Government Efficiency: Your Call Back Time Will Be In Approximately 1,144 Minutes

1,144 minutes is about 19 hours and that's no mistake, that's the waiting time for a Tier 2 call.

Tier 2? Well friends, I'm dealing with USCIS hell.

I have a client applying for an H1B Masters's cap opening.

In short, the kid is an engineer, has a master's degree from a US University, he's a sharp, good and clean kid from India, and his employer here for his apprenticeship wants to hire him as he's good at what he does and they've trained him up.

So I do the I-129 process, including getting a labor certification, and he's actually going to be paid more than the company's American workers due to a very screwed up average wage calculation required by Department of Labor for the area. Stupid as hell, but that's the law.

I submit it with premium processing and send it via express mail on April 3 to their Premium Processing address in California.

USPS shows it was delivered to Premium Processing on April 4 at 11 am.

Then it disappears.

USCIS can't find it, and the fun begins.

First I have fun just calling the USCIS help line - 800-375-5283.

After being on hold for 30-45 minutes per call, I get to Tier 1 support. Half the time Tier 1 just drops the call and I have to start in the queue all over again.

Finally with Tier 1 going through the same maddening script every time and refusing to move it to Tier 2 until we go through the script, they then send me to Tier 2 phone waiting hell. How much hell? It's so bad you do not wait on the line, instead you enter your number and they tell you when a Tier 2 officer will call you back. That call back wait time can be rather extreme.

On a prior Tier 2 call, I was told to email Lockbox support which I did. Lockbox support acknowledged the email and said they would reply within 30 days.

They Didn't. I waited over 30 days before bugging them, but no contact from them, because that would be too easy, right?

Back to calling, starting with Tier 1 hell again. I get connected to Tier One and they tell me to call Premium Processing support and give me a phone number.

There's a little problem with that number. It requires you to enter a receipt number that I don't have because the package was lost so they never issues a receipt number. No receipt number - the call disconnects.

Back to call Tier 1, and after going through the same script tell the next helpful idiot that suggests that I call Premium Processing support that that will not work.

Then I finally get a call actually completed to route to Tier 2 and the time to get the call back?

That's where the 1,144 Minutes comes from. That was the latest estimate.

Then 1,144 minutes later, Tier 2 calls back at 8pm tonight and I have to explain everything again because no one has kept any notes on this issue. At all.

Tier 2 agrees with me that this is getting ridiculous and offers to send me to Tier 3.

I know what is about to happen so I politely ask for the number so I can call myself....

Nope, they won't gove that out, nor the direct number to even get into the queue for Tier 2, but she'll transfer me to Tier 3.

And she drops the call.

This means I need to start all over again with getting on hold to get to Tier 1, to get to be put on hold with Tier 2 to get put on hold with Tier 3, al the while hoping some functionary doesn't have a malfunction and drop the call.

At this point I am beginning to develop rather strong anti-government feelings and a vocabulary to go with it.

So in short, USCIS has lost an application, refuses to do anything about it, refuses to connect me to anyone who can do something about it and this should in a normal world not take this farging long and this much time to even get to the point to find someone to fix their mistake, and we're still not there. And all this for a simple I-129 application that should have been granted over two months ago now.

Meanwhile, Illegals can waltz across the border and work illegally with fake social security numbers have no such troubles.

I halfway want to tell the kid to change his name to Sanchez, have his employer pay him under the table, move to California so he gets free healthcare, and everyone will be happy, unfortunately that's just not good legal advice.

Just wait until government controls your healthcare, expect your service times and levels of customer service to be similar.