USCIS: where we're at...

So, you may recall that I thought, naively, that our greencard interview - originally scheduled for June 2008 - would be right around the corner.

In fact, USCIS told us as much this past September. "Oh, you're about to be-rescheduled. It says right here in the system. Your interview will happen in less than 6 months."

Cut to 6 months later. No new date. So, we go through the pain in the ass of re-scheduling and making it to an "appointment" with USCIS to find out what is going on. It seems - oh boy, this is a good one - that a mere 4 weeks after our last visit, in September, my biometrics - taken back in early August 2007 - "expired." Apparently, my fingerprints and picture are only considered "current" for 15 months. So, the person who saw us in September didn't think it would be important to tell us that we were a mere 4 weeks away from having our petition be completely "frozen."

But surely, you think, they told us it was frozen? SURELY the much-touted "check your case status online" function would tell us that our case was something other than "pending"?

To you, I say: "The very pants I was returning!" And then I shall chuckle heartily.

So, now I get re-fingerprinted on April 7, and a few weeks after that, we schedule another "appointment" and beg someone to please please please move our case to the top of the list instead of having us start over from the beginning - a prospect that means, if you do the math...August 2007 to June 2008 (original biometrics-to-interview timeframe) - well, it us in the interview hotseat sometime in February 2010.

Yup. Twenty motherfucking ten!!! The Abstract Citizen will remain a very concrete nonpermanent resident alien for a while longer, it seems.