I’ve only been to one place in Ft. Smith, Arkansas: the Homeland Security Office.
And I highly recommend it.
Our I-600A fingerprints are going to expire on December 13th. Meaning we have to give them again to prove that we are still not criminals.
Who has time for crime when there’s a toddler in the house?
(Can you believe it’s been 15 months since those fingerprints?)
You may remember in mid-November that we went to Memphis to give our 2nd set of fingerprints and ask that they be sent to the US Consulate in Guangzhou where our beautiful file sits in a dust free, temperature controlled, golden room. I’m sure.
The Memphis office did not like our situation one bit so they gave us the old red tape and explained that we needed an official appointment for fingerprints and our appointment today would allow us to make an appointment for fingerprints which we should do in Ft. Smith.
Thank goodness Memphis has BBQ.
The Ft. Smith office proved to be very efficient. Within a day of receiving our fax they called and offered us their first open appointment: December 2nd. We’ll take it.
We arrived to a not-too-busy-at-8am office. We were immediately escorted to the back and the process began…on a computer!
Hubs: You can scan in our fingerprints electronically?
Lady: Yes. We can scan them in. If I think your fingerprints aren’t clear enough then I’ll also do the ink set today and hold them. Oh, your fingerprints will be just fine. No ink set necessary.
Hubs: You mean we won’t have to come back to Ft. Smith. Our friends went to Memphis and had them done, but they were not clear so she has to go back.
Lady: Goodness no. You’ll never have to come back here.
Hubs: And these will go to the Consulate in Guangzhou.
Lady: They will go into a system that the consulate can access. Your official document is stamped and proves that you have updated your finger prints.
Hubs: Is there anything else we need to do?
Boss: I’m not sure, but I will go across the waiting room and set up an official appointment with that office and you can ask them for more details.
Hubs: Your office is so different from Memphis!
Lady: Yeah, they just had a big turnover.
And with that, we wiped the water off our hands, walked across the waiting room and went to another window. We asked our questions. They seemed to give very informative answers. And then we were done.
We grabbed some Starbucks and headed back to the wilderness retreat.
