I-551 denied at border, but biometrics notice sent anyways???

[niner49 0]

A little background: My wife (a Spanish national) and I (U.S. citizen) were married in Spain May 2008.

When we initially decided to move back to the U.S., we completed the CR-1 process and my wife received a i-551 stamp in her passport from the US Embassy in Madrid on April 11, 2010. We arrived at the U.S. border on August 23, 2010, supposedly within the allotted 6 month window. Since we initially applied for the visa, we received work offers and will now live in Abu Dhabi until approximately June 2012. That said, we were hoping to apply for a 2 year i-131 extension once her i-551 was validated, as we return to the U.S. at least once every 12 months.

However, the Madrid Embassy mistakenly put the date of May 11, 2010 for the “IV Expires On” field. In retrospect, perhaps we should have tried to have this text amended, however we assumed it was a mere typo and the system would recognize we had arrived on time…. (turns out we were right…. see below). Anyways, upon seeing this (incorrect) expiration date, the border agent confiscated our package and simply granted my wife a tourist visa….. and caused us a delay that made us miss our connection…. he didn’t care (and explicitly told us so).

Afterwards, we called the Madrid embassy and they acknowledged their mistake, however they said they needed the package that was confiscated by the border agent!

So we assumed that our application was dead in the water and we would have to start the whole process over. HOWEVER, a few weeks ago, my father in the USA received an ASC appointment notice (i-797C) for biometrics.... How is this possible if the border agent rejected her i-551, confiscated her “do not open” package and granted her simply a tourist visa? We are no longer in the US and will not return until July 2011. Can we keep delaying it until July?

Well that about covers it. Does anyone have any insight about our case? I am almost resigned to the fact that we will have to restart applying to the embassy in Abu Dhabi, but I am hoping there is some way we can salvage our current case (and save on the additional application fees)….. thanks!