Your desire not to be a burden is laudable, but there's a more-important principle at stake here. Government officials should always make an effort to accommodate reasonable requests, or if that's not possible, to explain why — and moreover, those officials, as representatives of this country and its citizens (including me), should damned well be at least that welcoming and courteous to a visitor or new resident such as the GP's wife. Assuming that the GP was accurately telling the whole story, every American should be thoroughly embarrassed that the GP's wife was treated so abysmally, and the officials responsible should be disciplined.
That's not what I said. I don't try not to be a burden, I just don't expect consular officials to give a shit about my schedule, and set my priorities based on that. Sure they should be welcoming and all, but it is what it is.
Attempting to reschedule an immigration interview doesn't strike me as unreasonable, nor does escalating to a supervisor if you don't like the answer you got. The employee calling security, on the other hand strikes me as abusive. I think that employee should be fired and probably not given a position of authority where they can mistreat others that way again in the future.
Given how long everything takes when dealing with immigration, it's not exactly surprising that they aren't able to accommodate people's schedules.
> Given how long everything takes when dealing with immigration, it's not exactly surprising that they aren't able to accommodate people's schedules.
If things take a long time, it shouldn't make much difference to them whether they do an interview this week or next. It's surprising that everything takes a long time though, from a certain point of view anyway.
For example, they scheduled her for an interview on a date that was impossible for her to make (iirc, that was her first day of a new job). She went to the INS offices to ask to have it rescheduled, and the person at the desk just gave her a flat "no, we do not reschedule interviews". My wife asked to speak to a manager - something that's eminently reasonable, if maybe slightly annoying, at any business - at which point the INS employee bushed a button that summoned to burly guards to physically remove her from the premises, stating that she was a threat to the office's security.