Passport Restamp Experience in SFO

[Ravi0598]

Hi folks,

Last week, I went to SFO INS for restamping my son's passport. I thought I will post it here FWIW.

My son and I reached INS at 8:00 AM in the morning and got in line on the side entrance. By 9:00 AM we made to ticket counter. I tried to explain to him that I need to restamp passport because it expires soon. The guy was not friendly (you knew this part about INS already, didn't you?) and gave us ticket # 367 for, get this, Green Card Replacement and also gave us I-90 form to fill in if asked by IIO. I asked him if I needed to talk to IIO for restamp or I could go to Rm 200B where I did first stamp. His answer "You want to go there!" I said "Thank you" to him as he was not at all interested in listening.

Ok, we turned around and checked which number was being served- the display showed 307 and we were 367. We were in for the whole day there. We sat in the waiting area. Numbers were ticking very slowly @ 6-7 per hour. Then around 10:00 am they announced that their computers had problem and they weren't getting the bandwidth to move faster. It appeared that we wouldn't make it. After the lunch hour, around 12:45 PM, the numbers started moving fast- by 2:00 PM, our number was called. Bottom line here is, INS folks just don't want to process faster. They can if they want to- as they did after lunch hour. Anyways, IIO was no different than the ticket guy- asked us to fill I-90, get two new photos and gave us a pass to go out for photos and come back in. He totally sounded like he was doing us a huge favor by doing all this. He asked us to get all the papers at counter 12. We went out to get the photos. Came back and turned the papers and passport at counter 12. That guy took all paperwork, put photos in transparent envelop and stapled to application. Also took my son's passport and asked us to wait till our name is called. We had to wait for 1 more hour to get the passport back. We came out at 3:30 PM.

Now I just hope that my son's card comes thru this time.

Good luck to you all.
Ravi