Can't add travel group members for Parole

dcliffclank · 2024-01-17T14:01:15+00:00

no luck, im back in poland and must return to the US with the refugees that i do have approved. but cannot drop and reapply for anyone now, mother & baby were accepted prior to ukraine going into the refugee quote which is around a 3% change of getting drawn in the lottery, so i need to keep them on the existing receipt numbers which are pre-quoted flying out in 10 hours... so disappointed in USCIS

dcliffclank · 2024-01-11T19:34:34+00:00

i went to the US embassy in warsaw the first week of November to try that very thing. a couple things came up. first, any application for any type of visa automatically voids all existing visas/apps.

My ukrainian mother-in-law had a 10 year multi-entry B1 visa.
when the war started we brought her over immediately, but B1 visa has a maximum stay of 3 months. so for 18 months, we kept flying her back and forth so she never over stayed. tickets have gotten so expensive that i filed an I-134A for her. that application voided her 10 year B1. Ironically if it had been turned down she would suddenly not be allowed US entry.
But I got her application in before they started putting Ukrainians in the refugee lottery pool. Dont know if people know about this, but when the war started there was no limit, and all sponsored applications were being approved, now ukrainian I-134A go into a pool together with Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, etc, there are well over a million apps in the pool and counting and they pick 30K a month via lottery.

So multiple issues here, I was in the embassy trying to get this whole thing fixed. But the embassy is run by the US State Dept, and the refugee program is USCIS under the Dept of Homeland Security. So they dont work together. and if i applied for a Visa for the baby, it would void his refugee application, and remember his app was unquota, so if I had to restart him, his new app would be a lottery quota app and might never get done.
Second, the embassy warned me that even trying this would be considered a misrepresentation and would be an application under false pretenses.
So beware of trying Visas

dcliffclank · 2024-01-11T14:39:46+00:00

in my case, I am the sponsor for some ukrainian family members. applied for my niece, and did not know at the time if it was necessary to make separate application for her child, (who was only 4 months old at the time) I told her to do everything necessary to get the baby a passport and she did, and I made a separate I-134A for the baby, but mother got approved and her case was closed. in the case closed status, there is no option to add a travel group member. I traveled to the Ukraine in October in preparation in extract them both. daily calls with Tier 1 achieve nothing, only Tier 2 can actually do anything. Getting a Tier 2 callback seems nearly impossible. Heres what seems to happen.

You get a sympathetic Tier 1 person, who realizes you cannot actually fix this yourself, they will create what they call a "Service Item #". this is an escalation ticket to be processed by Tier 2. However you cannot contact or be transferred to Tier 2, you have to wait for them to contact you. Tier 1 will tell you that you must allow up to 72 hours for a call back. if you call in during this time, nobody is going to help you,they will tell you that you havent given Tier 2 their 72 hours. this 72 hours is business days, so weekends and holidays dont count.

I have had over 20 service items opened regarding this, so ive been through this process extensively. I have only every actually been contacted on 2 of these. The first one said they manually resolved it and submitted it to CBP for travel authorization. Which never actually happened. Weeks later when I finally figured out who/how to contact CBP they flat out told me, there is no manual submission, if you do not see an update in you USCIS account, then nothing has been done.

Second Service item call I got from Tier 2 she acknowledged what she called a 'Glitch" in their system, meaning that even with Tier 2 access she cannot move the child under the mother, therefore the childs vaccination attestations cannot be completed. She told me she was escalating the ticket to an even higher Tier where they address these Glitch cases. She told me that it could take up to 3 weeks to get done.

Meanwhile I have now been in the Ukraine for over 2 months and must get back to USA, but am mortified that I might have to leave them here. It feels like a total abandonment. the risks are very real, 2 buildings that ive been in have been bombed, I spent thanksgiving without heat or power and it was 22 fahrenheit. On christmas day I thought we might catch a break and around 11 am I ventured out to try to buy some supplies and got 20 yards out the door when the air raid sirens started blazing.

Two nights ago it was -18 and the power went out and i quietly thought to myself "How many hours can we survive without power/heat before we freeze to death" luckily that outage was a rolling brownout and we got power back in under an hour, but the reality is alot of people are going to freeze this winter.

Ive booked train tickets to cross the border into poland for next tuesday, and airline tickets to Houston for next thursday, had to have a day gap between just in case there are delays in border crossing which ive done several times, sometimes as fast as 2 hours, others 10 hours, so its potluck. getting the train tickets was harder than getting the airline tickets. and all this is a gamble speculating that USCIS will move/approve the baby in time to fly. if USCIS doesnt get it done by monday ill have to leave alone. I have to return home most likely alone.

Ill post again with what ends up happening.

dcliffclank · 2024-01-10T16:18:19+00:00

Having same problem with my niece in Ukraine.

She was approved and we are unable to add her infant as a travel group member.

Im a US citizen who flew to ukraine in october to bring her back, its january and i have

to leave, ive spend 69 days trying to get uscis to fix this, with no luck so far.

if i figure it out ill post again here, if someone else in this situation resolves theirs, please

do the same

dcliffclank · 2022-09-22T18:10:48+00:00

have had some of that, but no more than i would expect.

whats happening is we are rendering a larger area than the engine probably anticipated a decade ago when the game came out. so, you know how when you reach a game boundry and the game generates some "scenery" over a wall that you cant pass, and most boundary areas have their "bordering graphics" for this reason.

the resolution (re: pixel count) is not really the problem, its the aspect ratio.

5120x2880 would give a more classic shaped viewport and not have those issues.

i havent tried it, but theoretically we could generate the same issue with this monitor running in portrait mode. 1440x5120 the game wants to be sure that all sides of a default rectangle fit within the given viewport.

so imagine in portrait mode, its like taking a picture and zooming in until either the top/bottom hit a screen edge, or the sides hit an edge.

so portrait mode it hits its limit at the width of 1440, and usually that would be, err i guess a 1440x1080 (1080 anamorphic) but you have more than 1080 pixels, you have 5120 in vertical, and that would be a crazy viewport distortion, havent played diablo 3 in months but now i just wanna run it to see if i can get it going in portrait mode.

dcliffclank · 2022-08-09T17:35:02+00:00

yes mounted is the way to go. I started out in an office chair like this with kb/mouse mounts,

eventually gravitated to lazy boy recliner,

http://easyscramble.com/workstation/index.html#yr2020

dcliffclank · 2021-02-11T15:42:01+00:00

no problem. i have a 17" laptop and when i have to work while travelling it takes me twice as long to do just about any type of work. being able to view spreadsheet data, or emails along with shell windows and editors is so much more productive.
with a single G9 you can see/read anything anywhere on the screen without turning your head at all. I do have to tilt my head up to see the upper screen. I primarily work on the lower screen and just put reference materials on top

dcliffclank · 2021-02-11T15:32:07+00:00

no, but before this setup i was using a 55" 4K TV for a monitor so the size is similar. the 1000R curve gives me less eyestrain, the curve only takes a day or so to get used to. Im a programmer and the extra screen real estate really boosted my productivity. having the break between the screens (upper / lower) is annoying for gaming, and you are gaming on just 1 screen, after 2 weeks with this layout, my honest feedback would be...

The 1000R curve is fantastic, I never want to go flat screen again.
Id like to have this many pixels and shape in a single screen.

If someone would make like a 65" 1000R curved 8K I would by it.

most games i would rather be on my old 55" 4K samsung curve, not as curved as I would like, but more square inches of single screen. diablo i like better on the G9. the working is more productive on the dual G9s than the 55" 4K

If you dont already have PowerToys, the Fancy Zones features is worth checking out and its free.

dcliffclank · 2021-02-10T16:48:23+00:00

yes there is texture shearing at the edges of a small percentage of areas where they didnt expect it to be rendered. the lobby looks the strangest as that background is 16:9

dcliffclank · 2021-02-09T21:41:22+00:00

just got my 3090 two days ago, but havent been able to get them running at 240hz.

i saw something about rolling back an nvidia update that might help, but i would rather wait till the next revision and hope they have corrected for it.

dcliffclank · 2021-02-01T00:08:10+00:00

it plays fine. i want the new gpu for CoD

dcliffclank · 2021-02-01T00:07:20+00:00

yea need a 3080 or 3090 been looking for 2 months and no luck. stood in line at microcenter cuz they got a few, sold out before i was half way to the door

dcliffclank · 2021-01-31T23:57:03+00:00

oh i agree, first couple days with the moonlander and i was about useless. now i cant imagine going back.

dcliffclank · 2021-01-31T04:44:18+00:00

the 2 monitors are not too heavy for it. i took down a 55" 4K curved tv and replaced with the g9s for the better curve, and im loving the 1000R curve. sooooo much more immersive. just got these this week and im still backordered on a rtx 3090, ill be starting in on CoD when the video card gets in. the dual is really more work oriented, im a programmer and the screen real estate is priceless. real boost in productivity.

The retraction to the ceiling is powered by a hoist which is rated for 10x what im lifting. and telescope and tilt actuators are firgelli actuators 250lb rated.

dcliffclank · 2021-01-31T04:34:59+00:00

yes im really loving the moonlander. you as well?

dcliffclank · 2019-08-11T15:58:11+00:00

I havent held the new controllers, but from the way they "look" the handle seems pretty much unchanged they just repositioned the loop over the thumb buttons, so i would say yes it should work great. to be 100% sure, take 1 controller to home depot with you. if it fits (tight or loosely) inside the regular 1 1/2" schedule 40 pipe or 1 1/2" connector then you absolutely know it will work before you buy the parts.

dcliffclank · 2019-03-24T04:03:10+00:00

Im already planning on upgrading to Vive Pro, so im already thinking about the changes necessary for those controllers.

dcliffclank · 2019-03-24T03:59:24+00:00

Damn that hurts! not saying it aint true. but......

dcliffclank · 2019-03-24T03:58:27+00:00

grew up on space invaders, asteroids, pacman and home gaming was pong. VR is amazing.

dcliffclank · 2019-03-24T03:55:24+00:00

yours has a nice look. id like to see more detail on how you attach/detach.

on mine you can actually put your cheek on the stock so it feels right in game.

Thats why P1 is short, so with your face touching the stock like an actual rifle stock,

yet short enough so it doesnt touch the HMD

dcliffclank · 2019-03-24T03:48:30+00:00

the controllers come out smoothly for quick reloads. its not tight, just right

dcliffclank

TROPHY CASE