August 7, 2015: EAD Part 3
Today was supposed to be a good day. I had a morning meeting that would potentially have promising results, we had a great afternoon lunch, and we had plans to go bar hopping in our neighborhood with friends and our puppy on his new, very helpful, no-pull leash. We even managed a much needed afternoon nap (puppy included since he likes to wedge himself in between us on the bed). When we woke up we started talking about when we were going to meet up with folks, and then he checked the mail. We had not one but TWO letters from USCIS, and one was in a larger than usual envelope—the full page sized envelope that we never get mail from USCIS in. I opened the big letter first and was instantly confused. The check I wrote them for our THIRD EAD application was stapled to a letter that said ‘Rejection Notice.’ As I read further, it said that the check we had sent for our application wasn’t necessary for the application to be processed, so it had been returned. Attached were copies of our cover page from our latest application as well as a scanned copy of the outer USPS envelope that we had sent our application in. The second letter was a typical NOA that the application was received and was being processed.
Whelp. There went our good day. Efrem was instantly pulled down by the frustration and confusion of it all. Our first application was approved but the card got lost in the mail. The second application was terminated, supposedly because were supposed to pay the application fee since the card was lost because of a USPS and not a USCIS error. We mailed our third application with the fee, but here they are, returning our check to us saying the fee wasn’t necessary to process the application. But if the fee wasn’t necessary, then why the hell did the second application get terminated? We both realized at that moment, we had never received the hard copy termination notice of the second application in the mail, which would’ve explained in full the reason for the termination. We’d only talked with that immigration officer over the phone about the reasons and she said it was because we didn’t pay the fee, so we tried again and paid the fee, but clearly that wasn’t the reason. So what is going on?
We called immigration immediately to try and get an explanation. She was as confused as we were, especially throughout our explanation of all the applications we had submitted. She thought maybe we had filled out the second application incorrectly, but that would mean that we also filled out the third application incorrectly since I literally used the second application and just changed the dates to submit for the third time, and yet this application was still being processed. She asked us what the termination notice said, but since we didn’t have it, that was a dead end as well. Her thought were that the immigration officer who told us that we had to pay the fee gave us incorrect information since this was still our first application, but since we didn’t have the termination notice and she didn’t see anything in our record with a termination notice, all anyone was doing was speculating.
At the end of the conversation, she said the only thing she could do was attach an inquiry to our case and tell us that someone would get back to us eventually. I mean, our third application was still being processed, it’s not as though they had rejected it, but we just needed to understand why it even came to a third application if the second one’s termination had nothing to do with the fee. If we’re making a mistake on the form then we need to know that so we can not make the same mistake again in the event this third application is rejected.
Still in legal limbo.
like black butterflies 