The waiting Man

I’ve been married for a year and a half now, and I’ve been living in the United States for just a bit longer than that. Looking back, we’ve managed to get a surprising amount done in that short time.

We started out in a rental house run by a classic slumlord. After a long, exhausting search, we took a bit of a gamble and bought a house at an auction. It was a risk, but it paid off. Yes, we needed to do some serious upgrading that made a big dent in my savings, and yes, we also bought a second car (it’s a pickup truck, because, well, it's America), but we finally have a place of our own and we love it there.

Then, there’s the Adjustment of Status process to get my Green Card. That is a whole different beast. Beyond costing loads of money, it takes time, time, and more time.

And then there is USCIS itself: an impenetrable fortress. There is virtually no way to find out where your application actually is in the pipeline, how much longer it will take, or what kind of progress is being made. Predictions on the internet just make it worse, so you just have to sit tight, knowing they will reach out if and when they need something.

And reach out they did. At one point, I was told they missed the payment form for my work permit. This meant re-submitting the payment along with all the work permit forms again. Fortunately, since our initial package was processed, the system had been updated so that part could be handled online.

The next Request for Evidence (RFE) was about missing tax information for 2025. I had assumed submitting my main Form 1040 was enough, but apparently, they required all the extra supporting schedules and calculation forms as well. Easy enough, I thought—I have them right here. But because of how the system works, uploading those extra pages meant re-submitting the entire Form I-864 (Affidavit of Support) and all that comes with it all over again.

But there was a catch. The much bigger hurdle was that they also missed—or misplaced, or lost, we will never find out—my medical file.

Because my original medical results from back in the Netherlands had expired before the initial application, I had to get a brand-new civil surgeon exam over here. You can’t just go to any regular family doctor; you have to pick someone from the official USCIS approved list. And when you're in a position of need, you don't have much leverage to object to the exorbitant cost.

We found a doctor on the list who had an open appointment. We went in, paid the base fee, and then paid even more because they decided I needed additional tests and shots. A week later, we picked up the infamous sealed envelope containing the official results and sent it off.

Fast forward to the latest request: they needed the medical file again.

"Easy," I thought. "I'll just go back to the same doctor, explain that USCIS needs another copy, and have him seal a new version for us."

We drove over to his office, walked up to the entrance, and were greeted by a paper notice taped to the glass: THIS OFFICE IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED.

So there we stood in the parking lot, stress levels spiking. When USCIS sends an RFE, you have a very strict window of only a few weeks to get the required documents into their hands, or your entire case—and my right to stay here—gets denied immediately.

I started calling around frantically. Half the doctors listed on the official USCIS site as approved civil surgeons didn't even work at those locations anymore. Other offices never called back. Finally, we reached a doctor who had an opening. We explained our desperate situation, and while we still had to pay out of pocket, he was genuinely understanding and only ran the tests that were strictly necessary. Sealed envelope number two was secured.

Next came the mailing process—which is an absolute, nerve-wracking exercise in patience. Because the medical results are sealed, you cannot upload them; you must physically mail the original. And that means you have to mail all the other requested documents in the same package because USCIS demands everything be in one bundle.

You send the package via USPS tracking, and then you spend the next seven days refreshing the tracking page every twenty minutes. You watch your package move from one sorting facility to the next, sit motionless in a hub for a full day, and then suddenly pop up in a city that isn't even close to the destination address.

Panicked thoughts immediately set in: Did I write the wrong address? Did I mess up the ZIP code? Is it lost forever?

Eventually, the tracking updates again. The package backtracks to the correct hub, slowly crawls toward its final destination, and finally shows that status update you were waiting for: Picked up from PO Box. Four agonizing days after that, the official USCIS portal updated to confirm they had received it.

And now? The waiting begins all over again.

And while all this is going on, there’s my family back in the Netherlands. We really want to go there, but I am not allowed to leave the country while my Green Card application is pending. If I do, my application will be completely trashed immediately.

Thankfully, my sister visited us this last summer and we enjoyed that very much, but I saw my sons for the last time at my wedding, and that separation is really starting to wear me down. On top of that, my dad is in bad shape, and I really need to fly over to see him soon.

There is a potential way to do that: Emergency Advance Parole. This is special permission to travel if you can prove there is an actual, urgent emergency back home that requires you to fly out for a limited amount of time. To apply, I need official documentation from the hospital and the care home in the Netherlands where my dad now resides.

And that is where I’ve run into the other fortress: Dutch bureaucracy, and certain people who are not very willing to cooperate.

In the Netherlands, you need explicit permission for everything. They will only give certain documents to certain authorized persons. Even though I am his oldest son, apparently, I am not that person according to the care home. And in order to get certain documents, I need to be granted authorization using the DigiD system—the online system used for government identification. Something which, for now, my dad is unable to do. So now my sister and I have to find a way to work around that.

So, while the one stack of paperwork is now resting in some USCIS officer's to-do stack, here we are with another stack of paperwork to do, trying to get the right papers from the other side of the Atlantic, just so we can apply to USCIS and pay $650 (this is America after all!) for the "privilege" of applying to see my sick father.

The waiting continues, on both fronts.