Ireland Official Language

[Neetz 7]

Just wanted to share my experience with any fellow future visa filers from Ireland. We filed 129f in Jan this year and just received a RFE. Now we were so careful putting the pack together and triple checked everything on several days before we filed. As far as we were concerned we had all our t's crossed and our i's dotted not a single full stop was missing! So we were more than shocked when we got a RFE on Monday 7th May...........

Guess what for??? USCIS bless them, looked at our file and decided that our English legal papers were a translation and not the original / official spoken language of Ireland and that they needed them in, get this, the correct original format, which they seem to believe is Irish/gaelige. Now just to be clear here, i am talking about court documents as in Irish Divorce Papers, which are only written in English as is any court documents, unless otherwise requested by 1% of Irish speaking Irish people.

I am flattered that USCIS thought Gaelige is more widely spoken and to be fair since 2003 is it considered the 1st language of Ireland but not the Official spoken language, however it was an RFE that was not required as they had the correct papers to begin with. (But we will forgive them.) I had to go to the court and have them state in writing that the papers were NOT A TRANSLATION AND ALL COURT DOCUMENTS ARE WRITTEN IN ENGLISH, have it signed by the registrar and embossed with the court seal (which can be examined at the embassy). Scan the said letter to my sweetie and he mailed it back to VSC today as per instruction from a Tier 2 CSR.

So for anyone filing court documents with USCIS in the future, just be aware that not all agents/.officers are up to date on what is the official spoken language in our Emerald Isle and it may be prudent to advise in advance that documents are not a translation, hence avoiding RFE's.

Hope this will be of some help to future Irish (or any) VJ filers.

[Ryan H 3,821]

Moved from IR-1/CR-1 Process & Procedures to General Immigration-Related Discussion.

[ceadsearc 516]

Wow, who would have thought? Glad you got it straightened out.

[sabi 148]

Hopefully they will feel bad about their mistake and approve you straight after receiving your reply fingers crossed

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Wow, that is embarrassing for them. They should have a list of documents and examples and/or descriptions. I wonder what that Officer was working from?

ETA: Curiously, the list of country documents for Ireland has a very detailed description of a Birth certificate and a very general (useless) description for a divorce certificate. http://travel.state.gov/visa/fees/fees_5455.html?cid=9219#docs

Edited May 10, 2012 by Harpa Timsah

[grrrrreat 109]

Just wanted to share my experience with any fellow future visa filers from Ireland. We filed 129f in Jan this year and just received a RFE. Now we were so careful putting the pack together and triple checked everything on several days before we filed. As far as we were concerned we had all our t's crossed and our i's dotted not a single full stop was missing! So we were more than shocked when we got a RFE on Monday 7th May...........

Guess what for??? USCIS bless them, looked at our file and decided that our English legal papers were a translation and not the original / official spoken language of Ireland and that they needed them in, get this, the correct original format, which they seem to believe is Irish/gaelige. Now just to be clear here, i am talking about court documents as in Irish Divorce Papers, which are only written in English as is any court documents, unless otherwise requested by 1% of Irish speaking Irish people.

I am flattered that USCIS thought Gaelige is more widely spoken and to be fair since 2003 is it considered the 1st language of Ireland but not the Official spoken language, however it was an RFE that was not required as they had the correct papers to begin with. (But we will forgive them.) I had to go to the court and have them state in writing that the papers were NOT A TRANSLATION AND ALL COURT DOCUMENTS ARE WRITTEN IN ENGLISH, have it signed by the registrar and embossed with the court seal (which can be examined at the embassy). Scan the said letter to my sweetie and he mailed it back to VSC today as per instruction from a Tier 2 CSR.

So for anyone filing court documents with USCIS in the future, just be aware that not all agents/.officers are up to date on what is the official spoken language in our Emerald Isle and it may be prudent to advise in advance that documents are not a translation, hence avoiding RFE's.

Hope this will be of some help to future Irish (or any) VJ filers.

This is really absurd. I hope this leads to a quick approval after they get the RFE response, as it has for other folks. Hopefully it was just a dumb mistake on the part of a particular adjudicator and not a widespread USCIS issue.