Will I increase my chances of denial if I keep bothering the government. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States at our offices here in St. Louis, Missouri. I got a good laugh the other day when I was reading through our Immigrant Home Facebook Group. And if you're not in our Facebook Group, you really should join us. It's called Immigrant Home. We're in there every day, answering as many questions as we can, and people are having good discussions with each other about maybe processing times or their experiences in applying for certain immigration benefits. The group has really sort of taken on a life of its own.
But I had a good laugh the other day because somebody said, "Is it true that if you keep bothering USCIS, that you'll slow down your case or get it denied?" And I laughed about this and I even talked about it with some of the people here in the office. I thought it was sort of a silly question that, "No, of course not. You can't bother them too much or bother them so much that they deny your case." But when I talked to [Adela 00:00:59], our office manager and who's been with me, my right-hand person, since we started back in 2007, she looked at me and she said, "You know, that's not such a funny question." She said, "I do believe, especially if you put in service requests that you can slow down your case."
And what she meant by that is that your case is going on a certain track. And when you file a service request, you actually can pull it off that track while somebody else retrieves the file to see what's going on with it, and then sending it back. Actually, sending in multiple service requests or doing repeated service requests at USCIS can cause you problems.
I think at the embassy, they've done a pretty good job of setting up these filters so they basically don't even see your requests. But anecdotally, based on things that I've seen over time, when I've seen the interactions that people have had with the State Department at the National Visa Center and at the embassies, I do think that you can make them so angry that they just put your case up on the shelf. I wouldn't say that they would deny a case because you bother them too much. But I also do think that too many repeated requests can cause frustration on their end and make them want to work on your case less. We've definitely had people be told by the State Department, "Stop emailing us. We'll let you know. There's nothing to tell you now. Please leave us alone." Those kinds of things. And I think, at that stage, you really do need to stop.
You might need to think about suing them at any of these stages, but just bothering them for the sake of bothering them, the squeaky wheel doesn't always get the grease. I would advise you to do this with caution and to do it in limited circumstances and not, just because you can, keep sending an email. I mean, just think about if it cost you $100 to contact them each time, how would you handle things differently? Just because it's easy to contact them, or at least to send a message or to make a service request, doesn't mean that you should.
I hope this makes sense. If you have questions, give us a call 314-961-8200. You can always join us in that Facebook Group I mentioned, Immigrant Home. We'd love to have you subscribe to our YouTube channel. That way, whenever we update a new video, which we do every day, you'll be the first to find out. And then, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you'll find me, usually around noon Central Time, answering as many of your immigration related questions as I can on our YouTube channel and in the Facebook group. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
