Infopass Appointment at Santa Ana DO
Well, I went for an Infopass appointment this morning at the Santa Ana DO. I had called the customer service line about two weeks ago and when they really couldn't tell me anything useful, I decided to make the Infopass appointment. It is pretty easy to schedule it online, and you just print the appointment letter and take it with you. The appointment was for 7am, and I got to the federal building around 6:50am. There was already a line forming outside, so I joined it. I spoke with a nice gentleman from the Philipines who was having his N-400 interview this morning, and he had a PD of 7-23-07. He receive the IL on 2-21-08 (he was kind enough to show me his letters, so I am posting his timeline here).
Well, anyway, it turns out I was in the wrong line for Infopass, but it was fine since I got to speak with other applicants. The security guard sent me around the corner to where Infopass people go, and I stepped inside. The first step was security screening, and it is clear to me now where all the money from the application fee increases is going: towards hiring security guards to prevent pissed off applicants from trashing the place. There were a number of armed guards standing around, and they had me walk through a metal detector and put my documents etc. through the x-ray machine. All their equipment seemed brand new and state of the art. Well, the next step is to go and get a ticket number from a woman who sits behind 3 inches of bulletproof glass (are you sensing a theme here?). After showing this woman your appointment letter and ID, she gives you the equivalent of a number, similar to what you get in line at the post office. Why it takes a human being to do this task is beyond me, but I didn't really want to get into it with her at 7am regarding why she is sitting there instead of consucting naturalization interviews. Besides, the glass partition made it hard to hear anything she said.
So, next step is to go to a big waiting room. Didn't have to wait long until they called my number. Went and spoke with an IO and simply asked for an update on my case. Gave her my GC and told her my priority date. She typed a bunch of stuff into her computer, and I waited patiently. Finally, she told me that all of my background checks had cleared and that I was "in the queue", but that nothing has yet been scheduled. I was disappointed, to say the least, that nothing was scheduled, but after speaking with other applicants in line I was not really surprised. They are clearly struggling to get through the July hump, and my sense is that many many people waited until the latter part of July to apply. This means that there are probably an awful lot of folks with PDs between 7-23-07 and 7-31-07.
The IO told me to give it another three months, and that I could check back then if I hadn't received anything. Well, three months makes it July, and a July IL means a late September ID. Given the lag between ID and oath, it will be too late for me to register to vote here - and this is assuming that everything goes well, and there is certainly no guanrantee of that. So, that's where things stand at Santa Ana DO. Stilll interviewing July 2007 applicants, so if you applied after 7-31-07, you can realistically expect to wait a few more months. I had very low expectations going into the Infopass, and my expectations were approximately accurate in terms of what you can expect from this type of appointment. I went for a couple of reasons: (1) wanted to make sure I was through name check, (2) to get some info to report back here, (3) to give the appearance of being as proactive as possible, in case I later on need to exercise the "nuclear option" (lawsuit).
My next step will be to fire off a few letters to some local politicians expressing my outrage over not being able to vote this year, despite having applied for citizenship 15 months prior to the Nov 2008 elections. Again, I don't expect that anything will come of it, but see number 3 above for why I am doing this. That's about all I have to report for now - I may do another Infopass in a few more weeks, or perhaps somebody else can report in on how theirs went. Let me know if you guys have any questions
