Bureaucracy American style, part three

You can find parts one and two here and here.

R and I took the Boychen and my stack of original documents to the embassy today to complete the application process for Boychen's registration of birth, passport, and social security number. Because I had mailed the application materials for advance review, all we had to do was sign the forms in the presense of a consular official and pay.

It took two hours.

US Citizen Services works on a first come first serve basis; we were number 14. Somehow, I was under the impression that because I had taken advantage of the opportunity to have everything reviewed and approved in advance that our application would be expedited, that since all we had to do was sign and pay we'd be in a different line. Basically, I thought that since we had made their jobs easier and shortened the wait time for everybody by sending in the forms in advance that we'd get preferential treatment. In fairness, nothing on the embassy website said this but the phone call I got on Friday certainly left me with this mistaken impression. Or maybe I was just kidding myself. It would certainly make sense: to encourage people to send in the forms in for review so all the problems are solved in advance and you're not wasting everybody's time at the counter not knowing your husband's social security number, not knowing if your daughter has a social security number, and not having your daughter's birth certificate with you (yes, I'm talking about you Number 10) send those of us who used the mail preview option to the front of the line. Over time, more and more people would do this, wait times would go down, embassy employee's jobs would be easier, and there would be fewer complaints and grumbling people in the waiting room. But that's not the way it works, and we had to wait a very long time just to pay and sign.

But pay and sign we finally did. The registration of birth and passport will arrive in the mail in a couple of weeks - in the envelope that I had to pre-stamp. How cheap is that? Seriously. If you want to charge me for the postage just add it to the cost of the application but don't make me stamp my own envelope, that's just insulting. As an American living abroad I'm required to file income taxes and depending on income pay taxes and males are required by law to register for the draft even if they've lived their entire lives abroad (but cannot automatically pass on their citizenship). The least they could do in return is buy me a freaking stamp.