Comments on: Renewing my Visa to Remain in Japan

by: Roppongi Richard

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:16:34 +0000

Congratulations! Next year submit the application for Permanent Residency and be done with it for life.

by: Ravi Dronamraju

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:29:57 +0000

I am not a big fan of INS (USCIS as they are called now). However, there are somethings you have to keep in mind.
- More people want to come to USA than anywhere else
- As a country USA has a very friendly immigration policy compared to a lot of the countries across the world.
- More people actually come to US to live(temporarily and/or permanently) every year compared to any other country (exclude tourists).

Overall, I agree that USCIS should treat aliens (this includes me) better. But, it’s unfair to compare USCIS with Japan. I doubt Japan has such a liberal immigration policy or population desiring to go there. I would even doubt, if the people in that country are as welcoming to immigrants as people in the US are.

by: Sam

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:55:17 +0000

I spent a number of long, long waits on the INS lines in NYC while applying for Chinami’s green card. For one of them we simply slept in the car and arrived on (the already quite long) line at 4 am. Outside, in January. For the thousands of people, there was one translator of Spanish, and no Chinese translators.

At one of our call backs for an “appointment” (not really appointment, they just told us to show up on a particular day), the notice came on a Wednesday afternoon, for a Friday morning “appointment”. That in itself might have been okay, except that it was the Wednesday immediately prior to Thanksgiving.

Eventually she got her 3-year conditional green card. Trying to remove the conditions after the 3 years expired took several years of requesting appointments and being told to wait (of course, if she wanted to visit Japan during that time she’d have to go to INS to get a special stamp). This is probably one thing that 9/11 sped up — within a couple of months of 9/11 we received a request to come in for an interview. At that point our oldest son Kai was one and a half, so the interview went rather quickly.

Anyone who wants to navigate the American immigration process smoothly should do so in a less-used state, like New Hampshire or Iowa. The officials there will be far more attentive, and the lines shorter. Of course, those aren’t good places for illegal immigrants, as the extra attention will mean any small error will be noticed and investigated.

by: Ask Bjørn Hansen

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 07:45:15 +0000

Hah - I had a couple of hour long waits to get my fingerprints taken when we were going through the green-card process here. First for my employment authorization (picture and two finger prints) and a few months later for some other form (picture and ten finger prints or some such). Huh? And we couldn’t have done that the first time because … ?

Another fun one was when I came to the INS office and had the guards tell me to go to counter 7 for the emergency travel window and then have the supervisor come behind the window and yell at me and threaten me with having the guards come throw me out because “there is no such thing as the emergency travel window”. Huh?

That being said, we also had a few positive encounters. One was the two people who showed up at our house early in the morning to see if we really were married (there had been some mixup with an appointment that they called us to and then told us not to come to). They were perfectly polite and professional. Also the guy who processed our case in the end was helpful and, well, treated us quite humanely (it’s a longer story, but he was quite our hero one Friday afternoon…).

So, I still curse about the idiocy of the process, but some of the people working there really are “good people”…

- ask