It’s one thing to be waiting on a table at your favorite BBQ spot in Kansas City. It’s quite another to wait twenty-six years for a green card.
Yes—1998. That’s the year Titanic won 11 Oscars, Google was founded, and the U.S. immigration system apparently pressed the “pause” button on some cases… and never hit play again.
If you think I’m exaggerating, you haven’t met the quietly growing number of immigrants across Kansas and Missouri whose lives are still stuck in bureaucratic purgatory. As an immigration lawyer in Kansas City, I’ve seen it firsthand: people who filed applications in the 90s attended interviews in the early 2000s, and paid government filing fees that could rival a semester at KU—and yet here we are, decades later, and they’re still waiting for resolution.
At Midwest Immigration Law (MIL), we handle a wide range of services, including work permits and asylum defense. But this article isn’t about the flashy stuff. This is about the stuff nobody talks about—the forgotten files, the dusty manila folders sitting in government basements, and the people whose legal identities exist somewhere between “pending” and “we’ll get back to you.”
And the scariest part? Most of them don’t even realize they’ve been forgotten.
The Longest Wait Isn’t Always for the Bus
There’s a cruel joke that runs through immigrant communities in Kansas City: “I’ll get my green card when my kids get their Social Security.” The joke, unfortunately, is based on very real delays—delays that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security doesn’t exactly advertise.
According to USCIS statistics from 2024, there were over 9.2 million pending immigration cases, including family-based green card applications, employment visa petitions, and asylum applications. That number includes everything from your freshly filed fiancé visa to cases that predate the smartphone era. I once worked with a man who hadn’t traveled outside of Kansas City since 2001 because he was still “awaiting further notice.”
This is not just a system glitch. It’s a structural slow burn. And as an immigration lawyer in Kansas City, I can tell you: the Midwest isn’t immune.
The Curious Case of Category F2B and Family-Based Limbo
Let me introduce you to the Family Second Preference B (F2B) visa category. This is a family-based green card category for unmarried adult children of lawful permanent residents. Sounds specific? It is. And it’s notoriously backlogged.
Take Mexico or the Philippines, for instance. If you applied under F2B in 1998 from either country, you may only now be reaching the front of the line—if your documents didn’t get lost, denied, or need refiling along the way. The Department of State’s July 2025 Visa Bulletin indicates that priority dates remain stuck in 2001 for some F2B cases from Mexico.
In Kansas City, we’ve seen these kinds of cases clog the courts and delay lives. I’ve had clients ask whether they should withdraw their application because it’s been so long that they’ve forgotten what they were even applying for. And here’s the real kicker: if you get married while in F2B status, you lose your eligibility. So yes, love is illegal in this category—at least until the green card arrives.
The downsides of this archaic process are enormous. Families have been split for decades. People delay major life milestones. And legal pathways to citizenship are forfeited simply because USCIS couldn’t move a file from one shelf to another.
Immigration Backlogs Are a Global Problem—But America’s Is in a League of Its Own
To be fair, bureaucratic delays aren’t uniquely American. But they are uniquely American in scale.
In Canada, for example, the government reported in 2023 that it had cleared over 90% of its COVID-era immigration backlog in just 18 months, utilizing a combination of digital tools and targeted staffing. The U.S.? We’ve been trying to modernize Form I-130 since the Bush administration.
In Germany, immigrants can often get work authorization within three months. In contrast, here in Kansas, I’ve had clients wait 16 months or more just for an initial work permit despite following every rule in the book.
And no, it’s not just government inefficiency. It’s also the lack of investment in processing infrastructure, combined with stringent vetting policies, that delays even the most straightforward applications. While some of this is meant to protect national security, it’s often applied with the subtlety of a chainsaw at a knitting circle.
At Midwest Immigration Law, we’ve adopted our systems to track delays, expedite cases with congressional assistance, and re-file when applications are lost or missing. I’ll admit—it sometimes feels like tilting at windmills. But now and then, a long-forgotten case finally gets dusted off and approved. It’s bittersweet. The client’s life restarts. But we’re left wondering—why did it take 20 years?
Big Tech Hasn’t Been Immune, Either
You’d think billion-dollar companies like Google or Meta wouldn’t get caught in these slow gears. And yet, in 2022, Amazon had to delay the transfer of over 400 H-1B visa employees to new jobs due to processing backlogs at USCIS. The legal staff at these companies includes immigration attorneys who charge five times what local firms in Kansas City do—but they still hit the same red tape.
This gives small businesses and startups in Kansas City even less hope. Without deep pockets or legal firepower, many simply give up on hiring foreign talent altogether.
As an immigration lawyer in Kansas City, I’ve seen local software companies lose developers and engineers due to delays. One case involved a brilliant Ukrainian coder—already in the U.S. on a J-1 visa—who had a job offer but couldn’t start because his work authorization was “in review” for nine months. He ended up returning to Kyiv. That same company later went under.
When delays can cost jobs and livelihoods, we’re no longer talking about paperwork. We’re talking about economic sabotage on a national scale.
The Ugly Side of the “Case Status” Page
If you’ve ever checked your case on the USCIS website, you’ll know it reads like a robotic oracle:
“Case Was Received.”
“We Are Actively Reviewing Your Case.”
“Your Case Is Taking Longer Than Expected.”
No kidding.
These automated messages are part of a communications strategy that’s less about informing people and more about buying time. In reality, many of these cases are not being actively reviewed. They’re sitting. Somewhere. Possibly misfiled and possibly lost. Perhaps it is being used to support an annual USCIS “pending workload” budget report.
Clients often ask if calling USCIS helps. It doesn’t. You’ll talk to a Tier 1 officer who reads from the same script as the website. Only after multiple escalations, letters from a member of Congress, and sometimes a media inquiry do things begin to move. And that’s a luxury most immigrants don’t have.
At MIL, we’ve had to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) our own clients’ files just to find out what happened to a green card application from 2006. We didn’t find the application, but we did find a copy of a prior adjustment request that was never processed. Imagine paying for a service and then having to sue the company just to prove that you made the payment.
“Administrative Closure” – The Legal Purgatory With a Pretty Name
Here’s a term most folks outside the legal world don’t know: administrative closure. It’s when a case isn’t denied or approved, just… shelved. Sometimes due to missing documents, sometimes because a hearing was missed, and sometimes because a judge decided the case wasn’t urgent enough.
The problem? Many immigrants think this means they’re in the clear. They’re not. Administrative closure doesn’t grant legal status. It’s a legal vacuum. You can’t work. You can’t leave the country. And if ICE decides to re-calendar your case (yes, that’s a thing), you’re back in court, sometimes decades later, with a new judge and a new interpretation of the law.
As an immigration lawyer in Kansas City, I’ve represented individuals who were unaware their case was closed until they were arrested. One man from Nigeria lived in the U.S. for 17 years under the assumption that his asylum case was pending. It wasn’t. It had been closed in 2008 because he had moved and hadn’t received a notice.
We helped him reopen it. But it required thousands of dollars in filings, motions, and affidavits—money he didn’t have. At MIL, we believe legal services shouldn’t be reserved for the wealthy, which is why we offer a flat rate that he can afford. But not everyone is that lucky.
Midwest Immigration Law has provided professional assistance in dozens of such cases, sometimes succeeding where others have given up. Sometimes not. But always fighting.
When Waiting Becomes a Way of Life
One of the most heartbreaking things I’ve witnessed as an immigration lawyer in Kansas City is how quickly “just waiting for a response” becomes a permanent lifestyle. People stop planning weddings. They stop applying for promotions. They put off buying homes because—what if they’re asked to leave tomorrow?
I once worked with a woman from El Salvador who came to the U.S. in 1997 after fleeing gang violence. She applied for asylum, followed every procedure, checked in with ICE annually, and renewed her work permit religiously. Fast forward 26 years, and she was still waiting for her final asylum decision. In that time, she became a homeowner, raised two U.S.-born kids, and even ran a small bakery in Kansas City. She wasn’t undocumented—she was just… forgotten.
This isn’t rare. It’s disturbingly common. And while the resilience of these individuals inspires me, I also can’t help but feel that this system—if we can still call it that—demands way too much patience from people who already gave up everything to be here.
Court Reform? Not Without Congressional Coffee First
If you think these problems are invisible to lawmakers, think again. They know. Oh, they know. The issue isn’t a lack of awareness—it’s inertia.
In 2024, the American Immigration Council reported that immigration judges had a backlog of over 3.5 million active cases. That’s roughly one judge for every 4,500 cases. To put that in perspective, if each judge worked 250 days a year and spent just one hour per case, it would still take over 18 years to get through their docket.
And while Congress has approved minor increases to immigration court staffing, it hasn’t restructured the system to prioritize speed and fairness. Immigration law is still treated like a stepchild in the federal judiciary, operated under the Department of Justice instead of as an independent court system. That means political winds blow directly onto judicial robes, and decisions sometimes reflect enforcement goals more than due process.
At Midwest Immigration Law (MIL), we’ve filed motions that waited two years for a hearing date, only for the court to reschedule it for another nine months. Clients feel hopeless. I feel furious. However, we continue to file because someone has to.
Kansas and Missouri: Friendly Neighbors, Different Realities
Here’s a fun quirk. Immigrants living just five miles apart—one on the Kansas side of Kansas City, the other on the Missouri side—can have radically different immigration experiences.
Kansas, for example, is one of the states that requires local law enforcement to cooperate more closely with ICE. Missouri, while not exactly immigrant-friendly, has fewer direct ICE agreements with local agencies. The result? An undocumented individual in Overland Park might be arrested for a broken taillight and end up in deportation proceedings, while their counterpart in North KC may just pay a fine.
This disparity isn’t just frustrating—it’s dangerous. It creates uneven protection and encourages misinformation. I’ve counseled people who refused to drive their kids to school in Kansas out of fear of a traffic stop. That’s not law—that’s a failure of policy empathy.
And yet, despite these obstacles, Kansas City remains home to a vibrant, tight-knit immigrant population—people who are holding on, contributing, and waiting for the U.S. to reciprocate.
Forgotten Files and the Quiet Heroes Who Find Them
One of my proudest moments as an immigration lawyer in Kansas City came when we found an old file.
It was a Honduran father who applied for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the early 2000s. His case was somehow misclassified, and instead of receiving TPS, he was placed in removal proceedings without being informed. Years later, during a worksite audit, his employer flagged a discrepancy in his I-9, and suddenly, ICE was at his door.
We FOIA’d everything. And buried in 86 scanned pages of documentation was a clerical error made by an agent in 2002. We used that one line—literally a form where someone wrote the wrong code—to reopen the case, stop his deportation, and file a new TPS application with retroactive protection.
It wasn’t magic. It was slow, detailed work—the kind of work MIL does quietly, every week, for people who deserve a future.
Are There Solutions? Yes, But They’re Not Easy
I’m often asked, “What’s the fix?” And while there’s no silver bullet, there are reforms that could meaningfully reduce these limbo cases.
One idea gaining traction is automatic case review after a 10-year wait, similar to parole eligibility in the criminal justice system. Another option is to implement a statute of limitations on administrative closure, requiring USCIS or EOIR (Executive Office for Immigration Review) to act within a specified time frame or grant status by default. Both sound radical, but consider this: if we can deliver a pizza across town in 20 minutes using GPS and drone tech, surely we can move a few million case files between government departments in under 20 years.
Even AI-based legal triage is being tested in the UK and Canada. Algorithms there help immigration offices prioritize urgent cases, detect delays, and auto-flag missing documents before they stall applications. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we’re still faxing documents to some district courts.
Progress is possible. But it requires pressure. From voters. From journalists. From immigration lawyers in Kansas City and beyond. And yes, from the immigrants themselves, who’ve been shouting into the void long enough.
When the Law Forgets You, It’s Time to Be Loud
I understand that not every immigrant can afford to hire a lawyer. That’s why firms like Midwest Immigration Law have always made affordability part of their mission. We don’t believe legal help should be a luxury only. We offer sliding scales and flat fees, and sometimes we do it pro bono because we’re human beings before we’re attorneys.
I know this article doesn’t end with a clean solution. But it does end with this:
If your case has been pending for five, ten, or even twenty years, it’s not too late. You may not be lost in the system. You may just be misplaced. And finding you? That’s our job.
Immigration with Midwest Immigration Law isn’t just about processing paperwork—it’s about bringing lives back into focus. We won’t forget you, even if the government does.
So, if you’re tired of being “pending,” let’s make that the past tense.
