Adventures In Bureaucracy

We could have posted them two weeks ago. They were documents relating to my adjustment of status to a legal permanent resident of the US, but seeing as they included our wedding certificate, birth certificates and so on, even if only in copy form, we wanted it checked through and we wanted a receipt...so we booked an appointment to hand them all over in person.

After ten minutes of frantic running around a monolithic federal building looking for the correct entrance, (No, no, you have an appointment made over the internet. This entrance marked 'Appointments Only' is for people with appointments made in person. Go around to the front entrance. Next!) we were ushered up two escalators and stood in line breathless but on time, and when we reached the front of the line we were told that in the district of New York, this particular application can only be posted.

After ten seconds of wailing and gnashing of teeth, the woman behind the desk looked through our pack of papers anyway and corrected a couple of mistakes, which was invaluable, as little things like that can stop applications in their tracks. Anyway. She told us that because of the transmutation of the INS into the new USCIS, the address we would have to post the package to was somewhere in Missouri. She also said that she didn't have the address; that we would have to go to another desk in the building to get it.

Down two escalators...into a long tan marble-floored room where there was a man whose sole job was to direct people into one of two queues...when there wasn't anyone serving the people in those queues. When we finally reached the front of the line after someone appeared, saviour-like, to serve, we were informed that no one, yet, had the Missouri address and that there was an interim address which we were given on a slip of paper. As we walked back into the lobby, Krissa gave a cry of bureaucratically-induced dismay.

The interim address was the building we were still standing in.