A couple of weeks someone was talking to me about how she wanted an accommodation from someone within a big bureaucracy. She did not get it and was perplexed and slightly angry that she got know. As she saw it, a little accommodation would have been more efficient not only for her but for the big bureacracy. Ever the contrarian, I explained that if certain things need to be accomplished by tens of thousands of people, part of the large…

A month ago I last wrote about  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s customer service system, called in true-blue government fashion a long name and a string of letters – this time the National Customer Service Center or NCSC, or as people actually say, the USCIS “800 Number.” I was very optimistic that a change to take place on August 16, 2013, involving the NCSC would mean better service to attorneys using the system. The change would result in attorneys not…

On June 11, 2013, I wrote about how when an attorney calls the USCIS National Customer Service Center (NCSC)  the wait is more than an hour, but when an alien calls about his or her own case, he or she gets nearly immediate help. It turns out I was not just being paranoid. Lawyers were being treated differently. The NCSC works on a two-tier system. Normal inquiries go to Tier One and “unique and complex cases,” i.e., cases you actually…

As I have written about before, USCIS has a National Customer Service Center (NCSC) where customers can call to ask about the status of their cases through an 800 number, (800) 375-5283. Recently a former client came to see me about delays in a benefit he was seeking and we discussed suing USCIS because of the delay. While in my office, he said he wanted to call the “800 number” to see if there had been any late-breaking progress in…