Trying to obtain my "Absence of Criminal Records" Certificate incites so much rage in me I might in fact end up with a criminal record! This week so far, and its only Wednesday afternoon, has been a series of losses and victories. First, the losses:
1. It has been 11 days since my LiveScan submission, and I was supposed to receive the results in 7. Luckily the CA DOJ provides an automated hotline where you can call, enter your ATI number (that appears on the bottom of your submission) and find out the status! Unfortunately, there is no record of me in their system. So, I call the number provided on their website, a number specifically given out if "The automated response system has no record of your submission". A woman at the DOJ picks up the phone, refuses to listen to me, tells me she can't help me, can't give me the information, yells it a couple more times, and hangs up on me. A series of phone calls later, I find myself driving up the 67 freeway to El Cajon to the main office of the LiveScan agency I submitted my finger prints through. This "main office" is a counter at a car wash. The man was very nice, but in the end, completely useless. He did do a re-submission for free, but was no help with finding out my status. I tried my luck on Tuesday as well, with the same results.
2. Alex Dickerson, a current student at IESE that went through her own nightmarish visa story, gave me a phone number and an e-mail address for the FBI Criminal Records Division. Apparently a nice man named Gary got her her stuff in a matter of days (as opposed to the 13 weeks) after she gave them her sob story. I called the number and the very nice lady sweetly informed me that there was no way to expedite, and that they were more bogged down than ever because all of the 2010 Census workers need to be fingerprinted.
3. I then e-mail this Gary gentleman my sob story, and offered to resubmit all my documents to him. As of Wednesday afternoon, I had not heard back.
So, 3 defeats for Kate.
But, there were some victories!
1. Apparently, the US Department of State: Bureau of Consular Affairs is a lot more tech-savvy than the California DOJ. They have a status check on their website where, with simply your DOB, last name, and last 4 digits of your SSN, you can find out what's happening to your application! Mine, apparently, is in the final processing stages and will be mailed to me on Friday! Woohoo!!
2. After what will simply be referred to as "the closet incident", and a couple of days to calm down, I once again called the bitch @ the DOJ who hung up on me. She once again told me she couldn't help me that I had to check with my employer and that since I was OBVIOUSLY applying for a job, she couldn't help me. Right before she was about to hang up again, I cut her off in time to tell her "I AM NOT APPLYING FOR A JOB! THIS IS FOR A VISA!" She fell silent. Then in a soft voice said "Oh, Ok. I"ll transfer you". I then talked to a very nice gentleman who told me my submission had been received yesterday (guess that first one was a lost cause) and that it had already gone out in the mail to my home address. Wooohooo!!
3. Finally, after many fruitless attempts with other incompetent individuals, I got into contact with Mr. Joe Ewing, Notary Public. Mr. Ewing, apparently, has done this, and more than once. He knew all the steps for getting an international document apostillized, and would be able to do it all, down to picking up the document from my mom's house, and taking it back. He also informed me that there were 3 steps for apostillizing FBI records for international use:
1. COPY CERTIFICATION BY DOCUMENT CUSTODIAN AFFIDAVIT. This needs to be notarized and submitted with the document. I'm not sure why, as its the original that must be notarized, but whatever.
2. This affidavit then must be authenticated.
3. This authentication is then overnight-ed to the Secretary of State in Sacramento, where it finally gets it's apostille.
I'll obviously follow up wtih him more, just to understand the steps, but this all sounds good. I'm assuming he'll charge a hefty but if he can get it done, with no stress on my mom, its allll worth it. Hi, new best friend!
We'll call that 2.5 victories. Mr. Ewing could still turn out to be shady.
