Silly Mistakes by USCIS (And What We Did to Fix Them)

While the USCIS has a rigorous process in place to adjudicate immigration cases, at the end of the day, the people working behind it are only human, and prone to making mistakes every now and then.

Throughout our years of working with the USCIS, our law firm has encountered even the silliest mistakes from the USCIS and resolved them to help our clients’ cases move forward.

Mailing Address Mishap

Recently, we had a client whose work card was approved. Prior to it being mailed by immigration, we filed a request for a change of address and made four phone calls and two online service requests explicitly asking for the work card to be sent to the client’s new home address.

Despite that, however, immigration attempted to send the work card to our firm’s old office address. We moved offices in the fall, so the work card ended up being returned to immigration. Upon seeing that, our firm immediately called the USCIS and asked them to mail the work card directly to the client’s home, as per our service requests.

The second time around, immigration still sent the card to our office, but thankfully, they mailed it to the new address. Our firm received it and sent it over to our client. But regardless, immigration still didn’t honor our service requests and phone calls nor did they follow our specific instructions about where to mail the work card.

Mix Up With the Forms

The second egregious mistake that we’ve encountered, which is actually quite common with the immigration service, is regarding a mix-up with the forms. Immigration sent an entire case back to our office with a note saying that we failed to submit a form with the application.

We went through the whole case file and found the form shuffled and mixed into the rest of the case. That’s not where we put the form when we mailed the application to the immigration office. And it looks like someone in the mail room took the case file apart and put it back together the wrong way instead of flipping through the file to check for the documents.

So our firm simply rearranged the case file, put the form in the right place again, and sent it back to immigration telling them that the form is enclosed. Everything should be fine moving forward, except for the fact that due to their silly mistake, the client’s case is going to be delayed.

Why Immigration Makes These Silly Mistakes

Even with immigration’s strict processes, they are still prone to make these mistakes that end up delaying a client’s case. And from experience, it looks like all the errors stem from problems in the mail room.

Most of immigration’s mail room personnel are contract workers instead of actual USCIS employees. Most of them are trainees too. Because of that, things like these can happen all the time.

The immigration service is very capable of making mistakes – and it’s our firm’s job to deal with those, make sure that the oversights are resolved, and our clients get their cases moving forward.