Lost Medical Records (SCAM?)

[Messybrownhair 251]

Goodluck to you!

[David & Kezia 25]

Sorry for the late update on this. These past months have been super busy with going back and forth hospitals and rehabs for David's mother who had cancer, and when she passed away last August, we were also swamped with estate sales, cleaning up her rented house, moving things to storage, and a lot of other paperwork dealing with someone's passing (not counting all the grief and other drama with in-laws). USCIS really chose a bad time to give us problems, as we didn't have much time to deal with them this year.

Anyway, after almost everything has settled down, on the first week of October, we still haven't had any real progress with our case. The congressman's office has been a little helpful, but my case got transfered 2x because the original case officer went into vacation. The temporary replacement was actually good and very helpful (and was also married to a Filipina), and he got to a point where he received some response from the Phil Embassy (which is so difficult to do with phones and emails, unless you can find a direct line to a specific officer there and even the congressman's office couldn't figure out how to do it). However, the Phil Embassy still needed a request from the USCIS so that they can forward that request to St. Lukes. It seems that this process has to go through 4-5 offices, and there is no skipping or jumping through that red tape. It got worse when the original case officer came back and he got my case, as it appeared that he didn't do anything more to follow-up on the case, unlike the temp who got more things done in a week than what the original case officer did in 3 months. I wished that my case was just retained by the temp and not given back to the original guy.

We were running out of time, as we needed to have everything settled before the end of October or the whole process will expire. So, we scheduled another infopass appointment with our local office and we were lucky enough to talk to another case officer. We told them what happened and what we were told, and he and the other guy who overheard everything looked puzzled, and they sure looked like they know that what happened was anomalous, so after some discussion, they checked the records (which was supposed to be locked for that week because they were undergoing an audit), and told us that my medical records are actually there. Then they apologized and made excuses for our original USCIS case officer, saying that she received my medical records after we left after our interview, but they sure looked like they were just covering up for her and they were also disappointed (shaking their heads a little) with what happened. If you ask me (and my husband), we believe that our records have been there all the time, and even if they received it later, they should have just went ahead and approved our case since it was the only thing missing, or at least sent us a notice that we didn't have to worry about the medical papers anymore. Anyway, we were told that we will have our case reexamined the week after that, which is after the audit is done, which means it will then be approved (or disapproved if there are really more problems with our case which it didn't).

We received a call from our original case officer about 10 days after that, telling me that it's been approved. I didn't say much anymore, just yes and yes and thank you, because I was surely tempted to say more about my disappointments with the process. I received my greencard in the mail on Oct 24th, but my card says that I've been a resident since Oct 19th.

At least this part is over. I can now concentrate on our lives again, including getting us a house and preparing myself for work.

Thanks to everyone in VJ for your support and advice.

:-)

Kezia

[Messybrownhair 251]

Sorry for the late update on this. These past months have been super busy with going back and forth hospitals and rehabs for David's mother who had cancer, and when she passed away last August, we were also swamped with estate sales, cleaning up her rented house, moving things to storage, and a lot of other paperwork dealing with someone's passing (not counting all the grief and other drama with in-laws). USCIS really chose a bad time to give us problems, as we didn't have much time to deal with them this year.

Anyway, after almost everything has settled down, on the first week of October, we still haven't had any real progress with our case. The congressman's office has been a little helpful, but my case got transfered 2x because the original case officer went into vacation. The temporary replacement was actually good and very helpful (and was also married to a Filipina), and he got to a point where he received some response from the Phil Embassy (which is so difficult to do with phones and emails, unless you can find a direct line to a specific officer there and even the congressman's office couldn't figure out how to do it). However, the Phil Embassy still needed a request from the USCIS so that they can forward that request to St. Lukes. It seems that this process has to go through 4-5 offices, and there is no skipping or jumping through that red tape. It got worse when the original case officer came back and he got my case, as it appeared that he didn't do anything more to follow-up on the case, unlike the temp who got more things done in a week than what the original case officer did in 3 months. I wished that my case was just retained by the temp and not given back to the original guy.

We were running out of time, as we needed to have everything settled before the end of October or the whole process will expire. So, we scheduled another infopass appointment with our local office and we were lucky enough to talk to another case officer. We told them what happened and what we were told, and he and the other guy who overheard everything looked puzzled, and they sure looked like they know that what happened was anomalous, so after some discussion, they checked the records (which was supposed to be locked for that week because they were undergoing an audit), and told us that my medical records are actually there. Then they apologized and made excuses for our original USCIS case officer, saying that she received my medical records after we left after our interview, but they sure looked like they were just covering up for her and they were also disappointed (shaking their heads a little) with what happened. If you ask me (and my husband), we believe that our records have been there all the time, and even if they received it later, they should have just went ahead and approved our case since it was the only thing missing, or at least sent us a notice that we didn't have to worry about the medical papers anymore. Anyway, we were told that we will have our case reexamined the week after that, which is after the audit is done, which means it will then be approved (or disapproved if there are really more problems with our case which it didn't).

We received a call from our original case officer about 10 days after that, telling me that it's been approved. I didn't say much anymore, just yes and yes and thank you, because I was surely tempted to say more about my disappointments with the process. I received my greencard in the mail on Oct 24th, but my card says that I've been a resident since Oct 19th.

At least this part is over. I can now concentrate on our lives again, including getting us a house and preparing myself for work.

Thanks to everyone in VJ for your support and advice.

:-)

Kezia

What a mess!! I am glad it all worked out. Congrats on getting the GC!!! Enjoy the 2-yr break!