Ana
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Posts posted by Ana
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great idea! i am a poor graduate student, fresh from 2 years of earning a steady income of $3,000/year in china, so no, i dont have the funds to make such a trip.
but anyone who would, i would worship you forever. and also, i would be willing to send faxes, emails, make phone calls, etc. to the powers that be in support of your interview, ala what i am doing for owen and mick.
great idea!!!
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poor mick,
when i taught, it was a maximum of 12 hours, and i often got away with much less!!
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from what i have heard (which may very well not be true), gz does not send paperwork to the states, merely the applicant's name. thus, why would names, easy as pie to send, be sitting in a box? that wouldnt make sense. we are too annoying. it would be easier for them to send.
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my letter was an individual one, maybe individual ones are better? i posted it at the beginning of this thread. copy away if you like. i will fax it to adams and donahue asap with copies over email. i have email addresses for both if you want to pm me.
also, as far as the fax numbers go, if you are faxing from the states, the number is a little different than owen posted.
adams:
011-86-20-8186-4001
donahue:
011-86-20-8186-2341
owen: faxing in china IS expensive! you should try the smaller copy places. the difference between doing it there and at the post office is ENORMOUS!! also, if you work in a school, sometimes you can pull a little guanxi to get at a fax machine.
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jon,
how did your senator get this info? is it reliable?
i have been told a bunch of crap by kennedy's office. it seems like they had no clue what was really going on.
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The DOS and GZ disappoint us at many important days, I hope they won't fail us again before 2/14 Valentine's Day.
Any August interviewee has the resub as me recently?
St
tell me about it. we already missed our first anniversary, so we decided to change the date to the day or our wedding (as opposed to the day we got the marriage cert) which is valentine's day, in the hopes that he would be here by then. looking like no! thanks a lot, guys!
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maybe r adams doesnt exist. maybe he is just the info team under an individual name, so we think we can actually contact an officer. everyone who has ever tried to see him or talk to him has failed. he has also returned my emails through the info team.
i think he is chief of the iv unit, not consul general
isnt norris the consul general?
i have both hays and adams email addresses. i think that info is available over cuc. but if you need them, pm me.
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I am sending a fax today to R. Adams, asking that he meet with Mick and Owen. Mick and Owen: Do you want me to send it to anyone else in GZ? I'll also send it over email.
But if they only get this one little fax from me, it won't be strong enough. We need other people to do it too! It won't take long, and you can cut and paste from mine if you want, or write a short one of your own.
Here is mine:
Dear Mr. Adams:
Roger Owen Krout and Dwight Turner will be going to Guangzhou during the week of February 10 in the hopes of meeting with you and other Consular Officers. They would like to discuss the delays applicants who interviewed between July and October of 2002 have experienced in receiving immigrant visas. My husband is one of those applicants.
Please consider Mr. Krout and Mr. Turner as representatives for many of us who have been waiting for our loved ones to receive visas. When they speak, they do not speak for themselves alone, and their visit is meant to help all of us. I firmly support them.
I ask that you grant them a personal interview and take their questions, concerns, and input very seriously.
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regardless of who is to blame, we should talk to and put pressure on every agency involved.
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when we were still innocent, we sent the forms to gz by snail mail on multiple occasions, and were told it would take about 1-2 months to get an interview. but literally months went by to no avail. light finally dawned and we faxed it to them instead (about 5 times) and they finally processed our paperwork.
never send anything by mail.
i am convinced those forms are to this day sitting in a box.
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mick and owen:
Would you be willing to either post your full names or else pm them to people who would be willing to fax r. adams asking for an ear?
everyone else:
please help by contacting richard adams and saying you support mick and owen and would like him to give them attention!! if you are willing to do so, post here!!
does anyone know the best fax number to fax r. adams? gz has so many floating around that i hardly know which one to send it to.
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mick,
the sad truth is that no one really has reliable info to give you. even when we receive 'reliable' info, it is difficult to know if it really is so. perhaps it might be better for people just to send you their opinions or what has been told to them, and that is proof enough of the lack of information and the elusive nature of the beast that confronts us.
1. here are rumors ive heard on the subject:
a. there were 2 systems; the black hole group went into the first system, but when they replaced it with the second system, we had to be resubmitted
b. our names 'slipped through the cracks'
c. the databases werent up yet
d. the name check runs over several, uncoordinated agencies
2. i havent heard of anyone getting clearance from nov. i know people got cleared in dec, but was that bc of a nov resubmission, or a later one?
3. the fbi, the cia
4.
a. our names, entered later, were behind people who interviewed in nov and dec. we had a collective breakdown, and they responded to it.
b. our names were sitting on a desk.
c. our names had never been entered to begin with.
d. the computer system was still a nightmare.
the only thing that is clear is that it is only because the black hole started to spew out light that we were noticed as a force in the galaxy.
5. i think there is more going on than we know about. i dont think they want to give us real information, honestly. why else would there be so many contradictions? why else do i feel like i am in a detective novel?
6. i dont think its laziness or ill will, i think the reason for our names sitting on a desk, or being resent a million times (whichever you prefer, the result is the same) is due to the 'real' information that we are not getting.
7. im not sure its a 'conspiracy,' but there are definitely major holes
8. they all know what the deal is, but they may have different interests or needs
as far as getting an appointment, maybe it would be best to try for a tues, because then you can always return on thurs if necessary. i say call the r. adams line every day and leave your name and phone number until the secretary hates you and gives you an appointment to get rid of you.
i would be perfectly happy if you said that you are coming on the behalf of everyone in the black hole group, many of whom know about this visit and have given you their open support.
i think you should write an email to r. adams and hays requesting an appointment and saying you are representing us. you could collect names from this website and post them in your email. think of this as a group letter gone live. add my name to your list!
and maybe it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to fax and email r. adams directly requesting that he pay attention to you guys and give you a serious interview on our behalf. what do you think of this idea?
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i think that as many people as possible should email attached timelines of their efforts at getting their cases resolved to owen and mick, as well as personal stories, photos, etc. in order to give them ammunition during their meeting. here is a segment of what mine looks like:
January 2, 2003
Faxed Richard Adams requesting that xxx's name be resubmitted.
Faxed Maura Harty’s office requesting information about xxx’s case.
Faxed Colin Powell’s office requesting that the situation of visa applicants from China be looked into and the process made more efficient.
Sent a letter by Federal Express to John J. Norris Jr. requesting that steps be taken to process the visa cases in a reasonable amount of time, supply more information to applicants, treat all applicants fairly, and deal with us in a respectful manner.
January 6, 2003
Received the standard response from the Guangzhou Information Team in regards to my email to Richard Adams. No mention was made of the status of my husband’s case or my request for a resubmission of his name.
Responded to this email by repeating my original requests. Have not received a response.
January 13, 2003
Called the DOS hotline. xxx’s case has not been cleared, but we finally learned that his name was last submitted January 9 or 10.
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i think what we need to ask them to do is not to contact gz, but to put pressure on the state department to get our loved ones through the name check. it doesnt seem that they are willing to do that at this point.
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i can sympathize with your feelings! i just flew home from my china visit two days ago and feel so sad i can barely function. i keep listening to cheesey chinese pop music and my friends are starting to think i have lost my mind. i cant sleep because of fantasies of picking up the husband at the airport, followed by self-inflicted reality checks. honestly, leaving him this time was much harder than it was when i did it 6 months ago! back then i actually believed i would be seeing him again in only a month! how delusional i was!!!!!
anyway, thank god for the internet and yahoo messenger.
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eric,
you are absolutely right. this website has saved my life. i didnt know hand from foot before i joined at the end of december. i still feel hopeless and helpless a lot, but nowhere near as isolated and confused as a month ago!!!!!!
thanks everyone!!!
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whatever their personal/political issues are, the fact is, we never talk with them anyway. kennedy himself will never hear word of my case, most likely. only his staff will. that's why he has these people working for him. so i do not feel guilty about bothering them, and yes, i do expect them to help me, just as other people's senators have helped them. is that too much to ask from our govt reps??
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if anyone is interested in some kind of joint action to kerry/kennedy, you can pm me and we can start putting together a more formal plan.
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first: owen and mick:
it is great that you are willing to do this. we all will benefit from your visit, i think.
maybe it would be a good idea for people to put together an outline of their efforts and the responses these efforts were met with (not prose). wouldnt it be nice if you had a stack of papers (with pictures?!!!) to slap down on the desk? he doesnt even need to look at them to hear the sweet sound of a problem that wont go away.
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i think maybe email is not an effective way. i emailed kerry's office also about a month ago and havent received a response.
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i was wondering if there were other folks from mass who would like to get together to contact our senators en masse. maybe they would take us more seriously if it seemed that what we were talking about was a real issue.
i have been calling kennedy's office in boston, and trying to talk to his 'immigration specialist.' it has been a nightmare. first, the woman was constantly unavailable, and i was always talking to secretaries, etc. who mostly just try to calm me with 'trust the system' and 'this is normal' statements. i was told the only thing they could do to help me was to write a letter to gz inquiring about the status of my husband's case.
this they did, and when they got a response, they never informed me, even though i had contacted them after they received it! furthermore, it was just the same old form letter bs.
my mother (who is also working furiously on this case!) called a few weeks ago while i was in china and finally spoke to the 'specialist.' apparently she was completely rude and blatantly brushed my mother off. my mother was told that 'there was no problem' and that basically, she was inventing a crisis that did not exist. finally, she told my mother there was nothing kennedy's office could or would do to help. calling kennedy was actually a worse experience than calling dos/gz!!!!
any other stories, good or bad?
what about going in it together (as well as individually) both kennedy and kerry?
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august 30
last reported resubmit jan 10
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cut, pasted, and sent!
Oh, but what a tangled web they weave
in General Visa Discussion & First Steps
Posted
I've actually heard of GZ hanging up on people before, although it has never happened to me. As a rule, the people who work the phones there have been completely rude to my husband. It is only rarely that he gets to talk to someone who treats him with a grain of politeness. I made this lack of respect a major point in my fed-exed letter to John Norris, complaining that the information team is often rude and has hung up on people. It is not enough to put us through hell, feed us disinformation, and keep us separated for months and months from our families. They must also treat us less than human.