ANCHORAGE, ALASKA — Qilak, an Arctic hunter who crossed from Siberia into North America roughly 4,500 years ago, confirmed Thursday that his application for lawful permanent residence is still "actively under review," a status U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has given his file since about the time Stonehenge was waiting on its permits for the big stones.
"I filed in good faith," said Qilak, approximately 4,531, from a molded orange chair in the Anchorage field office that he describes as "the same chair, spiritually." "They told me six to eight months. I assumed they meant moons. I now believe they meant something else."
According to documents reviewed by HuckFinn, Qilak's case, receipt number LBR-2474-BCE-000001, has so far generated 312 Requests for Evidence, 1,104 rescheduled biometrics appointments and one fingerprint card the agency lists as "illegible (seal oil)." He has been asked for a birth certificate in every format USCIS has ever accepted, including clay tablet, parchment, microfiche, PDF and "a PDF, but smaller."
The case took a turn in October, when an adjudicator noticed that the Bering land bridge Qilak says he crossed had been underwater for roughly 6,500 years by the time he arrived. Scientists generally date the flooding of the bridge to about 11,000 years ago, and the people who reached the far Arctic thousands of years later came by boat or across winter sea ice. USCIS has since flagged the application for "material misrepresentation."
"Fine. I didn't walk. I paddled, and then I walked on the ice," Qilak said. "I used the wrong word for a bridge that was not there. I apologize to the bridge."
📬 Case Status Online
Checking your status does not change your status. It does count as an interaction, which restarts the clock. Case Status Online is a parody and does not connect to anything, which is also true of the original.
A USCIS spokesperson, who asked not to be named because she was not authorized to describe a timeline, said the agency was "processing cases in the order they were received," and noted that this month's Visa Bulletin had advanced the Rest of World, Late Neolithic category to a priority date of 2511 B.C.E. "He is very close," she said. "Thirty-seven years, give or take a retrogression."
Qilak is not alone in the line, only first. USCIS is carrying a record pending caseload of more than 11 million applications, according to the American Immigration Council and NPR. Workers born in India in the EB-3 category face a wait of more than 12 years. A December 2025 policy memo put decisions on hold for green card applicants from 19 countries, with no end date. Qilak's country of birth is listed as "Siberia (pre-Russia)," so he has been placed on every hold as a precaution.
Officials have also asked him to prove continuous residence. He sent 4,500 years of it: a midden of seal bones, three soapstone lamps, a harpoon head, and a lock of hair much like the one Danish researchers used in 2010 to sequence the genome of a Saqqaq man who lived in Greenland about 4,000 years ago. USCIS returned the genome because it did not come with a certified English translation.
The case got harder in January, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement, fresh from serving a deportation order on an 11-trillion-ton glacier, issued a detainer against Qilak under a legal theory that his arrival was "illegal immigration with extra steps." ICE proposed removing him to Siberia. Russian officials replied that they had no record of him, since he left about 3,300 years before there was a Russia.
"I have been told to go back where I came from," Qilak said. "Where I came from is the bottom of the Chukchi Sea. I can give them the coordinates. They will need a kayak."
🛶 Where Are You In Line?
- Priority date
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Estimates are based on current processing times, which are based on nothing. Gold Card figures reflect the program as reported in April 2026: one approval.
One immigration attorney suggested the $1 million Gold Card, which began taking applications in December 2025. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in April that one had been approved so far. Qilak offered 4,500 years of dried Arctic char instead. The offer was declined because fish is not an accepted payment method, though a staffer noted that the $5 million Platinum tier "might have taken a whale."
His descendants, many of them U.S. citizens, have filed petitions for him. As the parent of a citizen, Qilak would normally count as an "immediate relative," a category with no annual cap. USCIS has accepted this in principle, but it has asked every intervening generation, about 180 of them, to submit a DNA test proving it descends from the one before. So far 41 generations have replied. The rest are, in the agency's term, "unresponsive."
Qilak has also been studying for the civics test, which he must pass if he ever applies for citizenship. One question on the test asks, "Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?" On a practice exam, Qilak wrote, "Me."
"They marked it wrong," he said. "They told me to be more specific."
🇺🇸 Civics Practice Test
Correct answers follow the official USCIS civics study guide. Qilak's answers follow 4,500 years of living here.
At press time, Qilak's biometrics appointment had been rescheduled again, to a date the online system showed only as "after the glacier is processed." He said he would wait.
"I crossed an ocean on ice with a harpoon and a bag of dried fish," he said, settling back into the chair. "I can do a line."
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