There is no better way of spending your vacation by queuing up the USCIS line 6:15 in the morning. It was cold and windy, luckily I was wrapped up like Michelin man, waiting in line, alone, until hell broke lose at 6:30. Out of no where, 20 people showed up and queued up behind me. Amazing.
The guards were late, I wasn't let in until 7 o'clock sharp, although I should be let in at 6:45, extra 15 min in the cold. Also I was totally irked by the jackass, who checked my bag, thought I might do the federal government harm if I waltzed in with my Pentax. WTH? I can understand no knife policy, but no camera? What about embedded camera on a phone? Should I go in without cell phone? Jackass private security had no answer. But, in order for me to get in, I had to walk back to the parking lot to drop the camera in my car. Extra 15 min well spent. I waltzed into Room 1001 with the 7:15 people. Ridiculous.
It is great that the USCIS InfoPass system works for people who has an appointment at 7 or 7:15 since I walked out at 8 sharp. I will not recommend using the system to acquire appointment at 10 o'clock since you might end up meeting the officer around 12 (lunch time).
On the way home I heard, from KPCC (NPR), that someone whacked Bhutto.
Also, dad bought eee PC, the 4GB with web cam version, and prayed that it arrives before he departs for Jakarta.
Dinner at Din Tai Fung.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
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3 comments:
I know what you went through.
I got so pissed today that I sat down and wrote this letter to the dumbasses at USCIS. I don't expect any change, but I've had a need to vent:
To USCIS.Webmaster@dhs.gov
Dear USCIS Webmaster:
I don’t know if you or anyone else care about what I am going to write to you, but I will try anyway.
At least writing this down - as advised by my shrink - may release some of the frustration and stress I experienced this morning while visiting your Santa Ana Field office.
Please add this text to the information printed on the appointment Infopass for your USCIS offices:
No person will be allowed to enter USCIS office with a camera or cell phone with a built-in camera under any circumstance.
We don’t care if you are a 9-month pregnant mother with a kid in a stroller and another in your arm: you will be turned away and have to schlep back to your car to put away your camera cell phone.
We don’t care if you are a wheelchair-bound: just put your wheelchair in reverse gear back out of the security check and roll merrily back to your car to stow away your camera cell phone.
We don’t care that you are parked half a mile away and are going to miss your appointment. You should expect us to make your experience visiting our office miserable!
Oh, what are you saying? That we could as a courtesy provide a camera cell phone check-in? No, no, no, that would be too nice of us to do for you the Joe Public and you could get used to us the Government bureaucrats doing something reasonable and then demand it all the time of us. So the answer to that is a resounding NO!
Oh, what are you saying? That our policy is unreasonable in a day and age when majority of people carry a cell phone with a camera on them much the same as you would expect them to wear a watch? WE DON’T CARE!!! We are the Government, we have no reason to be reasonable, and we don’t have to adjust to the changing times, we can live back in the 20th century for as long as we want and there is nothing you can do about this!
You should be glad that we have added this warning to this Infopass now. Before we had this warning, thousands of people had been turned away daily when they tried to enter the USCIS because they had a camera cell phone in their pocket. And we DID NOT CARE!!!
The reason I suggest you should add the above warning to your Infopass stems from what happened to me today:
I tried to be prepared as much as possible, so day my planned visit to the USCIS office, I went on the USCIS web site and printed out my Infopass appointment sheet. I read and studied the information on the Infopass sheet and armed with that information I drove to downtown Santa Ana, parked my car and walked about half a mile to the USCIS office.
When I finally arrived at the entrance, the security officer turned me away saying that he will not let me in with my cell phone, which has a built-in camera, nor is he willing to let me leave it at his desk for the duration of my visit at the USCIS office. I asked the officer how he expects me and thousands of other people who daily visit the USCIS offices to know that such a common place thing as a cell phone with a camera that most people carry on them all the time and don’t give a second thought to, would prevent them from entering the building. I asked why this pretty important information about this dubious security policy, is not printed in big red letters on the Infopass information list. The list that contains such obvious point as: bring your ID to your appointment. I would think that informing me about the fact that I might have to do a mile long roundtrip to my car to securely store my cell phone before I am allowed to enter the USCIS office because they have a no-camera policy, would be more than useful to me and countless others who find themselves in the same predicament in what must be all the USCIS office around the country. He apologized and informed me that he and others have asked countless times to have this information included on the Infopass to no avail, and that he has to continue to turn away thousands of people including mothers with children in strollers. At this point I remembered that that was exactly what had happened to my wife about a year ago when she was required to appear at another USCIS location here in Santa Ana. I recall that she was almost brought to tears when she was asked to navigate the concrete walkway jungle of the Santa Ana Civic Center with our daughter in the stroller back to the third level of the parking structure to store away her cell phone that she accidentally brought to the appointment.
So it’s a year later and I found myself in the same situation. I ask myself: where is the more customer-friendly USCIS promised by the current administration? Are there no reasonable people in that bureaucracy that would care enough to say: you know, if I make couple of phone calls and make sure that the webmaster in charge of the Infopass website includes our no camera policy on the info list, I will make life somewhat easier for hundreds of security officers and thousands of USCIS visitors every year. I guess NOT!
I am planning to write to the Ombudsman, if I could find the email.
Thanks for leaving this message for the good of all who stop to read your message. I have an appointment at the USCIS tomorrow and was wondering about the cellphone ban. I was going to bring it anyway until I read your posting. I will now bring my phone card instead. Thanks for your public information.
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