafka's The Trial. ;)

[shortbutfast]

immigration... the horror.

here in the us, they love giving me trouble every time i have to deal with them - for no reason whatsoever. i have a 'lifelong' green card and fail to see how this warrants being treated like a criminal every time i cross these borders or have to get anything updated. i have to go soon for an update... wish me luck, haha.

sounds like you got everything sorted out. :]

[samedi]

Everything is sorted out for my visa, but I'll need to go back some time in the next two weeks to pick up a re-entry permit for my passport. We didn't have enough time to take care of that during our earlier visit -- in fact, I ended up missing my first period of class as a result of the long wait.

Sorry to hear that you always end up dealing with crap at the US immigration office. How soon do you plan on going back?

[shortbutfast]

i need to go sometime this month, oh joy. i will have to treat myself to some honey walnut shrimp in chinatown after the ordeal, hah! good luck with yours.

[samedi]

Treating yourself to something nice after the experience does sound like a good way to deal with it. Getting a re-entry permit can can done at any of the immigration branches, so I might try to take care of that at the airport on the day I leave. (I'm going to be showing up to the airport early anyway!)

Good luck with yours as well.

[brighidn]

It sounds like you had an unpleasant wait, but I can personally attest that the average US "la Migra" offices are much worse. They seem to have learned their customer service from the USSR. The cattle drive of sweaty applicants is terrorized with everything but cattle prods. (Since 9/11 they may have added those, too!)

Also, they inexplicably hire the least qualified workers for such tasks, people who can barely speak or read English as their own mother tongue, let alone Spanish or other needful languages. It was always interesting to watch the knuckle-draggers stumble over each and every name on the list, gruffly barking out such gimmees as "Gonzales" or "Mendoza" in the most mangling way. Nobody is ever really sure if they heard their name called at the INS.

[samedi]

While I won't deny that I was surprised at how long it took, the wait itself wasn't bad. A couple of commenters above mentioned bringing a book along, but it also presents a great opportunity to people-watch or to just sit and think about whatever comes to mind. Of course, maybe that's just me.

I had assumed that things would be similar - or perhaps worse - at several US immigration offices, though I'm sure there are probably good ones out there somewhere. However, I didn't expect to hear there would be so much trouble over pronouncing relatively 'simple' names like the ones you mentioned. That's fairly disconcerting.