Another letter to Powell and Harty

[Guest seafloor06]

David and James

 

Indeed they need more help at GZ. I'm not sure our telling them will necessarily be news to them, however. I agree with the spirit of your sentiment, that is, they need to get caught up and they need to return to 'business as usual'. So, how and when?

 

With that in mind,

'6) What will the be the impact of the current delay on future K visa processing?'

 

Should be more like "How do you plan to restore GZ to normal visa processing speed after this delay? Clearly, more resources, human and otherwise, will be needed to be allocated for this to happen. What additional aid will they be receiving and when will they receive it?" Or something like that.

[Guest seafloor06]

David and James

 

Indeed they need more help at GZ.   I'm not sure our telling them will necessarily be news to them, however.  I agree with the spirit of your sentiment, that is, they need to get caught up and they need to return to 'business as usual'.  So, how and when?

 

With that in mind,

'6) What will the be the impact of the current delay on future K visa processing?'  

 

Should be more like  "How do you plan to restore GZ to normal visa processing speed after this delay?  Clearly, more resources, human and otherwise, will be needed to be allocated for this to happen.  What additional aid will they be receiving and when will they receive it?"  Or something like that.

With the additional increase in visa requests over the last few years, the Gaungzhou Consulate will need additional support to handle that increased load. At present, the current staffing has difficulty handling the greater influx of new applicants for visas. How then, can this current backlog of thousands of visas be handled by a staff that is already over loaded? Obviously, more help is needed. How soon can you get the help to the Gaungzhou Consulate to alleviate the backlog of these thousands of visas and increase permanent staffing to handle the increase in visa requests?

Very well said (or written, rather)!

 

Q: are there other factors (state side) in the processing of US visas for Chinese that have slowed down this process? Someone else brought this up earlier.

 

If my understanding is correct, the processing of K visas for Chinese was slower than processing for non-Chinese to begin with. (Excuse any ignorance on my part, I'm new to this.)

 

Beyond the current K visa situation, it frustrates me to see all of my Irish/British/Spanish (name your western European country) friends have friends/families visiting every few months while my fiance has no chance of coming here until we get this K-1.

[markimwaiting]

I think we all have good ideas of what to put into the letter.

My opinion is to ask very simple straight forward questions that require a definite and specific answer to give us what we want to know.

If any questions we ask has the smallest room for them to wiggle, they will.

very simple question like, is my clearance in gz. it is a yes or no question.

 

example:

are there other factors?

should be asked, what are the other factors.

if we ask if there are other factors, a simple yes there are, answer can be given. this tells us nothing.

 

I like the idea of asking about future delays because this will send a message that not only will the backlog people be asking, now there will be a whole new group of people to contend with if this doesnt get fixed.

 

can someone post the latest version of the letter?

 

thanks guys, what a wonderful team we have here.

[Robert S.]

Victoria already got her clearance and the letter has been sent to her fiance. She is in her words out of here. Somehow we will have to struggle along without her.

[PJ]

Robert,

 

I have spoken with Victoria, and she definitely has said that she is still concerned about all of us and even told me she could continue helping to work on the press kit, should we choose to pursue that path. Of course she will be out of the country soon to pick up her fiance, but I really do not think we should count her out in any way.

 

Thanks,

 

P.J.

[Guest seafloor06]

Seafloor,

 

That battle has already been won by the sheep here. We have the visas flowing again but there is great confusion with the GZ consulate on how to do their normal jobs and handle this mess that was just dumped on them. There should have been a more orderly flow of security calearances all along instead of all of a sudden. It was mysterious, after all of us involved  politicians, newspapers, and other media in our plight. We have a start of a press release board that was never finished that will help with the background but it was never finished. VICTORIA HELP      >Jim

Brian (bbridges51) wrote the following today on 'the numbers don't add up' forum:

"P4s and interviews seem to have come to a screaming halt, so i sure hope someone there is working busily to clear these visas. "

 

I'm confused because you say the visas are flowing. Help?

 

Anyway, I can empathize with the folks who want direct answers. Not only does that give you some peace of mind, it also adds credence to a response like 'people are working very hard to resolve the situation'. When Ms Harty replies in a manner like that, one can't help but wonder whether he's getting a 'form letter' type response. Quoting actual numbers would give more confidence that something is being done.

[skibum]

When writing the next letter you may also want to ask how hard would it be for some of the other consulates in China to help GZ. They all have experinced people.

[PJ]

Don,

 

Sometimes you make too much sense. You should be an efficiency expert! I wonder if we could suggest this, or if the consulate and DoS would take offense at our presumptuousness?

 

Thanks,

 

P.J.

[Ying&Vin]

Mark, good idea! I really hope that I can contribute something for the letter! But as you may already noticed from my preview post, I am terrible in English!

[markimwaiting]

Good idea about othe consulates helping GZ.

I vote you as CA boss

It only makes good sense for the others to chip in.

but that might just be to easy.

 

where is the latest version of our letter?

[markimwaiting]

we need to get this thing out on Monday morning,

can we?

[LaoMao]

When writing the next letter you may also want to ask how hard would it be for some of the other consulates in China to help GZ. They all have experinced people.

BeiJing and Shanghai have visa machines. Send the passports that GZ has collected since the end of November and send to the closest consulate for issuance. AND, send the EMS letter for the beneficiary to go to thier local consulate for printing the damn thing. Common sense, folks.

 

-Don H

Yes, Don, I think this is good idea. Resource sharing. what's wrong with that? Hey, send this idea to GZ and DOS.

[markimwaiting]

we need  to get this thing out on Monday morning,

can we?

Mark,

 

It depends on Seafood and Robert to get the finished letter to be approved by all who want to sign it. At that point, I have the list from Victoria and I will be acting the way that she would. You will have to post an OK to have your name on the letter if I already have the name from the previous letter. If not, those people will have to send me there full name, city and state, and e-mail address. That is going to take a bit of time but, it will be legal with an authoritive letter sent by the same person as a follow up to the previous letter. Robert said your comments were excellent. I am sure that he wants everyone here the opportunity to contribute their ideas as I am sure you would want also. >Jim

Thanks

everyones effort will be rewarded soon I beleive.

[markimwaiting]

Good Sunday morning all, I just wanted this back in the topic on top so we get more people involved

[Kaige]

I gave Victoria the go ahead for my name and every thing so drop a line if I need to give the info again, your letter sounds good , so lets keep on the people in Washington. The people at GZ have not had to work for sometime guess they had better stop the coffee and donut breaks.