10 posts tagged “uscis”
..its not green, at all!
So, I got my green card today! As promised, here is a picture of what a real honest-to-goodness green card looks like. Was I really surprised that it isn't green? Ummm.. no. I've been dealing with our friends at USCIS for exactly one year now, and if there is one consistent thing that I've learned: they are consistently inconsistent. Constantly.
Not only did I get my green card today, I also got my North Carolina driver's license and North Carolina license plates. By the way, everything you hear about the DMV.. its all, painfully, true. Two hours of squirming in my chair-shaped torture device waiting for my number to be called and they didn't even have WiFi so I could at least get some work done!
I even tried guessing the WEP key of the Volvo dealer beside the DMV office.. no luck. It wasn't "volvo".
However, I did run into my old friend, Inspector Dan - the nice guy from the sherrif's office who helped us get our ducks in a row to make our car "American-ized".
If you missed it, and like to look at super-hard to duplicate USCIS identity cards, then don't forget to check out Employment Authorization Card, which exists only in memory now that "they" took it from me.
The nice people at The Department of Homeland Security were easily swayed by all of our evidence that we're a "real" couple, and as of April 23, I am officially a Permanent Resident of the United States!
Photo of this alleged "Green Card" to come.. as soon as I get it in the mail!
The long road to my Green card comes to end..
Teams of lawyers, thousands of dollars, hundreds of pages of forms.. the moment of truth is upon me! On Monday, as 2:15PM, Laurie and I will need to "justify our love" in front of a panel of USCIS agents. If we succeed, then I will be granted that most-holy of US government documents..
<< The Green Card >>
Of course, we have no worries that it will come off fine. We're an actual relationship with a history of co-habitation and co-mingled finances, we are legally married and most importantly.. and most obviously to anyone who has met us, we are in love!
Nevertheless, there is a level of stress involved, because if the meeting goes badly, its going to be "No Green Card for you!! Come back.. ONE YEAR!" At least we've got a ton of good physical evidence to pack along with us to match the googily eye we still share for each other (bank statements, lease agreement, tax returns, car insurance.. all in both our names).
Our lawyer said that we've going to be someone's after lunch no-brainer approval because of how solid our case is. He also shared some cases that he's had that weren't quite so believable, like a guy who got divorced and then married his immigrant wife on the same day! Forget checking dates on that one, USCIS had to check the time-stamps on the divorce/marriage orders to see if it was legal. Laurie and I were also a little concerned about our age difference, to which our lawyer just said, "Oh please.. I've seen a 60 year old woman and a 20 year old man who knew each other for two weeks. You're fine!"
So, wish us luck and if I'm posting from Canada on Tuesday then you'll know how things went.. otherwise, I'll post a copy of my Green Card here and we'll see if it's really green! I also think its kinda "funny" that my employer is waiting until Tuesday before they hand over two contracts to me.. hehe. Best make sure I'm going to be here to work before making a big transistion!
..they expect results."
Those immortal words, spoken by Dan Ackroyd's character in "Ghostbusters", echo the feeling of angst and expectation that I have experienced this week.
I have returned to the life of full-time employee for the first time since August 2004! Ah.. the life of a student.. so varied and diverse, with only one's own spirit and willpower driving the completion of projects.
But now, I have a worklist and a direct report to whom I am responsible to complete said worklist. I have an email inbox that delivers implementation problems and questions to me and a phone that rings and takes voicemails if I don't answer it.
But.. I have an office, a big window overlooking downtown and Subway on one corner and Starbuck's on the other corner. And, of course, a regular payday with what I believe to be pretty decent compensation. I also love my new fully loaded Dell laptop that they provided me with.
It has been a long wait, between re-education and waiting for immigration to approve my work status, but its pretty cool to be working again. It's also a good feeling knowing that the work that I'm doing helps other people find careers, too.
Mostly, though, it's nice getting paid for the work I do - university is fun and all, but the pay sucks!
I am now legal to work in the United States!
This is it.. the card that I've been waiting for! I'm pretty pleased about this, as you can probably imagine, since I've been waiting to work for quite a few months.
My employer will be very excited, too, because they wanted me to start "yesterday". I have only one more small step, and then I'll be commuting to work with my wife, Laurie.
It's really cool that we're both working at the same place. We're such a good team and even though we're not working on the same project, it will great to talk about things together and to take breaks with each other.
I totally dig this card, too. It's covered with security holograms, microprint, and even has my fingerprint embedded on it. But, how did I wind up looking like a thug in this photograph?? Do I look like that? They must have some kind of "Thug-o-Cam" thing at the USCIS office! Weird..
Now that I can work, it will also give us a pretty decent combined income so that we can finally start saving for a house, which is..
..very cool!
This is a long post, but worth the read... I hope!
Just over seven months ago, I left Canada with my fiancée, our cat and our car. We loaded everything we own into a giant UHaul, strapped the car to a trailer and climbed aboard for a journey into the unknown, just like in Star Trek. Also, just like in Star Trek, we had a mission: "To seek out new lives and better places of employment".
At the time we left, our immigration case had ground to halt thanks to our loud and unpleasant neighbors who stole our mail, which included forms from USCIS that absolutely had to be returned. Even though I didn't know what my immigration status was going to be when I got there, we had decided to move from British Columbia to North Carolina, and once I make a decision, I stick to it. The day that we left, we were absolutely exhausted from cleaning and loading the truck and it was raining so hard I was beginning to think that we should pack our swimsuits along in the truck with us. And, it was honestly not easy to leave behind family and the place we'd lived and gone to university for the past four years. But, our plan was in place and it was time to get the wheels rolling.
Our 2900 mile drive, as estimated by Google Maps, should have taken just a little under two days. Well, we weren't even close! It took us seven days to make the journey, not counting our three-day stop in Minneapolis to pick out an engagement ring. By the time we arrived, we were tired of riding in the truck, tired of greasy restaurants and cheap motels, and our cat was tired of not being able to run around and climb things all day.
The day we arrived was ironically the same dark, wet weather as the day we left more than ten days ago. Since then, a lot has happened: my financée became my wife, we installed a wood floor in the place where we would be living for the next two years and our cat has found all the best places to climb and hide in our new home. It has been really great being here with my new family and they've welcomed me as one of their own. And recently, I began the task of finding work now that my legal-to-work date is closing in.
I actually like interviewing for jobs, and it was particularly nice to look for work here, as there are so many more career opportunities for people with my skills here than where we left. I also really like the people - southern hospitality isn't a myth! However, when they're behind the wheel of a car, its battle-conditions, just like everywhere else.
Today marks the four-week countdown until I can finally rejoin the working-class! Thanks to a great law firm who has helped us out a lot, my new wife and I are finally at a point where we are saving for a house. She has already started work because she is American, but the really interesting thing is that we both wound up interviewing for positions with the same company.
Although we were being interviewed for different positions and by different people, we told the company that we were married so that there wouldn't be any surprises if we were offered positions and showed up to work, already in an 'office romance' together. Luckily, they did not care that we were married and in fact seemed to like the fact they're getting a team. We were both offered the positions that we applied for and we now both work for a very progressive software development company. In four short weeks, we'll be commuting to work together, just like we did when we were taking classes in Canada!
Since I've been here, many people have asked me, "Why did you leave Canada? It's so beautiful there!". They're right - it is beautiful. But it's far from perfect. Not to say that anywhere could be perfect in every way, but for those who asked, this is my "top-ten" list as to why I left British Columbia for North Carolina:
- Home prices: CBCNEWS: "Vancouver houses prices still highest in Canada". That quote, from June 2006, states that prices went up a whopping 23.7% in just one year. The average price: $518,176! Completely insane, if you ask me. The average house price in the city where we now work: only $121,575.. just a little cheaper!
- Medical system: Don't tell me the Canadian medical system is free, because it isn't. It's rolled into taxes, which hides the real costs, so no one can really be sure how expensive it is. However, taxes are very high in Canada, so it's not too hard to make the connection. And as for the service, let me share a little experience I had: A few years back I was 'gifted' with kidney stones. For anyone who doesn't already know, this is a pain level that has few, if any, parallels in human experience. It's bad, but not life-threatening, so to receive the treatment that would break up the stones, I had to wait my turn. It was almost two months before I got my turn, and even then I had to get to the machine on my own! If the machine had been at the hospital in the city where I lived, that wouldn't have been too bad, but I had to go 250 miles, each way, just to get there! I missed more than two months of work, earning a fraction of my salary while on disability pay and had to go 500 miles round-trip while suffering intense discomfort. I've had time to investigate the process here in North Carolina, and there are many of these machines in hospitals all over the state. And, the waiting time would be hours-to-days, not months.
- Gas prices: Taking into account metric to Imperial conversion and currency differences, the price for a gallon of gas down the street here in North Carolina is $2.38 compared to the same gallon of gas in British Columbia, which is $3.32! Almost a whole dollar more per gallon for the exact same gas. For me, that works out to $10 more per tank for gas in BC.
- Wages: Although the minimum wage in Canada is higher than in the US, the average annual wage for someone who does the kind of work that I do in BC is $41,000 compared to $62,000 in North Carolina. The opportunities for advancement are also much greater here.
- Happiness: Maybe its the house prices, or the price of fuel or that people have to wait in line for months to have a painful medical condition relieved, but when I'm shopping or at a restaurant or just walking down the street, people just seem happier.
- Education: 18 of the "Top 20" Universities world wide are in the United States (TIME.COM). One has to look down to #24 to find University of Toronto for the first Canadian listing, and to #37 to find British Columbia's "UBC".
- The Avro Arrow: In the frigid spring of 1959, the Canadian government decided that it was a good idea to destroy the greatest aircraft the world had ever seen. This incomprehensible action was the catalyst to the 'brain-drain' from Canada to the United States which saw many of the world's finest aeronautical engineers move into the American space program. Included in the list of expatriates was the brilliant Jim Chamberlin, who became a lead engineer for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft programs. Incidentally, Jim Chamberlin is a personal hero of mine, not only for his work on the Arrow and the NASA space program, but I also have a personal connection to him since we share the same birthday and grew up in the same town in Canada.
- Shopping: 24hr WalMart, 24hr Target and 24hr Harris Teeter. 'Nuff said?
- Car insurance: When buying insurance in BC, you get two choices: ICBC or ICBC. In the US, the concept of state-owned insurance is a little too "commie", so insurance is handled as a free market commodity. The result is better coverage for less money. Plus, I get to buy insurance from a lizard! How cool is that?
- Hockey: I don't mind the game, but I am a big Formula 1 fan and whenever a race is on at the same time as a hockey game, the race is bumped to a later date or is not played at all. In North Carolina, hockey is semi-tolerated but racing is BIG!
I truely hope that no one is offended by this. However, I didn't say anything that wasn't true - so there! Like I said earlier, no place is perfect in every way so I wanted to put a few things that I miss about Canada:
- My son. Goes without saying, but he is #1. I see him and talk to him often, but moving away from him was the hardest thing I ever did.
- My family. Love you mom, dad, sis, bro-in-law and their kiddies!
- Friends: I don't have too many of them in Canada, but you know who you are.
- Mountains. It's really flat here and I used to really like riding into the mountains on my bike to get away from the world.
- Boxing day. In the US, its called 'black Friday' and its after the US Thanksgiving. Black Friday is cool, and has better sales than Boxing Day, but when it's the day after Christmas, its like getting a second chance to get yourself the gifts that you didn't get the day before!
- Kenna Cartwright Park: This park has excellent mountain biking trails that I rode almost daily, sometimes twice a day. Good times..
- Crispy Cheesers: Little Ceasar's Pizza in Canada has something called the Crispy Cheeser, which is not made by US-based Little Ceasar's. They're very tasty, but kinda bad for the tummy!
- Tim Hortons: The closest we have here is KrispyKreme, which isn't very close at all.
- Fewer churches: There are too many churches here! I think everyone should be able to believe whatever they want, as long as they keep it to themselves. But, its pretty hard to ignore all the church-ey messages that are everywhere, including stuck onto all the exercise machines at the local "Y" that I go to.
- Relaxed people: In general, Canadians are pretty mellow people, and that's a good thing.
There are a lot of other great things about life in Canada, but these are the ones that I will personally miss. As of today, I join a long list of Canadian expatriates as I have now officially left Canada. One is never really gone until the Canadian Revenue Agency knows about it, and I've just gotten off the phone with them to tell them that I've gone. It's an unusual feeling, but not an uncomfortable one, as I've always felt as though I 'fit in' better in the United States, anyways.
With that, I bid Canada a sweet 'farewell'.
Like about a zillion other bloggers, I have to say something about the two artists who were arrested today in Boston for their flagrant disregard for safety by displaying signs which bear no resemblance whatsoever to bombs.
What kind of paranoid society are we building where goofy cartoon-like images are mistaken for terrorist activities? Granted, I've never actually seen a terrorist (that I know of..) or a suicide bomber (I'm sure of that..), but I'm pretty certain that they don't dress up like a monochromatic, 2-dimensional Spongebob Squarepants. And if they did, they would be pretty easy to pick out of a crowd.
Our friends at Wikipedia discuss 'paranoia' as the psychosis of holding beliefs in an irrational threat. When we start believing that harmless signs resembling a Lite-Brite set (look it up if you've not seen one before) are explosives, then people will start seeing bombs (and bombers) everywhere. Its kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Uncle Leo thinks that everyone is an anti-Semite. We laughed at that, but its going to be a lot harder to laugh at this event - this is real paranoia, not a sit-com.
The road to Paranoia-town is incredibly easy to get lost on, but almost impossible to turn around on. Once one starts to see terrorists in everyday things, it only feeds the paranoia to find terrorists is even more everyday things. Just like Uncle Leo believing that his hamburger was overcooked because he is Jewish, I believe that this event is only the beginning: soon, we'll be hearing of false-arrests for suspected terrorists doing the mundane things that they've always done. Kids tossing eggs on Halloween: terrorists; the 'Check Engine' light on your car: terrorist auto mechanics; spyware on your computer: installed by terrorists.
Maybe not. However, it wasn't too long ago that one of my favorite actors, Jonathon Pryce, was the lead in a film that is spookily-familiar to the direction that I see our society now wandering perilously towards. Before Pryce was Governor Swann in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series of films, he was the hapless bystander in a society plagued by terrorists.
In the film "Brazil" (1985), Pryce is one cog in the machine of a government that is out-of-control paranoid in its search for terrorists. During the course of the film, we see an innocent man being charged and eventually tortured because of his "affiliation" with a terrorist. The problem is that his only affiliation with the terrorist is the spelling of his name - nothing more. Despite the massive effort from the government in the film, and the over-exhuberant police force to curtail terrorism, we see that "no actual terrorists" are caught. But, instead of calling off the government sanctioned kidnapping and torture of innocent people, their plan is to make more government and tighten security. Sound familiar?
Currently in real-life, not in a sarcastic parody, there is already a "no-fly" list that bans people from flying based only on the spelling of their name. Passports are required documents to travel almost anywhere (quote from "Brazil": "Is it stamped??"). Billions of dollars spent and the loss of life in a war against terror that has turned up scant few 'real' terrorists, and has probably caused the buildup of real terrorists that is now happening around the world.
The unnamed government in "Brazil" eventually collapses in on itself, and we're led to believe that a new day is on the horizon where people can travel without prosecution or interrogation. That change will probably come for our society, too. But that change will not come without pain, or resistance.
The problem with someone who is paranoid is that if you choose to dispute their accusations, you only point a finger at yourself making them think that you, too, are a terrorist. Ironically, that has already happened: Mr. James Moore, a critic of the Bush administration, was placed on the "no-fly" list simply for disagreeing with the administration.
Don't get me wrong - I don't condone terrorists, I think bombs are generally a bad idea, and I like it when the police catch the bad-guy. However, when we start arresting people for drawing cartoons, its time to have a good look in the metaphorical mirror before we all wind up on the "no-fly" list.
Today begins the 90 day countdown for my work permit!
I'm pretty excited because the 60-odd page application for my work permit, change of status and spousal visa left for USCIS today. Big thanks to the expert lawyer team who straightened this out and got me on my way to becoming American.
Fill forms, file forms, wait. Repeat as neccesary.
In my last post on 'immigration', I talked about getting the forms and filling them out. Well, thats the easy part, as it turns out. Once I'd dotted the appropriate i's and other whatnots, I sent the forms into the Processing Center in California. And there they sat. Apparently, they attempted contact by mail, but as our new lawyer pointed out:
Recent changes in the law dismiss responsibility of delivery once something has been mailed. It is the onus of the applicant to ensure their mail arrives.
Sounds easy, unless you don't always get your mail (thats another story..)! The letter they sent never came to us and thus was returned to the Processing Center. Within 24 hours of their letter arriving back to them marked "Return to sender", our case was DENIED due to ABANDONMENT! Not cool.
Could we re-open our case? Sure, but there is a $475 fee just to apply to have it re-opened (with no guarantee that the application would be approved). Very not cool. And the process would take 60-120 days just to get started up again, if it was approved. Extremely not cool.
And thats when we hired a lawyer and things have gone peachy since! :O)
Next "Immigration" post: Lawyers are your friends
Follow me on my journey to the Land of the Free..
My journey is one on many levels: distance, employment, life, love, marriage and last but not least:
Bureaucracy!
This first post gives some background that will catch you up to where things were just before sending off my application for a Fiancé (K1) visa using the I-129F form, the "Petition for Alien Fiance(e)".
Setting the way-back machine to when I began working towards a B.Sc. degree, I was a recently-divorced father who just moved back to Canada from California where I had been a Network Analyst. While attending University in Canada, I met the love of my life. She was also starting her education in computer programming and before long, we were a 'hot item' and very happy. The only complication: she is American and I am Canadian and if we were both to find work in the same country, one of us would have to 'morph' to the other's nationality.
Anyone who has seen sitcoms where an alien tries to emigrate to another country, they always simply get married and "poof!", its done. Well, it doesn't work like that - at least, not anymore. The process is long and painful and not as cheap, or easy, as simply saying "We do".
First of all, one has to petition for a visa - a form that allows the alien to enter the country. For a Canadian to enter the United States, this form is the I-129F: not a real complex form, but one that has many details and isn't for the feint of heart when it comes to filling out paperwork. Along with this form is the G-325 "Biographic Information" form. This form requires very involved data on the alien, their parents and everyone's whereabouts for the past five years. For me, this wasn't too hard as I'd born in Canada, as were my parents. However, this is a big form and would be hard to hide from if your intent was not honorable (ie. terrorist..).
But is this easy? Not even getting to this point is easy! Before I close off this post, take a look at this page which is supposed to direct Americans through the steps in bringing their alien fiance(e) into the US (yes, its a dead link - I know, and that is exactly the point. The USCIS website was rather 'wonky', although it is somewhat better now.):
How Do I Bring My Fiancé(e) to the United States?
Next "Immigration" post: Read what happened when we in sent the forms.
