USCIS

Matt and I went to the USCIS office to submit our 1-600A yesterday. Translation: we went to the immigration office to apply for approval to bring our child from overseas and eventually obtain citizenship. After hearing many horror stories about the immigration office, I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised. We walked in with an appointment for noon. They actually saw us exactly at noon! Then we were instructed to go to the fingerprinting room and told "if there are too many people and you don't have time to wait, you can set a time to come back." We really didn't want to have to come back, so we went to check out the wait. Once again we were pleasantly surprised when there was not a single person in line. The staff person was literally sitting at his desk with his legs propped up, watching TV. The only frustration was when I tried to turn in the home study (which is part of the application) I was informed that the home study agency has to mail that themselves directly. Silly me. The application reads "Contact your Home Study agency to clarify if they will send your final home study. If they do not provide this service, it is your responsibility." I interpreted that to mean that I could actually take the responsibility of providing it! I was about to (politely, of course) point this out, but if social work has taught me anything it is that arguing/reasoning with a government agency is useless. So instead I asked for an estimation on how long the approval process will take. She said that are current on all I-600A's and they should get it done as soon as they receive the home study. That was even better news, so all-in-all we were pleased to walk out of the courthouse 20 minutes after noon.