Does USCIS listen to US senators or congressmen and women?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. We are in some dark times right now. We have these clowns running USCIS who have not been validly appointed. The Head of Department of Homeland Security and the Assistant Acting Head of Homeland Security, have not been appointed properly, and they are causing all kinds of trouble within USCIS. One of the questions that we are asked from time to time is, "Jim, should we go ahead? Our case is taking so long. Should we go ahead and contact our US senator or our congressman or our congresswoman?"
Here's my response to that, "You can do that, but don't get your hopes up. Not much is going to happen." The fact is that at these offices, most US senators or congressmen or congresswomen have an office in Washington, D.C., and then they might have offices in some of the bigger cities in the home state.
In that scenario, there are usually people working as intern. Some are paid, some are unpaid, I think most are unpaid. If you move up the ranks in the office, eventually you might get to be the immigration liaison. What that is, is you're the person that when a person with a pending Green Card or pending citizenship case or pending visa case, calls the senator's office or the congresswoman's office, then you get to handle that. You have them fill out a privacy form, and then you send them information about your case. Then they try to liaison with USCIS. They reach out to USCIS. But in my experience, the same lame responses that you're getting to your e-mails or your phone calls, are the same lame excuses that USCIS gets and provides to the US senator.
Remember there's three branches of government. There's the Federal Court, there's Congress and there's the Executive Branch. The Executive Branch can do whatever it wants. It doesn't have to listen to a member of Congress. They might talk respectfully, but in my experience, very little happens when a US senator or congressperson's low-level intern reaches out to USCIS. Really the only answer, if you want to get moving on your case, is to sue them. They're just not that impressed or worried about a US senator. Of course, we have people running the agencies that are completely unlawful and have no business being there. That should educate you a little bit on whether or not getting a member of Congress to help with your case is going to do the trick.
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Thanks a lot. Have a good day.
