After several more phone calls and inquiries, the local office finally e-mailed Joaquin's document to the National Visa Processing Center today, and lo and behold the NVPC sent an e-mail this afternoon stating they've already cabled it to Guangzhou, China...Mission Accomplished! I am free to relax and enjoy this last week before travel, knowing I will not be stuck in China!!
Typically it is supposed to take 5 days to process documents through NVPC and send them on, and as of early this a.m. the NVPC hadn't even received Joaquin's after almost a week - not good. The official word was that the document couldn't be sent electronically (both my agency and the immigration office stated this) so it had been sent snail mail. The only reason I knew it was possible to e-mail it was because I met another family in the immigration waiting room last week who "threw a dramatic fit" (their words) in order to get the local immigration office to respond. Then early this a.m. after multiple rejected calls I finally got through to the NVPC who said it could be e-mailed but refused to contact the local office to give them the e-mail address. I then responded again to the local office telling them I knew that e-mailing documents could and had been done, the NVPC confirmed it, and I knew the local office had the contact info of the NVPC office (because of the "dramatic fit" family). One hour later the local office let me know it had been sent electronically; three hours later the NVPC sent the cable to China. All thanks to the randomness (synchronicity!) of meeting that family in the waiting room did I persist; I am so grateful!
I have decided that instead of becoming bitter, I will be drawing up a "cheat sheet" to give to my agency with the hope that they will share itwith other families, to help walk them through exactly what I learned, what numbers to call, etc. I don't want one more family to go through what I did this past week. The great news is that this is just one example in a looooonnggg string of paperwork headaches, and from here on out I don't see any more of them?!? Cross every finger and bone in your body.
Most excellent day!!! Thank you to everybody for your support and good wishes, particularly the last week!! I can feel it.
No comments:
Post a Comment