Additional Perspective on GZ Trip

[Mick]

Just wanted to share a few comments and further info regarding our trip to GZ and our meeting with Richard Adams. I hope this sheds a little light, maybe it will, maybe it won't. Important point: If you don't like something you read here, don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

 

First of all, I do have to give Mr. Adams credit in that he did spend two hours with us and answered every question we had e-mailed to him in advance, plus some questions we didn't ask. I didn't find him evasive or get the sense he was trying to blow smoke. When he didn't know the answer to something, he openly admitted he didn't know. In fact, he went even further at times, admitting that "terrible mistakes had been made". With that said, let me get to a few points.

 

Owen has already mentioned that there were 10000 Immigrant Visas stuck in the backlog and that to date 2700 have been processed. Also, he mentioned that there were 600 K1 visas in the July/Sept group and that around 300 of those had reached resolution. One thing that Mr. Adams openly stated at the outset was that, at the beginning of this mess, his view was to put the K1's at the end of the line. His feeling was that family based visa's should take priority. Now, if he had wanted to blow smoke up my ass, I doubt he would have told me that as my case is technically a K1. He went on to say that he began to instruct his staff initially to deal with the backlog in this manner. However, as time progressed, due to the loud complaining of the K1 crowd, DoS ordered them to process K1's first. This caused some degree of delay as they were already proceeding in a different direction and had to shift gears. So that led to resubmissions of a number of K1's in November.

 

GZ was supposed to have all unresolved cases resubmitted by January 4 and they tried to meet this target date. Most were resubmitted by that date, but not all. He then ordered his staff to identify all outstanding cases and all these cases, except K1's, were compiled, reformatted to meet FBI computer system, and sent on a disk to FBI where it sat until last week. They just began to process these cases around the early part of the month. As for the K1's, when the search revealed outstanding K1s that had not been resubmitted per January 4 guidelines, they were immediately resubmitted, but not through the new computer disk. Instead, they followed the normal route of submission, except they were submitted through the new electronic submission system as opposed to the old cable system. Our case, for example, was one of these. It didn't make it in to the January 4 batch and thus, was resubmitted on January 13.

 

Now once these cases reach the states, they may be processed all in the same way with no distinction between K1 and other family type visas. In fact, I would expect they are all processed the same once Stateside. The agency responsible for the name checks, according to Mr. Adams is the FBI. Also, he alluded to "another agency" which he later, inadvertently identified as CIA as being involved in some cases. I suspect this is due to certain types of "hits". He also stated that only the beneficiary is involved in the checks and not the petitioner. I know this conflicts with some info posted on this board in the past. I can only tell you what he told me. He seemed to be forthright about this, but then, maybe there are things he doesn't know.

 

We pressed him to put in to place some sort of system to prioritize the issuance of visas according to interview date. He explained in detail his reasoning why he can't do this. I don't necessarly agree with it, but at least he did explain it. His view is that this would cause the backlog to grow at a faster rate because current cases would have to wait for the older names to clear and the bottleneck would just keep increasing. Like I said, I don't agree with it, but I understand it. Further, the namechecks come back in a random order in terms of interview date. This makes processing "in order" difficult. So as Eric has often said, it is in fact lotto. But this comes more from the Stateside agencies than from others.

 

Agency most responsible for this mess right now? He wouldn't say nor did he point fingers. I give him credit for that. He shared blame equally. But in terms on pending namecheck cases, the bottleneck right now is DOJ. No doubt about it. FBI processes these cases according to their own priorities and agenda. If it is not seen as an immeditate threat, it gets low priority. This is standard law enforcement reasoning, pure and simple. I don't like it at all and it is unfair, but from the feds perspective, that's the way it is.

 

Mr. Adams said that he could detect no discernable pattern in how the namechecks come back. It appears to be completely random. As Owen mentioned, the 1200 recently received contained a mixed bag of all kinds of cases, some were recently interviewed, some were old cases, some were cases not yet interviewed. He did say however, that the turnaround time had improved and his staff has developed plans to deal with large number of clearances when they come in. I did get the sense that he especially wanted to get these old K1 cases cleared up as they are the ones creating the most heat.

 

So I would say at this point, keep the heat on. That seems to get someone's attention at least. If we sit back and do nothing, nothing happens. I will post more later but kids my ribs are hurting right now and I need to get up and move around. Damn Chinese buses are dangerous sometimes.

 

Owen and wife are here at our home in Shantou for few days. We will post as time permits. I want to thanks especially Jennifer, Jon's wonderful lady, and also Bbzou and his wife for their help and support. They all made our stay a delight (except for the shopping ) Bbzou and wife arrived to give us moral support as well on the day of the meeting.

 

I'll write more later, including at some point a hair-raising account of our bus accident. What a nightmare that was.

[Eric&Yuhui]

You're the man my Mick..

Get this rib cage a good Thai massage ... Glad you are OK really.

This post is very factual, at times sobering ( yep, FBI controls in what order things are done, and no, we don't rank much high in their priority scale )

Excellent account Mick..

Doesn't make things logical... But certainly explains a few things.

As far as the "missed" Jan 4 resub.. You're right, We were resub'd 1/27.

Then again a question... GZ said repeatedly.... computer won't accept a resub less than 90 days old.. Our last before last was 11/16. Less than 90 days, yet they resub'd... Go figure.

 

And yuhui was in tears tonight,, Like I, after I hung up ... Visa seems to be a touchy subject for many of us Courtesy of a few US agencies...

[Mick]

You're the man my Mick..

Get this rib cage a good Thai massage ...   Glad you are OK really.

This post is very factual, at times sobering ( yep, FBI controls in what order things are done, and no, we don't rank much high in their priority scale )

Excellent account Mick..

Doesn't make things logical... But certainly explains a few things.

As far as the "missed" Jan 4 resub.. You're right, We were resub'd 1/27.

Then again a question... GZ said repeatedly.... computer won't accept a resub less than 90 days old.. Our last before last was 11/16. Less than 90 days, yet they resub'd... Go figure.

 

And yuhui was in tears tonight,, Like I... Visa seems to be a touchy subject for many of us  Courtesy of a few US agencies...

I asked about the 90 day thing. Yes, if it is resubmitted within 90 days, the computer doesn't "reject" it but instead, sends back a code on the spread sheet called "DD". This means duplicate submission. According to Adams, this has no effect on the case whatsoever. He showed Owen and I the computer screens and what the D0S case workers see when they pull up a case. Codes are DD, H, NR, E, and a few others. "E" means error, he did not know what "H" means, NR means "no record" and that my friends is a clearance.

 

The November resubmits were sent in again in January because GZ was ordered by DoS to resubmit them, I guess not realizing that most would come back as "DD". He alluded to some way that DoS had made changes in the system to accept duplicates. He did say that resubmitting within the 90 day window would not help anything.

 

As to the ribs, only time will heal this sort of thing. It's nothing major, just a little painful.

[Eric&Yuhui]

You're the man my Mick..

Get this rib cage a good Thai massage ...    Glad you are OK really.

This post is very factual, at times sobering ( yep, FBI controls in what order things are done, and no, we don't rank much high in their priority scale )

Excellent account Mick..

Doesn't make things logical... But certainly explains a few things.

As far as the "missed" Jan 4 resub.. You're right, We were resub'd 1/27.

Then again a question... GZ said repeatedly.... computer won't accept a resub less than 90 days old.. Our last before last was 11/16. Less than 90 days, yet they resub'd... Go figure.

 

And yuhui was in tears tonight,, Like I... Visa seems to be a touchy subject for many of us     Courtesy of a few US agencies...

I asked about the 90 day thing. Yes, if it is resubmitted within 90 days, the computer doesn't "reject" it but instead, sends back a code on the spread sheet called "DD". This means duplicate submission. According to Adams, this has no effect on the case whatsoever. He showed Owen and I the computer screens and what the D0S case workers see when they pull up a case. Codes are DD, H, NR, E, and a few others. "E" means error, he did not know what "H" means, NR means "no record" and that my friends is a clearance.

 

The November resubmits were sent in again in January because GZ was ordered by DoS to resubmit them, I guess not realizing that most would come back as "DD". He alluded to some way that DoS had made changes in the system to accept duplicates. He did say that resubmitting within the 90 day window would not help anything.

 

As to the ribs, only time will heal this sort of thing. It's nothing major, just a little painful.

"H" means Hell, no ! in State's parlance

Yes, they resub'd... but NOT all directly from DOS to FBI as they led us to believe late December.. We had to go first through GZ.... so the circuit was DOS(request to resub ) -GZ OK(we'll do it.. Here it comes ! ) -DOS ( Thanks, we got it guys ) -FBI ( don't bother us, we're busy with the Iraqis)...

 

Get well soon Mick...

I can't harass a wounded man.. now can I ??

[Jatuke]

Mick,

 

And does the mythical mailing room exist? If so, what did it look like? A vault with a bunch of petitions with cobwebs?

 

And how do they determine these hits for the name checks? Do they just do a name search on Google?

 

Thanks for your efforts and Owen's and others who contributed.

[Eric&Yuhui]

Mick,

 

And does the mythical mailing room exist? If so, what did it look like? A vault with a bunch of petitions with cobwebs?

 

And how do they determine these hits for the name checks? Do they just do a name search on Google?

 

Thanks for your efforts and Owen's and others who contributed.

Forget the mailroom

What I want to know Mick and Owen.. is.... just how many of us-masternagger pictures were on the dartboard in the consulate's lunchroom??

[Mick]

Mick,

 

And does the mythical mailing room exist? If so, what did it look like? A vault with a bunch of petitions with cobwebs?

 

And how do they determine these hits for the name checks? Do they just do a name search on Google?

 

Thanks for your efforts and Owen's and others who contributed.

Forget the mailroom

What I want to know Mick and Owen.. is.... just how many of us-masternagger pictures were on the dartboard in the consulate's lunchroom??

As to the mailroom, we never made it there but we did notice a lot of new construction going on. In fact, they now have re-routed the trail one has to follow to get into the Consulate because of the construction. My take on this? Probably building a new mail room as the old one is no longer adequate.

 

As to the master naggers, I didn't see any pictures but they kept whispering, "I wonder if he knows that Frenchman?"

 

Seriously, we waited in the main lobby, sitting right under the official pictures of Duh-bya, Powell, and Cheney. You should have seen Owen sitting right under a picture of our fearless leader. I would have taken a picture but they confiscated everything I had at the security entrance. They even took away my pen and it was felt tip.

 

Must have viewed us a definite threats.

[Guest R2D2]

Was the bus "accident" with the disabled brakes before or after the interview?

[Mick]

Was the bus "accident" with the disabled brakes before or after the interview?  

Before. We were about thirty minutes out of Shantou when it happened. Sad to report one person died in the accident. Ran right through a toll booth and right over the top of a Toyota.

[Guest R2D2]

Was the bus "accident" with the disabled brakes before or after the interview?  

Before. We were about thirty minutes out of Shantou when it happened. Sad to report one person died in the accident. Ran right through a toll booth and right over the top of a Toyota.

You took Adams on while you were disabled? A true patriot!!!!

[Eric&Yuhui]

Was the bus "accident" with the disabled brakes before or after the interview?  

Before. We were about thirty minutes out of Shantou when it happened. Sad to report one person died in the accident. Ran right through a toll booth and right over the top of a Toyota.

You took Adams on while you were disabled? A true patriot!!!!

YES !! MICK THE WARRIOR !! Took a bus hit... Then kept going and going and going... Man! Someone shuts him up !!

[Guest R2D2]

Was the bus "accident" with the disabled brakes before or after the interview?  

Before. We were about thirty minutes out of Shantou when it happened. Sad to report one person died in the accident. Ran right through a toll booth and right over the top of a Toyota.

You took Adams on while you were disabled? A true patriot!!!! B)

YES !! MICK THE WARRIOR !! Took a bus hit... Then kept going and going and going... Man! Someone shuts him up !!

They are going to write stories about him like Paul Revere!

[Guest A&A]

I'm greatly appreciate for all you've done for us.

Take care and get well soon.

[Tine & Ella]

Mick,

I to appreciate all the efforts you and Owen have made for all of us here at CFL to get to speak with Mr. Adams. Also I am sorry to hear about the accident, take care of your self. My hopes and prayers to every one still waiting for all of us to have background checks finished and EMS and visa's very soon.

Tine & Ella

Indianapolis & Shanghai

[Guest bbzou]

As I proposed in GUZ, nagging Richard Adams and DOS probably

has no use. Could we somehow ask FBI people to be more efficient?

 

It seems to me that contacting congressional staff is also not

effective. They really don't understand what the real problem

is and don't want to use their influence to correct this mess.

 

It is really useless to yell at the info line people too.

 

If we want to keep the heat on, we should think some other

targets.