US Citizenship & Immigration Service Customer Service

Calling the USCIS was a disaster. The 800-375-5283 phone number is set up to rely heavily on a virtual assistant, and the assistant is actually quite rude. At one point, it threatened to hang up on me, which I have never had happen before. I can't believe that a government agency would actually program a virtual assistant to act that way toward customers, but I guess if you're an immigrant, they think they can treat you however they want. In the end, the assistant did hang up on me, so I'll have to call a second time, but I'll need to sort out how to use the system a lot better before I try again.

It's understandable that the USCIS probably gets a lot of phone calls. Given this is the main phone number for immigration, there are doubtless thousands of phone calls a day from people who want to plead their case, to people who want to check their status, to people who want to take care of tasks such as biometrics. That makes me think it may be better to contact my local office instead of calling the federal number.

When I called, the interaction started easily enough. The virtual assistant greeted me with, "Thank you for calling the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service." Then, there was a Spanish message, and then, there was another speech about work authorizations that stated, "To ensure a high quality of service, we record our calls. You are likely eligible to apply for employment authorization if you have recently applied for parole or have applied for asylum. You can do this online and the work permit can be mailed to your address if it is approved." Then, there was another message about people from Ecuador.

After all that talking, which took a couple of minutes, the virtual agent told me, "I can understand complete sentences, how can I help you?" I told it, "Talk to customer service," and it told me, "I know you want to speak to someone, but to help me get you to the right person, please tell me what you need. If you continue to ask me for a customer service agent, I will disconnect the phone call."

This was shocking to me, but I tried to tell it that I needed help scheduling my biometrics. I don't know what it thought I said, but the next response was, "Please hang up and call 911 to report an emergency." Then, it went on to tell me to call the national suicide line and offered me info on the poison control center. It followed up by asking me if I needed the information emailed to me. It then told me that I could access a lot of information online, and then, it said, "Have a nice day," and hung up on me. It was pretty much a terrible experience.