The family of Ms. Jin, a Chinese woman in Los Angeles, is in a hurry to renew her passport because of its expiration date. However, they have begged their grandparents by phone, email and even sent an urgent letter from their lawyer to request the Chinese Consulate to handle her case as soon as possible, but they did not expect that the Chinese Consulate would just keep playing the official game and not take it seriously. Ms. Jin lamented that the Chinese Communist Party’s official website is full of words, but in reality, when Chinese people really need urgent help, it is very disappointing.
(Chinese Communist Consulate in Los Angeles)
Ms. Jin is reportedly a Chinese student in Los Angeles studying on an F1 visa, and her husband and two children came to the U.S. on F2 visas to accompany her.
In May 2020, she found out that her son’s passport would expire in August 2020, her daughter’s, in December 2020, and her husband’s in March 2021.
So she called the Los Angeles Consulate, but no one answered, and she had to leave it at that.
In August 2020, her husband’s application for immigration for exceptional talent was approved. The attorney advised that according to the green card schedule published by USCIS, the family could begin applying for a green card as of October 1, 2020. However, the passport that needs to be submitted must be valid for at least six months, and neither her husband’s nor her children’s passports were eligible, so she was told to contact the consulate to renew her passport as soon as possible.
Ms. Kim was very anxious and heard that she could send an email directly to the consulate for help, so she rushed to send an email.
2 days later, she received a reply from the consulate: “Please provide the reason for needing an urgent license and proof of relevant information, including the first page of the passport, legal identification in the U.S., proof of residence in the U.S. (including driver’s license or ID card) application form.”
Ms. Jin immediately asked her lawyer to write a lawyer certification letter as an emergency certificate, and then attached all relevant documents and forms. But after a few days of not receiving a response, Ms. Kim pressed the issue again and the consulate sent a short message, “Please provide your application form and relevant documents for the green card application.”
Ms. Kim was puzzled. Did the attorney’s letter not count? What exactly does the green card application mean? Wasn’t it the one that was sent to the Chinese Consulate before?
In desperation, Ms. Kim sent all the documents she thought were relevant or even irrelevant to the consulate, but after a few days, she still had not received a reply.
When Ms. Kim asked again, the consulate sent an email, and the response was similar to the first one: “Please provide the reason why you need an urgent permit and the relevant information to prove it.” Ms. Jin felt that what she had done before was useless.
Ms. Jin thought, “Does the consulate think that “the green card application is in the queue” is not an urgent reason?
So, Ms. Kim had to think of other ways. She asked her school for help, and the school’s International Student Affairs Office was worried about her and wrote a letter to the consulate.
In late October, Ms. Kim again prepared a carefully worded email, even providing 15 pieces of private information in detail. Ms. Kim stayed up late into the night to prepare these documents. In her email letter, she mentioned, “The expiration of our passports has caused us a lot of inconvenience in studying, living and maintaining our status in the U.S. …… Thank you so much! Pleading for acceptance! “Ms. Kim confessed that she almost changed the word “plead” to “kneel” – she just got down on her knees and begged the consulate! She almost changed the word “plead” to “kneel” – she was close to getting down on her knees and begging the consulate to “give her a hand.
I didn’t expect that the consulate would just ignore her: “Hello, because of the high number of passports issued during the epidemic, we would like to give priority to those who need to use their passports urgently, so we would like to ask you to provide documents for urgent use. If you can provide it, you will be given priority, so please explain the reason for urgent use and provide the documents.”
Ms. Kim said that she had written more than ten letters of urgency, but she had repeatedly run into a wall and received a thousand official responses, which made her frustrated and angry, and finally gave up and went through various maintenance and status conversions with her expired passport.
Fortunately, they were able to get fingerprinted a few months later, but they did not know if the expired passport would affect the processing of their work cards and return cards.
In February 2021, Ms. Kim’s husband’s old driver’s license expired, and he went to the DMV with his expired passport to apply for a new license. Although the staff initially questioned the expired passport, when Ms. Kim’s husband honestly explained his predicament, “We also wanted to renew it very much, but the consulate would not accept it.”
Fortunately, the staff expressed understanding and pointed out, “Although your passport is expired, the U.S. visa page has not yet expired, so we can accept it.” Finally, they helped to get a new driver’s license.
Ms. Kim was recently preparing to transfer her child to a new school because she had moved. The new school district said it would not deny her child’s enrollment based on passport expiration. She was so relieved.
Ms. Jin said she felt that the public authorities in the U.S. were more humane after all the hassle. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party’s authorities talk a good game on the official website, but in practice, they are disheartening and even annoying.
Ms. Kim questioned, “Where is the (Chinese consulate’s so-called) humane stance? It’s been so long since my passport expired, and I’ve been pleading by email over and over again… If applying for a green card to be scheduled and maintaining status in the U.S. are not urgent reasons, what is?”
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