St Paul oath ceremony delayed

[shoonye 0]

Our N400 case is filed with the St Paul USCIS office. My wife and I appeared for interview on 11/4 and were approved. On 11/12 our case status appeared online as "On November 12, 2013, we scheduled you for your oath ceremony and sent a notice providing the date, time, and location."

However it is now over a month past our interview date and over 3 weeks since the update that our notice had been sent with date / time / location. However we both haven't received any notice. Is this cause for concern. I called the USCIS customer service and they said they had no information and we should keep waiting. Would love to hear from folks whose application is being processed through the St Paul office what they wait time has been.

[Hypnos 6,576]

You should make an Infopass appointment at your local office and enquire there.

[NickD 203]

Did St. Paul change their officer manager again? The old one of about three years ago insisted on having at least 3,000 candidates for the oath ceremony and was always having problems where to hold the ceremony. At times was held at the Vikings stadium and the wait for that certificate could be over a year.

At that time our Senator Russ Fiengold stepped in, headed the finance committee for the USCIS and had special oath ceremonies held just for Wisconsin residents every month at the St. Paul office. Actually located in Bloomington. We met people as far away from Fond du Lac that is only 80 miles north of the Milwaukee office.

The new office manager actually had same date oaths, but only if you were lucky to get a morning appointment. My stepdaughters appointment was right after lunch, so we had to make a trip back about 2 1/2 weeks later on a very ice coated snowy day. To get that piece of paper. Hers was in the basement, very impersonal, brief talk on what to do after you got your certificate, watch a boring video on an old 27" TV set, stand up and lip sync the oath, get your certificate and walk out the door the instant you got it.

Wife's was held in the same waiting room for her interview, but for that one, had to be there before 8:00 AM, was also fast as they had to clear that space out for their normal visit. But we talked to other people in line, all from Wisconsin. Have no idea what the people from Minnesota have to do. But for the longest time, St. Paul had the reputation of being the slowest of the 80 some field offices in the US as being the slowest for oath ceremonies.

[otta 7]

This is cause for concern, as your letter may have been lost in the mail / misdelivered. The same thing happened to me about a month ago, in NYC. I called USCIS and flat-out told the first operator that I know she can't provide any information beyond what I can see online (that a notice has been sent) and requested to speak with a tier-2 officer. If you only got to speak with the first operator when you called, call back and demand they put you through to a tier 2 agent. When the first operator pushed back, I said that I need to request time off from work and can't wait for the letter any longer (aaaand it never even arrived in the end). Tier 1 will always stupidly tell you to just "keep waiting," but you don't have to wait, since this notification (unlike previous ones) does *not* specify that you should wait for 90 days before contacting USCIS.

Tier 2 officer told me the date, and asked me to call back 5 days prior to ceremony, when he'd fax me a copy of the letter. If you have a judicial ceremony, you shouldn't need a copy (since everyone can enter a courthouse), but my ceremony was in a federal building, where I needed a letter just to enter. In the meantime, I got an InfoPass appt and got a printout confirming my oath date / time that way instead.

I urge you to call back USCIS and demand to speak with tier 2 (if you didn't the last time), because ceremonies are usually scheduled approx. a month ahead, so yours might be in a few days. There is always a chance that they have not scheduled you yet, and the online status is an error, but as my and many other cases show, these letters often simply get lost in the mail.

Good luck!

Our N400 case is filed with the St Paul USCIS office. My wife and I appeared for interview on 11/4 and were approved. On 11/12 our case status appeared online as "On November 12, 2013, we scheduled you for your oath ceremony and sent a notice providing the date, time, and location."

However it is now over a month past our interview date and over 3 weeks since the update that our notice had been sent with date / time / location. However we both haven't received any notice. Is this cause for concern. I called the USCIS customer service and they said they had no information and we should keep waiting. Would love to hear from folks whose application is being processed through the St Paul office what they wait time has been.

[rajaji 0]

I applied for N400 in may, local office saint Paul. Went for the interview, officer requested RFE , sent that in, and waited. On November 6 I was approved and place in for oath. Haven't been scheduled yet. I checked online there is two ceremonies on Dec 11th , hopefully make one of them? I don't know why saint Paul office is taking so long to schedule people for oath ceremony.

[shoonye 0]

Thanks for the responses. Here is the latest update which I also just posted on my August filers thread:

My wife and I have an odd situation on our hands. We were both interviewed on 11/4 and were approved on that. We were told that our oath ceremony would almost certainly take place within the next 30 days. On 11/12 our status changed to "oath ceremony scheduled and a notice has been sent to you with date and location". Well we never received the notice. When I called last week, the customer rep said we should wait for another couple of weeks. I called again this week and asked to speak to a level 2 officer because we have travels coming up and I need to figure out some scheduling at our end. What he told us was our oath ceremony had in fact been scheduled for 12/11 but was then withdrawn and thus the letter had not been sent and our case was now in an undefined status. He said this was due to some review that had come up on our case on which further information was not available to him. He asked that we immediately schedule an infopass appointment with our district office which I had earlier tried to do but the only dates available are towards end of Dec when we will be out of town and also will be after the 12/11 date. He advised we take the infopass appointment for whatever date is available and show up tomorrow morning at the USCIS office and try our luck getting in. So far everything has been fairly mundane on our applications until this recent excitement.

[rajaji 0]

Does anyone know the oath date for saint Paul office? I was approved and place in line for oath on November 6, still not scheduled. Thought they were supposed to schedule you within 45 days. Anyone has any updates?

[Tanus2013 0]

Does anyone know the oath date for saint Paul office? I was approved and place in line for oath on November 6, still not scheduled. Thought they were supposed to schedule you within 45 days. Anyone has any updates?

Here is the link to naturalization schedule for St Paul:

http://www.mnd.uscourts.gov/Naturalization.shtml

[MRK13 4]

Sorry to hear about your delays. You requested to change your name, so you are supposed to attend a judicial oath ceremony?

I got mine done yesterday in St Paul. I was interviewed in the morning, and the oath ceremony in the same building took place at 2pm. We were around 30 people of so, from 11 different countries.

St. Paul as you can see does same day oath, but depends on if you need to change your name or no.

Good luck!

[rajaji 0]

Actually, I just got a letter today for oath invitation, for January 21, they never updated the status online so I didn't know what was goin on. But ya, finally looks like the journey will be over. Relieverd . Thanks for all your inputs.

[shoonye 0]

I was traveling out of the country so couldn't provide an update sooner. We went through an unusual and highly improbable series of events. To continue on from my last update

a) I went to the USCIS office on 6 Dec even though my infopass was for a much later date. They allowed me entry and the office was completely empty. I wondered why the system didn't allow me to book an infopass for that date itself versus much in the future.

b) in any case i inquired about my status with the officer and she told me to wait. After 20 minutes without any commentary, the lady came around and handed the oath ceremony notices for me and my wife scheduled for 12/11 (just 3 business days away). I asked her what had held them up. She said, nothing was held up with our cases and that I should have got the notices in the mail last month. I remarked that it was highly unusual both of our letters could have gone missing in the mail and only in this one instance. At the back of my mind I still had nagging doubts around what the level 2 officer had told me - that our ceremony scheduling had been withdrawn and our cases put in an undefined status.

c) On 11th Dec we showed up for the oath ceremony and as they checked us in, what do you know - they couldn't find our naturalization certificates. Of the 72 persons in the room that day my wife and I were the two individuals who were not on their attendee list and whose certificates were absent. The USCIS officer made some calls and told us to go through the ceremony any way while she figured out what was going on. We were both naturally upset and went through the ceremony half heartedly not knowing if we would indeed be naturalized that day or not. We also had an international trip coming up in two days and it was important this was settled one way or the other.

d) After the ceremony, the office came over and asked us to rush to the district office before it closed for the day telling us our certificates would be waiting at the reception. Thats what we did, but the lady at the reception desk was clueless. So we waited for another 30 uncertain minutes and then she eventually did come out with our certificates. It was a very surreal, almost Kafkaesque experience.

Next day we went to the passport agency to get same day service. In the night I dreamt our certificates would be rejected as counterfeit or something otherwise untoward would occur. As it happened, we did get our passports that afternoon. Even though I held them in my hands I continued to have that nagging feeling something was amiss. That night I dreamt we would be apprehended at the airport next day for something or the other. The next day we checked in for our flights. As we were about to board the plane, our names were announced over the PA system to report to the counter because something was wrong with our passports. I thought....ok this is it. Well somehow they had mixed up our passports as they had swiped them at check in and we did eventually board. I travel approx 6-7 times internationally each year and in over 15 years of travel, never once had such a situation so my mind was still not at ease.

Last night though, we did return back into the country on those passports. Now finally, I know all is 'likely' well with these little bundles of paper around which so much of our lives revolve. And, the oath ceremony notice never did come in the mail.

[Hypnos 6,576]

USCIS' incompetence knows no end.

Glad you finally got it sorted out.