"My case was denied because we missed the interview."
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, San Diego, and Washington DC.
I am going to an interview today, of all days, for a nice young man who had a green card application pending, and it was delayed, delayed, delayed. And we filed a lawsuit to find out what the problem was. What is going on with this case? The US Attorney sent me back two letters. One was an interview notice, and the other was a denial notice. And the immigration service claimed that my client had been notified properly of an interview, that he had failed to appear, and that his green card application was denied due to abandonment for the alleged failure to appear.
But lo and behold, my crafty paralegal noticed that the notices were sent to the wrong city, state, and zip. So they had his address right, but they had his city and his state and his zip code wrong. And luckily, we had a copy of the 45, the green card application that he filed, which had his proper mailing address all the way, including city, state, and zip, included in the application.
Now, luckily for this fellow, he had the lawsuit on file, so I was able to quickly send back what those erroneous decisions were and notified the U S Attorney, and they not only reopened the case, they reset it for interview, and that is the interview that I'm going to today.
Now, that doesn't always happen, and you don't always have that luxury. You don't always have that means of communication. Now, the good thing is this fellow had included his proper address on his application and he had not moved. Now, that's where we really see the problem of undelivered interview notices arise is that when the people move. And then the question is did you properly notify USCIS of the move? And do you have proof that you properly notified USCIS of the move?
So what we're trying to do at this stage is demonstrate that it's USCIS's error and not the applicant's error. So if you move and you do not properly update your address, it's a very good chance that you might get a notice at your old address and you might get a denial notice at your old address. And if so, that's on you. That's why it's so important to always update your address. And we have people telling me 12 different reasons why they want to keep their old address. They have an uncle checking their mail there or they're not sure how long they're going to be at their current address. Doesn't matter.
This is also another reason why you need to get access to the online portal and make sure that you check it regularly so that you can see if there are any updates that were mailed. You actually can see the forms that were sent on your online portal. So if you aren't doing these things, if you aren't monitoring these things, and the interview notice goes to your prior address and you fail to notify them of the address change, that's going to be on you and you're starting all over.
If it's their mistake, you're going to be able to notify them that it was their mistake and hopefully get the case reopened, although without a lawsuit on file, that's going to be a lot trickier. We were lucky to turn it around literally in three weeks and get the matter set for interview, and that's what I'm going to today.
So wish us luck. Hope you all are well. If you have any questions, give us a call, (314) 961-8200. You can email us info at hackinglawpractice.com. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is Immigrant Home. If you like this video, we ask that you please share it out on social, that you subscribe to our YouTube channel, and that you join us every Tuesday and Thursday, usually at noon central, where we answer as many immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
