INS

LEGAL IMMIGRANTS

As I am setting up this page in the summer of 2005, media and politicians are expressing alarm over the problems with the flood of illegal immigrants, especially from Mexico. The whole situation seems out of control.

Well, here are our own immigration experiences. A good starting point may be this letter to the INS:

June 22, 1998

U.S. Department of Justice
Immigration and Naturalization Service
210 E. Woodlawn Road, Bldg 6 - RM138
Charlotte, NC 28217

Dear Sirs,

My wife, Brita, and myself have lived in the United States since 1971. I was employed by the IBM Corporation and came over from Sweden on what was intended to be a two year assignment. The assignment was extended, and I was offered a permanent job over here. In January of 1976 we received our 'green cards'.

We never considered applying for citizenship until 1996 when Washington politicians were making threatening statements about immigrants - legal and illegal. We had then lived as lawful permanent residents for a quarter of a century, and there is very little in the daily life that citizenship would change.

Both in our mid-sixties, we decided to apply for citizenship in 1996. We went through all the paperwork, got our fingerprints, and mailed the application along with a check in the amount of $190 on October 28, 1996.

Following our application, we made contacts with four or five of the agencies which are authorized to perform the required test. We never managed to find one that had a test date in North Carolina, which was not canceled by the time we were ready to sign up.

Then, we received your 'Notice of Action', dated February 6, 1998, informing us that you had received our application (more than a year earlier) and that the processing time was 550 to 730 days. For your identification, the ' receipt numbers' were SRC-98-092-52330/52345

Suddenly, Friday June 12, my wife received the notification of an interview in Charlotte at 9:00 AM the following Tuesday morning. That notification was dated 5/30 1998 and postmarked 6/6 1998. It stated that if you cannot keep the appointment, the letter should be returned with a request for a new appointment. That was obviously impossible, since it had taken a week for the letter to come to us, and the notification arrived two working days before the appointment.

On Monday, June 15, I tried to call your office, but never managed to get through to a living person. I did get referred to another phone number where a real person answered. After I explained the situation, that woman said that she was going to transfer me to an immigration officer. Nobody answered and there was no message, not even music. I waited for about five minutes before giving up.

I am writing this for the record. We made our proper applications for citizenship, and we made several unsuccessful efforts to get to a test site. Some 20 months after the application one of us gets scheduled for an interview in Charlotte, five hours drive from here, within three days of receiving the notification.

We are both approaching seventy years of age, and we made all the proper efforts to acquire U.S. citizenship. If that is denied us due to an inefficient process, we will have to accept that fact, and simply remain
' permanent residents'.

Sincerely,

Kjell Petterson

I never had a response to that letter, but had reason to write another letter less than a month later:

July 19, 1998

U.S. Department of Justice
Immigration and Naturalization Service
210 E. Woodlawn Road, Bldg 6 - RM138
Charlotte, NC 28217

Dear Sirs,

On June 22, 1998, I wrote a letter to you, describing our efforts to apply for citizenship. The last thing that happened then, was that my wife, alone, had been called for an interview, but the letter reached us too late. You never responded to my letter, but it should be in your files.

Now, I am writing to tell you that it happened again. My wife was called to an interview July 17, 1998. Your letter was dated 6/23 and postmarked 7/8. It arrived 7/18, the day after the appointment date. Something is obviously not working.

As I wrote in my previous letter:

"We are both approaching seventy years of age, and we made all the proper efforts to acquire U.S. citizenship. If that is denied us due to an
inefficient process, we will have to accept that fact, and simply remain 'permanent residents'".

Again, I write this for the record, just in case anti-immigrant feelings flare up again. We tried to become citizens, but the system has failed us, so far.

Sincerely,

Kjell Petterson

'THE REST OF THE STORY', just for the record...

On July 28 1998, I received a letter (dated 7/27!) from the INS Texas Service Center, informing me that I was scheduled to be fingerprinted in Charlotte, NC on August 7, 1998 at 8 am. This time, there was actually a phone number to call, and it was clearly explained that only questions regarding the fingerprinting process would be allowed.

I called that number, and was told that the fingerprints I had submitted with the initial application were no longer valid, since they were more than 15 months old. Well, it was not my fault that INS had taken more than 15 months to process the case. The initial fingerprints were taken at the police office here in Swansboro, but I was told that the rules had changed, and local police stations could no longer take the fingerprints.

The session scheduled for 8/7 -98 in Charlotte was only for fingerprinting, no test, no interview. In other words, after my wife and I had mailed both our applications in the same envelope and paid with the same check, we are now expected to make the five-hour trip to Charlotte for fingerprints at different dates, then come to interviews at different dates. Four ten-hour roundtrips for the citizenship after we had made the proper applications two years earlier. Thanks, but no thanks.

It seems that the INS has found a neat way to reduce the caseload: Just throw enough roadblocks into the process, so that most people will give up. Sure enough, they state on the fingerprint letter: "If you do not have your fingerprints taken, your naturalization application may be considered abandoned pursuant to 8 CFR 103.2(b)(13)". I, myself, now consider the application abandoned due to a totally deficient bureaucracy!

Three more letters have arrived:

On September 2, my wife was invited to a fingerprint session in Charlotte during the week of September 8.

In a letter, dated 10/14, received 10/22, my wife was called to an interview in Charlotte on 11/9.

In a letter, dated 10/23, received 11/2, I was invited to a fingerprint session in Charlotte 11/3 - 11/10, or Wilmington (!) 11/16 - 11/20. Wilmington is only an hour and a half from here, but it is too late in the game now.

This last report was written in the end of 1998.

The only thing that has happened in the case is that I received a certified letter from INS, dated October 11, 2001. This was a ‘Notice of denial due to abandonment’. So my application from October 1996 was finally put to rest five years later.

My wife’s application made the same day is apparently still active....or has been lost in the shuffle of papers.

THEY DON’T CARE

During the 1980 presidential primary campaign, we happened to hear Lamar Alexander ® make a speech in which he praised the contribution immigrants are making to our country. “Nice speech, but he should know how poorly the system works”, I thought. I found an e-mail address to his office and sent copies of my documentation. Never heard back from him. Alexander is now one of the Tennessee senators.

Later, in March 2002 when the news broke that INS had extended the visas for two of the 9/11 terrorists, I thought, I’d give two local Congress people my experiences of INS’s efficiency. I sent this documentation to the congressman for our district, Walter B. Jones ® and NC Senator John Edwards (D). Jones office never responded and Edwards’ office sent a ‘boiler plate’ response.

Well, as far as I can find out, there are very few differences between ‘citizens’ and ‘resident aliens’. Contrary to what many believe, the tax rules are exactly the same. However, an alien can’t vote or be called to jury duty. It is also a no-no for an alien to work for the government or to own radio or TV stations. Big deal.

SO, SHOULD WE DISMISS THE WHOLE THING BY SAYING “ANYONE CAN MAKE A MISTAKE”? FIRST OF ALL, THIS WAS NOT ‘A MISTAKE’ BUT A WHOLE SERIES OF MISTAKES OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME.

INS IS NOW A PART OF ‘HOMELAND SECURITY’ -
GIVES YOU A WARM FEELING, DOESN’T IT?

OUR POMPOUS POLITICIANS, WHEN HYPING - AND SCARING PEOPLE - OF THE TERRORIST THREAT, SAY THAT WE SHOULD HAVE GIGANTIC DATA BASES CONTAINING ALL INFORMATION ABOUT PRACTICALLY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD.

BASED ON OUR OWN EXPERIENCE, I WOULD BE INCLINED TO SAY: “WAIT A MINUTE. THESE GUYS ALREADY HAVE MORE THAN THEY CAN HANDLE. AND, BY THE WAY, WE SHOULDN’T BE TOO QUICK CALLING SOME CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES ’BANANA REPUBLICS’!!!”