Yesterday, after I agreed with my AUSA that he will send me for review the draft of the Joint stipulation for the motion to dismiss, before he files with the court, he sent me the draft, at 5:01 pm, claiming that was a pdf attachement. Turned out that it was some Wordperfect file, it took me about 5 minutes till I could open.
To my unpleasant surprise, it contained the following:
STIPULATION FOR AN ORDER OF DISMISSAL
The parties stipulate and agree that the above captioned matter should be dismissed, with prejudice, because Plaintiff’s Form N-400 Application for Naturalization was adjudicated and approved on January 9, 2007. A copy of the Form N-400 is attached and incorporated by this reference.
I tried to call him immediately, but the receptionist was already gone (it was about 5:06 pm) and I could not get through. I sent him an e-mail, requesting to add one more sentence:
"Defendant USCIS agrees to schedule Plaintiff's Oath Ceremony as soon as possible but not later than 15 days after this order".
I also explained in the e-mail why I think that this should be included:
-past bad experience with USCIS, see the story with the oath scheduling of my wife, 5 months after the approval and holding my application for two years, with no good reason, as ultimately my cleared name check proved;
-my pending job application with a national nuclear physics laboratory, where I will need security clearence (US citizenship is a prerequisite)
He didn't answer my e-mail, but yesterday in the evening I saw on PACER that he filed the stipulation and the proposal for the order without any change, adding that Plaintiff gave him his electronic signature authorization on Jan. 24; when in fact, I explicitely requested that I want to review and comment the proposed stipulation before he files it, and he agreed. (I had the e-mails saved as proof).
I was so upset and felt betrayed. I wrote him a rather strongly worded e-mail, in which I requested to arrange till today 4:00 pm an oath date, otherways I will file by the end of today a Memorandum with the court explaining how AUSA misused my electronic signature, without waiting for my approval of the wording of the Stipulation and also I would request that the Court should administer the oath ceremony, instead USCIS.
Today morning I tried to call him, and he is out of office. Spoke to his assistant, and explained the situation. She realised that his boss can get in serious trouble because of the misuse of my electronic signature and she called him immediately on his cell phone. After some phone tag, we managed to speak. He promised that he is going to solve this issue, and he was evidently relieved when I told him that fortunately, I found out that there are two days next week when there are oath ceremonies at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, MI. AUSA was traveling in Chicago, he called his assistant and gave her instructions.
About half an hour ago I got a call from USCIS, telling me to be on Tuesday next week at the Ford Museum for my oath ceremony. After about 15 minutes, AUSA's legal assistant also called me to make sure that I received the message and I am satisfied and not going to file anything with the court.
Because I got what I wanted, I'm obviously not going to work all day today to draft a memorandum and run with it to the district court.
Morale:
1. You have to stand up for yourself, because nobody else will do.
2. When they feel the heat, they can act really quickly.
Since I filed in Nov. 20th and no updates.