Passport Stamped in LA INS : took 5 hours

My wife and I have got our passports stamped yesterday (Thursday May 16,2002) at the LA INS office.

-We parked the car at the Temple Street Parking lot. $6.60 for whole day.

-We went straight to rm 2050 (thanks to other posts) thru the main entrance and got there by 9:30am. Just show the driver\'s license and they will let you in. After we gave the original copies of the approval to the security guard at the door of rm 2050, we waited for almost 5 hours before our names are called. Then the stamping, finger printing took about 15 minutes.

-our original copies of the approval notice were taken by the officer, they gave us back the copies.

-the officer asked us for the ADIT style photographs. We had got them done earlier. The officer was happy to see that these were per specifications. (perhaps because earlier two families did not have photographs or these were not per specifications)

-the delay was mainly due to a large number of applicants who had turned up that day. The officer mentioned that the previous day (Wednesday), there were half the number of applicants.

-it looks like there were only 2 officers working on pp stamping in that room. There must have been at least 50 people waiting. Some of them that came in late (at around 10 to 11am).

-be sure to ask the security guard which window is doing the pp stamp because there may be other officers doing something else (AP or I-130). The room is big and it is hard to hear what names are called if you are not sitting close to the officer who is calling the names for pp stamping.

-pictures can be taken on the third floor if you need to do it in the last minute.

In hind sight it may be better to go to Santa Ana INS, because most of the posts have stated that the applicants took a total of only 30 minutes to get their passports stamped.
 
pp stamping

I just got approved and it stated on the notice that I have to go to Los Angeles, can I go to Santa Ana for pp stamping?
 
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