Tuesday, July 20, 2010

On dealing with the federal bureaucracy known as Jennifer Noronha

Since the US Embassy of Buenos Aires rejected my wife for a tourist visa, I've had a wonderful education in just how immovable the federal bureaucracy is.

I've filed a complaint with my congressman, John Culberson out of Houston. His staff forwarded my complaint, and we received back a response filled with spin and falseties from Jennifer Noronha, the consul general of the US Embassy to Argentina in Buenos Aires. I had Culberson's staff complain again, pointing out the inconsistencies in Jennifer W. Noronha's response. Ms. Noronha sent us back the bureaucractic equivalent of a middle-finger.

So, I complained to my Senator. Same thing, except this time Jen Noronha decided to simply forward to the Senator's office the original response, but with names changed. She continues to help the interviewing consular officer coverup the fact that the original officer didn't know the law.

Now, the day after we were treated so horribly by the US Embassy, we found out that Ceci is pregnant, so we wouldn't have been visiting the US anyway (our plans were that we would have been there right now).

Even so, Jennifer Noronha refuses to reply to any of my polite emails. She refuses to take her job seriously as consul general of the US Embassy. She even refuses to reply to any specific details I've raised in my complaints. I'm very tempted to tell our story and Consular General Noronha's role in it and then make it the first result in Google for "Jennifer Noronha" and all variations.

It doesn't seem right that federal bureaucrats can act with such mendacious impunity and no one ever knows about it.

Edit to note: amusingly, this is already the #1 result for Jennifer Noronha, and it's not even the result of work that I could do to make sure that it stays the #1 result for the next 20 years.
Edit 2: probably depends on your data center, as this post is now 11th or so when I just searched it.

7 comments:

Jenn said...

Evan, if you have the skills to do that I think you should on behalf of all us schmucks who don't know how.

BA said...

It will take 15 minutes of my time. And considering than ol' Jen Noronha won't even reply to my (so far) polite emails...unbelievable.

Of course, I may have to deal with the BA embassy again if/when we do move to the US, so maybe I shouldn't...

Unknown said...

OHMIGOSH Evan! Congrats! That's so exciting. :)

nat said...

I had a very similar - and equally horrific - experience with Ms. Noronha, including congressional appeals and the works.

I loved your expression "bureaucratic equivalent of a middle finger".

Really, she ought to be exposed for the nasty person she is.

Anonymous said...

Hi Evan,
I had a very, very similar experience with Jen. I tried through my congressman, through my senator (who happens to be Chuck Schumer) to no avail. I e-mailed and called. I even received an e-mail from someone at the embassy asking that I "do not contact them anymore...." Are these the people whose salaries I pay with my huge taxes? I pointed that out to them. I guess they did not like it. I just find this to be legal discrimination. Check out my Project in Facebook (The Pablo Anti-Discrimination Project).

Anonymous said...

She is in Afghanistan now. Maybe there's a better consul?

Anonymous said...

Jennifer Noronha sucks.