I have been looking around for a citizen type coalition to try to influence immigration reform in the U.S. legislature. I haven't found what I am looking for and perhaps it doesn't exist. If that is the case, I am not adverse to starting some kind of grass roots movement.
I don't even want to address the 'illegal' hot topic because I honestly believe that trying to 'fix' illegal immigration is putting the cart before the horse. The 'legal' immigration needs to be fixed first, then the 'illegal' problem and all that it encompasses will follow. It's like that old saying, 'free your mind and your ass will follow.'
I would like to influence how the U.S. legislators go about instituting overhauling the whole immigration system concentrating on family immigration, since it is an obviously personal issue. Additionally, since this is such a hot topic with the American voter right now, now is a good time to get involved in this decision making process with a new administration that will soon be in place. I have been in an immigration mode since I was married back in 2005. I am still waiting for some kind of closure. I could sit and do comparisons and contrasts between the U.S. and the Canadian immigration systems for hours and I do see the good and bad side of both these systems since I have (or am) lived through both sides. With this knowledge, I think I have some good ideas for how to reform the current U.S. 'legal' immigration system.
I do not see a valid reason for:
1. Diversion of funds (in the form of fees paid by applicants) to be used for enforcement rather than application processing;
2. Waiting for 1-1.5 years (conservative estimate) to sponsor a spouse with no criminal history;
3. Waiting for a Consular interview for months;
4. Skilled worker recipients being able to bring their families to the U.S. in a matter of a couple months in comparison to a spouse (see #2);
5. Not having a 'temporary' type approval where the intending immigrant family member receives temporary work permit and allow them to live and work in the U.S. while the application finalizes after they pass a basic security check.
I have other ideas that I think would improve the current system that my mind turns over in attempts to see from all angles. I try to be open minded and am trying to learn the whole immigration process. What exactly does USCIS do with the application, for example? Which data bases do they run name checks against? Why does it take so long?
I am weary though, of wading through immigration reform bill texts and seeing mostly how this bill wants to give all illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. and played nice and not ran with scissors a green card or the bill that wants to seal off the border with a larger than life fence and more and more border patrol officers. I am tired of reading newspaper articles about how this immigrant or that immigrant lived here since birth and lived a good life but happened to have parents of non-U.S. citizenship and will be deported. Or stories of human smugglers who extort their 'customers' for more money once they get their 'customers' across the border. Where are the stories about the normal families separated by the immigration system for months and months and the hardships they endure while their large fees paid to the U.S. government to process their loved one's forms is used to pay for the border patrol to drive around some remote area in the desert?
Why is it so hard and so difficult for me to live with my husband in the U.S. where I was born? That is the most basic of questions that it only requires the most basic of answers. Since I cannot find the answer right now, I want to invest some time and energy into finding an answer and a solution to not only my problem, but a problem that many are facing right now.
So, if anyone is aware of a group that works on this issue, that can, with clarity and an open mind, address the law makers to try to find a way to resolve the current immigration dilemma, please let me know. (You can just post a comment, link below). You never know what can happen when you get involved.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Happy Birthay mi esposo perfecto!
I tried to make your day special, long distance, and I think I succeeded. Hopefully, on your next birthday, we might even be living in the same country. I love you with all my heart and I tell your mother 'thank you' from me, just for having you. You brighten my life and give me hope everyday and I am so grateful that you picked me to spend the rest of your life with.
I love you.
I love you.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Rejection!
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 was a typical Tuesday. I went to work. I sang along to the radio or cd on both the drive and the drive home. (I think I should invest in tinted windows for the car to minimize embarrassment at some point in the near future.) I usually come home and greet the dog who motors herself around in a circle by waging her tail more like a propeller than a back-and-forth type wag. I change clothes, clean up the mess she made by destroying something that I inadvertently left with in her reach (usually a book, or some junk mail, a dish rag, an orphaned sock, etc). I called my husband to let him know that I am home and we had a quick discussion about our day and our individual plans for the evening. Then I took her for her nighly walk.
This dog I have is really a great dog. She is very social (almost to a fault), very curious, rarely barks at anything, and will, when bribed, do 'sit' 'lay down' and 'shake.' She is far from perfect though. She requires a lot of attention and exercise to be well behaved. She still jumps on people to greet them, and she takes me for a walk more than the other way around. I am still hoping that since she is only 1.5 years old, she may still settle down a bit more.
She and I generally stay to the same route for a longer walks. We have a wash area behind the apartment complex and we rarely see anyone there. I used to get to that area and unleash her to let her run around a bit, but it didn't take her long to figure out where the rabbits had their holes and she would scare them up and where ever the rabbits ran, she followed. This wash runs parallel to a rather busy street and I know that when the dog is chasing a rabbit, everything else in her world seems to evaporate, including on coming traffic. And there was no getting her back until she had lost track of all the rabbits and that could take hours. So there ended the off leash time. I now have to resort to taking her to a 'dog park' near my apartment every few days since the walks alone are not nearly enough to drain a fraction of her energy.
On the return trip of the dog walk, I stop at the mail box and pick up the mail. Most of the time it is just junk mail and the apartment complex is wise enough to have a trash can right next to the mail boxes. Typically, I pull out the mail, sort through it and dump it in the trash. This particular Tuesday, however, was a 8x11 envelope with 1-2" thickness. I looked at the return address and my heart just sank. I recognized that weight and the weight in that envelope went directly to my heart. The sender of this ominous envelope was none other than USCIS Chicago.
I opened it right there next to the perfectly placed trash can. My dog tugging at her leash, bored with standing in one spot more than 2 minutes. The face page was this:
I stood stunned for a minute but the dog pulled the leash one more time. Behind the ominous face page, was my original application to sponsor a spouse and all if its required attachments (the marriage certificate, birth certificate, proof of relationship, and hosts of other papers the government wants to see). I packed the contents back into the envelope and headed back to my apartment. Upon arrival, I kicked off my shoes, unleashed the dog, and prepared for a very long and depressing night.
I read the Notice of Action a few times to actually digest what it was trying to communicate to me. It said the I-130 was not signed. I looked at the attached I-130 and saw my signature. It took me only a second or two to see the problem. I transitioned from confusion to complete despair. On the bottom of the second page of the I-130 are two signature lines. One for the petitioner (me) and one for a person completing the form, if other than the petitioner. I had signed it on the second line. I felt so completely stupid. Because of my mistake, our entire immigration package and payment was returned. We had to start over.
I debated telling my husband about this problem. I hated myself so much for such a silly mistake that will probably cost us months of more time apart with our lives in limbo, or perhaps purgatory is more of an adequate term, that I didn't want him to hate me as well. I don't think he could beat me up better than I was doing to myself, but I certainly wasn't looking to be chastised by him. I know I deserved it. I had it coming.
In the end, I told him of our most recent news from USCIS. I was initially met with complete silence on the other end of the telephone line. After I failed to gain a response from him, I just told him I would talk to him later and hung up. He called me back 20 minutes later and said, "All I can say, is I am glad it wasn't something I did." Then we both laughed. We were both disappointed at this latest turn of events, but you can't turn back time and 'undo' history. All we could do was sign an new I-130, write a new check since the original check was 3 months old now, and resend the application.
The following day, I made the trip to the U.S. Post office and had the application sent overnight to the USCIS Chicago office. The I-130 application was received by USCIS Chicago on January 24, 2005. I guess the clock starts then.
This dog I have is really a great dog. She is very social (almost to a fault), very curious, rarely barks at anything, and will, when bribed, do 'sit' 'lay down' and 'shake.' She is far from perfect though. She requires a lot of attention and exercise to be well behaved. She still jumps on people to greet them, and she takes me for a walk more than the other way around. I am still hoping that since she is only 1.5 years old, she may still settle down a bit more.
She and I generally stay to the same route for a longer walks. We have a wash area behind the apartment complex and we rarely see anyone there. I used to get to that area and unleash her to let her run around a bit, but it didn't take her long to figure out where the rabbits had their holes and she would scare them up and where ever the rabbits ran, she followed. This wash runs parallel to a rather busy street and I know that when the dog is chasing a rabbit, everything else in her world seems to evaporate, including on coming traffic. And there was no getting her back until she had lost track of all the rabbits and that could take hours. So there ended the off leash time. I now have to resort to taking her to a 'dog park' near my apartment every few days since the walks alone are not nearly enough to drain a fraction of her energy.
On the return trip of the dog walk, I stop at the mail box and pick up the mail. Most of the time it is just junk mail and the apartment complex is wise enough to have a trash can right next to the mail boxes. Typically, I pull out the mail, sort through it and dump it in the trash. This particular Tuesday, however, was a 8x11 envelope with 1-2" thickness. I looked at the return address and my heart just sank. I recognized that weight and the weight in that envelope went directly to my heart. The sender of this ominous envelope was none other than USCIS Chicago.
I opened it right there next to the perfectly placed trash can. My dog tugging at her leash, bored with standing in one spot more than 2 minutes. The face page was this:
I stood stunned for a minute but the dog pulled the leash one more time. Behind the ominous face page, was my original application to sponsor a spouse and all if its required attachments (the marriage certificate, birth certificate, proof of relationship, and hosts of other papers the government wants to see). I packed the contents back into the envelope and headed back to my apartment. Upon arrival, I kicked off my shoes, unleashed the dog, and prepared for a very long and depressing night.
I read the Notice of Action a few times to actually digest what it was trying to communicate to me. It said the I-130 was not signed. I looked at the attached I-130 and saw my signature. It took me only a second or two to see the problem. I transitioned from confusion to complete despair. On the bottom of the second page of the I-130 are two signature lines. One for the petitioner (me) and one for a person completing the form, if other than the petitioner. I had signed it on the second line. I felt so completely stupid. Because of my mistake, our entire immigration package and payment was returned. We had to start over.
I debated telling my husband about this problem. I hated myself so much for such a silly mistake that will probably cost us months of more time apart with our lives in limbo, or perhaps purgatory is more of an adequate term, that I didn't want him to hate me as well. I don't think he could beat me up better than I was doing to myself, but I certainly wasn't looking to be chastised by him. I know I deserved it. I had it coming.
In the end, I told him of our most recent news from USCIS. I was initially met with complete silence on the other end of the telephone line. After I failed to gain a response from him, I just told him I would talk to him later and hung up. He called me back 20 minutes later and said, "All I can say, is I am glad it wasn't something I did." Then we both laughed. We were both disappointed at this latest turn of events, but you can't turn back time and 'undo' history. All we could do was sign an new I-130, write a new check since the original check was 3 months old now, and resend the application.
The following day, I made the trip to the U.S. Post office and had the application sent overnight to the USCIS Chicago office. The I-130 application was received by USCIS Chicago on January 24, 2005. I guess the clock starts then.
Friday, February 8, 2008
The world is, in fact, not flat...
My apologies to the few remaining readers. I have not posted in some time and I did not fall off the edge of the planet. Sometimes I feel like wandering to the edge though, and just peeking over just to say that I have...
As you know, I have a job and lately it has gone beyond just 'busy' and entered a whole new dimension of 'insane.' I feel I spend about 10 hours a day just trying to keep from drowning in a sea of work. On the upside, it is definitely job security and another big bonus and one I have not felt in a very long time: I actually like my job. I have a good staff and they are very nice to work with and for. I view my position as their manager of one of working for them rather than vice versa. They teach me everything they know and sometimes things they don't think they know. My boss generally leaves me to own devices to figure things out, which is fine with me most the time. Sometimes, it is frustrating, but generally, when I am patient with myself, I figure them out and I tend to learn best in that environment.
My husband is still stuck in the Canadian prison system and we are still trying to get him paroled. He gets issued passes occasionally for conjugal visits, which I enjoy very much. I jest of course, he is not incarcerated in the justice system sense, but he is in the immigration meaning of the word. He will be here next weekend for a long weekend visit and I am very much looking forward to going out to dinner for his birthday which is on February 11th. All he wanted as a big steak dinner and I made reservations at a very nice restaurant. I will try to put on a restaurant critic hat and critique the joint in a couple weeks.
I do have updates to my U.S. immigration process and I will get to those (including visual aids) in the next few days. In the meantime, I am still keeping a log of I-130 processing which is linked in the upper right hand corner of this page. I don't update it daily, but I do get to it a few times a week.
Keep fighting the good fight!
As you know, I have a job and lately it has gone beyond just 'busy' and entered a whole new dimension of 'insane.' I feel I spend about 10 hours a day just trying to keep from drowning in a sea of work. On the upside, it is definitely job security and another big bonus and one I have not felt in a very long time: I actually like my job. I have a good staff and they are very nice to work with and for. I view my position as their manager of one of working for them rather than vice versa. They teach me everything they know and sometimes things they don't think they know. My boss generally leaves me to own devices to figure things out, which is fine with me most the time. Sometimes, it is frustrating, but generally, when I am patient with myself, I figure them out and I tend to learn best in that environment.
My husband is still stuck in the Canadian prison system and we are still trying to get him paroled. He gets issued passes occasionally for conjugal visits, which I enjoy very much. I jest of course, he is not incarcerated in the justice system sense, but he is in the immigration meaning of the word. He will be here next weekend for a long weekend visit and I am very much looking forward to going out to dinner for his birthday which is on February 11th. All he wanted as a big steak dinner and I made reservations at a very nice restaurant. I will try to put on a restaurant critic hat and critique the joint in a couple weeks.
I do have updates to my U.S. immigration process and I will get to those (including visual aids) in the next few days. In the meantime, I am still keeping a log of I-130 processing which is linked in the upper right hand corner of this page. I don't update it daily, but I do get to it a few times a week.
Keep fighting the good fight!
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