On October 11th of 2007, I sent the Petition for Alien Relative (I-130) application to the closest US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office that services the east coast in Vermont. The application sat unopened for three months and then went to Chicago in January, where my $355 check I mailed with the Petition was cashed and my basic information was put into a computer. In February my Petition went back to Vermont and sat in a box with thousands of other applications. It sat for months and months and months. On August 23 I received this notice on the USCIS website: "On August 22, 2008, we transferred this case I130 IMMIGRANT PETITION FOR RELATIVE, FIANCE(E), OR ORPHAN to our CALIFORNIA SERVICE CENTER location for processing and sent you a notice explaining this action."

My application has seen more of this country than I have in the past year. I am happy since I know that the California office works much faster than the Vermont office. I am annoyed however, that my application went to the Vermont office of USCIS twice, where absolutely nothing happened to it. I am glad that they finally mailed it to an office that knows what the hell they are doing, but I found out that in early August, people that sent their petitions in November and December of 2007 to the Vermont office had already been transferred to the California office, so I am further behind than they are, even though I submitted earlier. I also found out through the website visajourney.com, that the California office had already processed people's applications that were submitted in March, April and May of this year. There is a line on the USCIS's website that goes: To be fair to all our customers, we process cases that are the same type based on the order of when they were filed. I certainly have found that not to be the case, but the sentiment is nice.

Living on the wrong coast and submitting my paperwork in October were two fatal errors on my part. I guess now that they have sent all of last year's applications to California, the Vermont office will have more room at their desks for rolling papers and tubs of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. So my advice to anyone that marries someone from another country would be to move west of the Mississippi River. The USCIS office in Vermont just can't be bothered to process you.

It's been a long time since I've made a posting on here. That's mostly because I spent a nice long vacation in Japan visiting my wife. After the trip I spent a nice long time recovering from jet lag. I was hoping while I was gone, that progress would have been made on my wife's visa application. We submitted her I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) on October 12 of last year. The application went to the US Citizenship and Immigration Service Center in Vermont where it sat for months, then went to Chicago for check cashing and initial data entry, and then went back to Vermont and has been untouched since February 24th. During the summer, I have contacted both of my senators, my representative, the current director of USCIS and even the head of USCIS's parent agency, Department of Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff. I've gotten the same response from everyone, that the massive delays resulting from the huge surge in applications have kept my paperwork from being processed. But by going to the website www.visajourney.com, where lots of people like me come together and share our frustrations in bringing our loved ones here, I have learned that a lot of people who have submitted their paperwork this year have already been processed and approved. So it would seem that USCIS is not going in order of when they recieved their paperwork, but rather just randomly approving cases so they can make their average processing time appear shorter than what it really is. I've also found out that many people who submitted their paperwork last year to the Vermont Service Center are having their cases forwarded to the California Service Center for processing. My case is still waiting in Vermont, but I am prepared to hear any day now that my application has been sent to California, which would mean that my application will have been to more places in the US than I have.

 

A lot of people have asked why haven't I moved to Japan already and just work there. The biggest reason so far is that I would pretty much have to give up my career in television. While there is a huge amount of media in Tokyo, there are very few foreign bureau's to work at, and even if I was fluent in Japanese, a Japanese media company wouldn't hire since I am not Japanese. And if I was actually Japanese, many jobs have age limits, so I would still be ineligible to work since I am 34 years old, an age considered to be too old. I could of course work in another field with a western company, or teach English to Japanese students. Those are options we are still exploring. Until then we will just hope that we will hear good news soon.

If you've been following my blog you know my story; in August of last year, my Japanese wife and I were married in Japan, I filed the paperwork to bring my wife into the country in October, and ever since then the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service has done nothing to advance our case. Unfortunately for us, we filed at a time when USCIS doubled their fees, which resulted in a 350 percent increase in applications from people rushing to beat the new higher costs. So now we are stuck in one of the biggest backlogs in immigration history. 

 

As we approach our one year anniversary, and our second year of being apart as a married couple, I am angry, depressed and frustrated at my government. I am angry at a broken immigration system that keeps families apart and treats all immigrants as terrorists. I'm angry that I have to pay fees that are far higher than any immigrant that has come before my wife in order to fix the most dysfunctional agency in the federal government. I am depressed that I am unable to start a life with wife and start a new family in this country. And I'm frustrated whenever I have to explain to someone how horrid our immigration system is when I am asked "why can't your wife just move here already?"

As the editor for Project Immigration I get frustrated when I see all the anti-illegal immigrant people who don't understand why there are so many people here illegally. But I also get frustrated by seeing so many illegals out there, and wonder if so many people can get away with breaking the law, why is it so hard for my wife and I to live together by doing everything the legal way. But mostly I am frustrated with the government. My wife is from Japan, an ally of the United States, and a country where people don't generally live in poverty, or blow things up, or live in danger, or go hungry, or have any other reason to want to move to America. She lived here for two years, and in that time did not prove to be a threat to national security (although she did get a few speeding tickets.)

I sometimes wonder why my wife even wants to move to America when I can become a legal resident in just four days (that's no typo, I did say four days!) She will actually make less money over here because the dollar is so weak. And she'll be leaving one of the most wealthiest, educated and safest countries in the world to come to the United States. But when she lived in America before, she found this to be a beautiful country, full of good, friendly, thoughtful people. America is a great country and even though our government is bringing us down, we really do want to make our home here. Thankfully there are some people in the government who are willing to help. My senator Jim Webb has promised to help us with our case. Hopefully that will bring results.

In the meantime I am hiring an attorney. And next week I am going to Japan to visit my wife for a week. I will be bringing my resume with me. Because when you are dealing with the government, it's good to have a backup plan.