Hello Friends,
Many here have great advice and I am can use some at this point I have posted here in the past, but not lately. I am in the U.S. Navy and stationed in Iceland.
The process for me marrying my Ukrainian Fiancee in the country of Iceland is to use established guidelines in the Navy that require me to send my marriage papers through the local Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The field office here then forwards the papers to their main headquarters in Washington. These people look at them and send to the state department. In essence, the NCIS acts in the same capacity as the regional service centers in the U.S.A. Well, I dropped my papers into the local office on 21 November and have waited. In February, March and April, this office sent emails to the NCIS headquarters asking for an "Estimated Date of Completion." They never got any response. After many calls to the director of the local office, he finally called the main headquarters and found out that the person who was handling marriages in the headquarters of NCIS had moved to another assignment after 9/11 and all marriage packages have essentially been sitting on a desk. Of course me persistence and emails about this reached to other countries that are doing the same for military personnel and this thing has many angry people, including myself. I was able to bend the ear of the Admiral on the base and he has been putting pressure locally on people to get some answers and take care of my case. I am wondering from people here if they have every used their Congressman to expedite their papers when all avenues have failed? Is this route usually successfull in getting answers? I am going to wait about one week for answers to the Admirals pressure, then I am going to ask for investigation into my situation if this is the best route for me to take. The process had already been bottled necked at the NCIS before this happened, with marriage taking 8 to 12 months, and now I cannot imagine how long I must wait with no one processing papers. I could have married her in the U.S.A. through the regular process, but I chose this one, because of the complications of marrying her there and then coming back to Iceland to have the military requirement for housing to deal with.
Thanks for you ear on this one and yes I will continue to serve with pride and professionalism for our country, but I expect that we who spend our lives in harms way and so far from home will at least receive reciprocal care for our life and happiness! Jim
