Milk In A Bag

The clock started on my immigration process Feb 13, 2006. We had been very thorough in supplying everything that CIC (Citizenship & Immigration Canada) had requested. We, in fact, supplied more than they asked for as a 'just in case they want it later' approach. Everyone knows that government employees absolutely adore their paper.

So, according to the CIC website and their processing times (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/canada/process-in.asp#perm_res ) I have a few months to kill while I wait for them to even acknowledge receipt of our application. This the time that I feel I can relax a little and explore my new surroundings.

One of the oddest things I have come across here is milk in a bag. I had never seen or heard of it before. Even now, every day when I look in the refrigerator, I see it, and I am puzzled by it. You can buy milk in quart or pint cartons, or even those single serving plastic bottles that you find mostly in convenience stores. If you want to buy a larger quantity of milk, you have no other option than to buy it in bag format. I have pictures here in case you don't believe me.


The concept is, apparently, you buy a bag that has 3 1-liter bags of milk inside. You buy a special pitcher and you place the 1 liter bag of milk into the pitcher. You snip off a corner of the bag and pour the milk from the pitcher that holds the bag. I suppose you could just pour the whole bag into a different pitcher, but the pitcher that is designed to hold the bag will not hold the entire contents of one 1-liter bag. Try saying that 3 times fast.

I debate the 'greeness' of this type of packaging with myself all the time. Which is better for the environment? The one gallon milk jug, or the bag of milk and its 3 smaller inner bags. Not to mention, the grocery stores only have plastic bags here; those brown paper bags are nowhere in existence here. So besides the milk bag, the 3 smaller inner milk bags, there is the bag the grocery store gives you to carry the other bags in (5 bags in all for what amounts to 1 gallon of milk). I haven't won or lost the debate yet: it keeps raging on.

Oh, the cruel irony!

If you haven't noticed by now, there is a small ad to the right. I supposedly 'get paid' whenever someone clicks on that ad. I really don't care about the one-eighth of a cent I get for the clicks, but I just find it sadly ironic that all the ads I have seen are for immigration consultants advertising they can help you get into Canada.

If you want information on these 'immigration consultants' here in lovely Canada, you should read these articles:

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/226065


http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/30072007/21/canada-s-immigration-worth-waiting.html

The first article I linked is actually a very interesting series (see the right bar of the article for the other articles in the series as well as video of an 'immigration consultant' doing his thing). Although a bulk of it focuses on 'refugee status' immigrants who have the highest denial rate, it does illustrate how completely hosed the immigration system really is here in lovely Canada.

These forms and those forms and more forms

While The Kid is busy adjusting to the Canadian education system, Mac and I start the long swim through miles-deep immigration forms in late October 2005. We fill out the forms over and over and over again, each time uncovering a new typo or missing information.

We decide to first start collecting items required by these forms that require outside (or even divine) intervention. First, we do the FBI fingerprints. I start off thinking that this little piece won't be so bad. I have been fingerprinted more times than I have fingers. Now, never because I was arrested, but for employment purposes. I used to hold security clearances and things like that. Fortunately, I found a fingerprinting service just a few miles (kilometers, if you are Canadian) from my house. For a small fee (about $35), they will do the fingerprints up for you, fill out the fingerprint card and away I go. I send the fingerprint request to the FBI in Virginia with a check to the U.S. Treasury to cover the FBI's processing fees. Mark one off my list.

Next, time to get photos taken. I assume these are to be attached to my Permanent Residence card, but they require several passport type photos of both me and my son. I find a little shop that sells and repairs computers that also takes passport photos and we get that done.

The medical exams are the next step. I search the Immigration website for the list of authorized doctors and find one that is not in Pakistan or Albania and is about a 15 minute drive from my house and make an appointment. We waited about 1 week to get in, The Kid and I show up, don't have to wait too long to get into the exam rooms. We get weighed and blood pressure measured, lay on the table and get the abdomen poked, get the heart listened to, and other basic exam things. We are sent to another location for our lab work. Keep in mind, I really have no idea where this lab is, as I wasn't told about this step before and I didn't get a chance to map quest it. (Map questing is the only way I seem to find things in this city.) I have to call Mac's cell and get directions over the phone because I am completely clueless where anything is. We have to have blood drawn and chest x-rays taken. One small glitch is The Kid's congenital heart defect. The Canadian doctor requests to see The Kid's medical records and gave me 10 days to provide them.

That is one thing that never occurred to bring with me from the U.S. I have his University of Minnesota cardiologist's card and I call and explain the situation and request that the records be faxed or mailed directly to the Canadian doctor. No problem, they say, they should be able to get that out in 2 days. I call the Canadian doctor's office the following week to make sure they received the records, and find out that nothing was received. Crap, running out of time. I call the U of M again, and inquire as to the problem. They have no record of my request! Ok, lets try again and I further explain the urgency of the situation. U of M assures me they will do it right away. I wait 2 days and contact the Canadian doctor's office to ensure they have them and yes!! they have them and all is well with the world again. The Canadian doctor mails his medical findings off to another place far away and I wonder how they ever match those medical reports to their applications, especially since Immigration doesn't even have our application. I figure there must be some kind of process for that. I have a receipt from the Canadian doctor, but that's about it.

For now, its back to the forms and piling paper. I filled out the actual application form, the spousal (thats me!) questionnaire, the background declaration, the sponsorship agreement, the application to sponsor an undertaking, oh my god, the list goes on. Attached to those forms were birth certificates, Mac's landing documents, university transcripts, photos of our wedding and trips we took before our wedding, copies of passports, lease agreements on apartments, and just about everything else you can imagine. The pile of mile high papers sits on my desk waiting for the FBI piece to arrive.

Long about the beginning of December, I receive a package from the FBI. They had returned my fingerprints and payment with a nice little form letter saying they don't accept personal checks. I had paid them with my U.S. checking account. I guess I must of missed that part. Well, there goes a month down the drain. I storm off to the bank to draw a money order in USD to pay the FBI and resubmit the fingerprints.

The FBI doesn't return the completed criminal check until early February 2006. With that final piece of the puzzle in hand, we run off to make crazy copies, then off to the post office to mail our box of forms and other papers to yet another place far away. Finally, we are on our way. The clock starts now on February 13, 2006.

Current Score: Us: 1, Government: 0, Errors: 1

The beginning is a great place to start

If you are new to my blog, this is a story developing in chronological order. Reading the most recent post may not make much sense, so look to the right and go to the archives.

Going to the chapel and we gonna get married...

Let us pretend it is September 2005. I had no idea at the time, but this will be my first taste of the bureaucracy that strangles the 'Canadian System.'

I was happy. Mac, my son (hereafter referred to as "The Kid"), and myself had just moved my worldly possessions (well, all that can fit into a Jetta with 3 people in it) to a new country. Everything was new and exciting. I liked the new apartment. It was huge to me. It had just about the same square footage that my town home in Minneapolis had. It was clean and bright. The building was immaculately maintained. I had an en suite! I had never lived in a place that had before. While I hate renting and view it as waste of money when you can own a house, this place was nice for a transitional home. We had underground parking and two pools, one inside, one outdoor. The best part of all, was that it was directly across the street from a Catholic high school. Perfect!

Next order of life is to get The Kid, 15 years old at the time, enrolled in school. I thought, no big deal, I'll just walk across the street and talk to them and see what I have to do. I speak to a nice woman working in the school office the week before classes start. She explains that since the student (my son) is from another country, he has to take some tests. They have to ensure he can speak, read, and write English. They need to test him for placement in the math and sciences. Ok, I think, that's fair. She gives me the phone number for the Assessment Center and away I go, thinking everything is going to be fine.

It takes about 1 week to get through to this number and get a call back to schedule the testing. The next opening is in 2 weeks. I am told to bring my son's birth certificate and my immigration forms and payment receipt. WHAT!?!? I haven't even started yet... I start to panic. After further inquiring, I learn that a student cannot attend school unless the 'immigration process' has started. I calm down and decide perhaps that is fair. They don't need visitors and vacationers attending school here.

This information presents a huge dilemma for me. I cannot file for immigration yet, as we haven't even gotten married yet. We were planning a small affair, civil, with a reception to follow around the first of the year. So my husband and I go into hyper mode so we can get The Kid into school. We call around, we investigate our options and we elect to just do a civil ceremony at the nearest government center.

We march ourselves down to get a marriage license. Oh, so naive we are! We fill it out and find out that in order for us to be married, we need to find a lawyer to review my U.S. divorce from 1992 to ensure it was legal. The lawyer's letter needs to accompany the marriage license application to some other place way far away. Jeez, ok fine. To the mighty and wonderful Yellow Pages we go. I spent 3 days calling random lawyers who would charge anywhere from $100 to $1,000 (I am not lying!) to review the divorce decree and write the letter. We obviously take the $100 approach, since we feel this is a pretty silly step in the process of getting The Kid into school anyway. Make an appointment for as soon as possible, sit down with the lawyer, give him the original, certified divorce decree, he asks me 3 questions, he pulls out a form letter, changes the names and dates, and has his assistant type it up. He takes our crisp, brown, $100 dollar bill from my husband's hand and disappears into the piles of cluttered paper and books that he calls his office. The assistant hands us our letter and off we go to make a copy and mail off our marriage license application to some place far away with the appropriate fees.

Then we wait. While waiting, since we are good multi taskers, we book a date at the government center and start trying to find someone to officiate. The marriage license office was good enough to provide a list of officiates. I spend 3 days calling 10 of those 22 on the list before 1 called me back. First come, first served, has always been my motto! So, he got the job. Hopefully, the marriage license will arrive in time for our October 1 marriage appointment. So much for romance and love and all that other gushy stuff.

Things worked out and the marriage license arrived from some place far away, about 5 days ahead of the ceremony. We bought some new clothes, got all shined up, met his family there at the government center and were married by this ancient Jewish man. He was funny, but the political jokes (something about my husband shouldn't act like Bill Clinton during our marriage) were a bit odd. It was wedding ceremony certainly didn't compare to anything I had ever attended before. Mac and I were sadly disappointed by the whole thing. We shrugged it off, knowing it had to be done and we didn't really have a choice about the ceremony and we planned that after things calmed downed a bit, we would throw a 'real' reception. Invite everyone we knew, redo our vows, and throw a huge party, complete with a mediocre wedding band that will play The Bunny Hop and other great wedding reception songs.

Ok, so back to the task at hand: Get The Kid into school. We got married, now for the immigration forms. We knew we didn't have the time to do them up properly and gather all the supporting documents that are required, so we decided just to do up a rough copy and sign them and use that for proof that The Kid and I really were in process for immigration. We logged on the CIC (Citizenship & Immigration Canada) website and paid the full fees of $1,675 (for you Americans, that is about $1,674 USD), printed off a receipt and think we are done.

Now, armed with my folder of immigration documents and other supporting information, The Kid and I finally get into the Assessment Center for his testing. We stand at an office, much like a school office, and fill out the forms. I offer my thick file of papers for their review and the nice man behind the counter says, "I don't need to review them." I might as well just stuffed my folder with miscellaneous receipts and crayon drawings for all he knew. No one ever looked at them. I was a bit irritated but focused on the goal: Get The Kid into school. The Kid takes his tests and we petition to get him placed into the school right across the street from our apartment. The school is full, we are told, but we can ask.

It takes another week to learn that the school just had a couple other students transfer out, so there will be room after all. (Thank God, something worked out). We have a meeting with a counselor to pick classes and go over the testing results. The Kid placed high in all categories and we scheduled him for a nice mix of 'acedemic' classes and 'general' classes. We took a brief tour of the place and got stacks of papers to fill out. We left the school and went uniform shopping. The Kid started school later that week.

Mark one for the Visitors! Current score Us: 1 Them: 0

Welcome to my first blog!

Hello. My name, at least as far as this blog and you all are concerned, is Delicia. I created this Blog as a way of alleviating some of my frustration, anger, and stress associated with my immigration to Canada.

Before I get into the nightmare that is so commonly referred to as the 'immigration process,' let me give you some of my history so you can understand the entire situation. I am a 43 year old, white, female. I am a U.S. citizen, born and raised in the Minneapolis, MN area. I had the typical protestant-ethic upbringing in a middle-class home. Both of my parents worked and it afforded me me some luxuries growing up. We had a cabin in Northern Minnesota where we spent almost every weekend. I had one older brother and both of us had our dirt bikes for the summer and snowmobiles for the winter. We water skied and enjoyed athletics, both of us belonging to the seasonal teams (baseball, basketball, competitive swimming, diving, etc). We both grew up, got married, had kids, worked at our jobs and did our best to be productive Americans and support our families.

I myself, got married and had 2 kids, 3 years apart. The marriage was horrible and ended in divorce after 2 years when I was 27 years old. (yep, you figure the math out here). I continued working hard and by the time I was 29, I had purchased my first house. I went back to school and completed my Bachelor's Degree in St. Paul, MN. Working full time and going to school full time while raising 2 kids alone is no easy feat, but it was something that needed to be done. Things weren't all that bad. I lived paycheck to paycheck like everyone else. I raised my kids similar to how I was raised, with that 'work hard and you will get what you work for' mentality. My kids got involved in sports and did fair at academics. Everything was so 'normal.'

Fast forward several years and I find myself spending the end of the evenings playing on line computer games. It was a great way to unwind and chill after the kids were tucked in for the night. It was my alone time. I was never a big fan of TV; I find most of the shows are boring or just to simple to be entertaining. I meet people on line, that play the same games. You get involved in idle chit chat, find out where they are living, what they do for a living, etc. Nothing too personal.

That is, until I met Mac. Mac became my best online buddy. We would team up for games and would have hours of fun. For about the first 6 months, we maintained that 'idle chat' and crack jokes, but never got too involved with our actual 'real lives.' One day, and honestly, I don't remember when or how it happened, but some time in 2000, we began exchanging views on religion, politics (yes, those old strange bedfellows), hopes for the future, and everything else that we could think of. Sometimes, we would log on these games and just sit and chat. The game became the background for the developing friendship.

Fast forward another 3 years to 2003. Mac and I hang out daily on line. We have added phone calls to our daily routine. I find about Mac's life in Toronto, ON and he finds out about mine in Minneapolis, MN. We decided it was finally time to meet in person and he flew out to Minneapolis to spend a few days. I ship the kid's off to their grandparents telling them that I had to work some crazy hours over the weekend, and Mac and I meet face to face for the first time. I was already in love with this quasi-mystery man by then, but making in 'real' was pure heaven. He spent just 4 days that first visit but the visits continued over the next couple years regularly. I went to Toronto or he came to Minneapolis, whichever worked out best for us at the time.

Now, it is 2007. We were married in October 2005, two months after I relocated to Toronto. I sold my house, donated my furniture to my eldest who was just starting out on her own life, packed up my car and we drove to Toronto. And here is where the story of the immigration nightmare begins.