Originally posted by Soumy
No I'm not talking about the Naseeruddin Shah movie( a good one by the way if people like Parallel cinema).
I had a suprise encounter with a BCIS adjugator at a Social gathering - Ofcourse I jumped in to ask what was really happening .. here is the gist
This is a lady(Japanese American) . She had an alltogethr diff story to tell.
" BCIS(ins) had done a great job upto Dec2001 when they were adjugating June 2001 cases in Dec2001(6 months) , they had 15 officers on the job for 485 alone, each were doing 15-20 cases a day. It all went wrong with the news breakout of the issuance of visa 's to dead people( u know who). She says John Ashcroft sent a letter to all adjugators to go back and look at all cases approved from 1999 to that point and also announced a Zero tolerance policy. So 12 of the 15 officers were going through each case by case of approved 485's ( family, employment everything)1999-2001to make sure there were no more goofups set to resurface.... that took 1 year. So the backlog started and then TPS was given to them as a priority. She says they are Elbow deep in paper.Each officer has to go through 35-40 pages for each applicant
including BC,MC,I140,Emp letter etc etc and because of zero tolerance have to be very meticulous. This is killing them.On top of it since most cases have crossed 12 months atleast in CA they have to issue a RFE (thats a local CA rule she says.. not applicable to other centers).
Just as this was being done, came the Sunrise program and another diversion. Inbetween because of FP expiration problems they tried to adjugate cases whose FP were within expiry range but that didnt work as people have taken FP at diff times and didnt co-relate to their ND. ( At this point ..for once I felt some sympathy).
She says they try their best ,but in most cases their hands are tied from the top.Every week there is a meeting and a new thing added to the process. If everything goes well starting Oct 1st they will have the 15 officers back on the job and we will see the difference.
I couldn't resist asking her .. what about my case? Dec2001. Come October you will see tremendous progress she says.Can't take up a partiucluar case.. but things are going to improve unless there is a fresh directive.
I had mixed feelings .. Anger sure .. some sympathy sure she seemed genuine and very knowledgeable.