We knew it was too good to be true. Our application was approved by the Dept of Labor and the lawyer filed with the appropriate Case Office in Vermont. Now we had a visa application number (yes it has taken 5.5 years to get a number) we could check progress on the USCIS (US Customs and Immigration) website. Excitedly we typed in the number and immediately had a timeframe for a decision: 90-400 days. BFD!
Still, we signed up for automatic email updates and hoped it would be low end rather than the high end of the estimate. A few days later we got an email to say our documents had been sent to Texas as, in the interests of streamlining and efficiency, they would be handling all I140 (green card)applications for the East Coast. Once again they urged us to check the case status online. Great news. Texas was handling cases from January 2006. That didn't seem too bad.
Then we got another email to say our documents had been received in Texas, and once again to check the status of our case. Bad news. Estimated time for the Texas Case Office to make a decision: 400-450 days. WTF?
No wonder people come here and wander out of the system. Bureaucracy sucks. I can only wonder what will happen to the immigrants here, legal or otherwise after Congress passes the proposed Immigration Bill.
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