My Infopass appointment experience

[Mel_Lee 0]

Hi Everyone,

I had an infopass appointment yesterday at the Miami office and just thought I'd share my experience.

Last month I filed my AOS packet, including AP and EAD. We're planning to travel to Australia in April for my Niece's christening and I have been trying to get my husband's AP expedited so we can purchase our tickets without fear. First I called the 800 number and they said I could write a letter asking for expedition based on a humanitarian request. I did that a few weeks ago and no touches yet. I had some appointments in Downtown Miami yesterday so I decided to try and squeeze an Infopass into the mix to see if there was anything we could do.

First off, to anyone going to the Miami office, there is MAJOR construction there and it's very hard to find the office. I made about four wrong turns down "NO OUTLET" streets before I finally found the right detour that led me to the office. We were about 10 minutes late for our appointment due to this. If any of you have plans to visit that office, give yourself a lot of extra time to get through the traffic and construction.

When we finally arrived we found out we had to pay for parking. It was $5.00. We parked and headed towards the building and the guard outside asked for our notice. We gave it to him and he asked for our cellphones. Both my husband and I had camera-phones so we needed to drop them off in the car. Then we got in, went through the magnometer, and a guard directed us to a line to see the receptionist. We told her what we were there for and the said that she doubts anything could be done to expedite the process. We said we'll take our chances and she gave us a number and told us to sit down and wait to be called.

The room was a large room with cubicle type desk surrounding it. Each desk had a LCD display on it stating if the desk was "CLOSED" or which appointment number it was servicing. We had # 588 and they had just called #586 so we were pretty happy we wouldn't have to wait for hours to be seen. It was about a 5 minute wait from the time we got our number to the time we were called. Both of us were pleasantly surprised!

We sat down and saw a nice lady and we explained our situation. She asked for our NOA's and I realized that I had grabbed the wrong set of papers as I was leaving the house and I didn't have them. She gave us a bit of a hard time but looked up his case anyway. She found his AP and told us that she couldn't issue an AP until 30 days had passed from our original filing, but if we hadn't received it in 30 days (which is in about 10 days) that we could schedule another infopass, fill out another I-131, and pay another $170 and we'd have it within 5 days.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good response. It was better than being told to wait for 60+ days to get it. We were pleased, and it was great to tell the family that our chances of being there in April just got a lot better.

I know all of this information could change when/if we go back, but for now it's given us some hope.

Thanks for letting me share and hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's day with their sweetie!

Melissa

[john_and_marlene 162]

Good Luck, I hope you get it.