How was your Christmas? We had a pretty good Christmas. James’ Mom got to go home from hospital on Christmas Eve (no one called us to let us know, we had to find out from the hospital when we went to visit :-p ). We spent a bit of time at her house, cleaning and stuff for her, then we went to see King Kong. The CGI Kong was amazing, so expressive and so realistic I thought. A new classic, without a doubt. I think I will re-watch the original black and white version just for something to do.

Christmas day was nice and sunny; once again the promised snow fall didn’t happen. I think we’ll have to move north if we ever want to have a white Christmas again. James and I opened our presents from each other and from my Mum that morning. Then we headed back over to his Mother’s to start cooking. She actually stayed out of the kitchen this time, still too weak to move around much. They drained 2 litres of water from her, which in her small frame, is quite a lot! She did say tho that her last CT scan showed that the tumors (she has 3, one on her liver and 2 in her chest) are all fading, so if the chemo doesn’t kill her, it just may get rid of the cancer!

Yesterday I got up and went to work, did my usual morning routine there, part of which includes having to call the District Manager to leave a message basically to say “Hey yeah, I made it to work today”. She called back not long after to say “what are you doing there? Go home” ugh…I swear, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The studio manager, my co-worker, told me last week that the DM told her that we are supposed to be open Monday and Tuesday, and I had to work. But then the DM says “who told you to work?” bleah….I was hired for a full time job, this obviously is not going to be a full time job. Our winter hours are cut in half for the studio, so its not even a full time job for one photographer, how the hell they expect 2 photographers to make a living out of it is beyond me. The DM can’t even get hold of my co-worker, she’s not answering her phones, so neither one of us knows how she’s planning to divide the work hours.

I really need to find a new job :-p

On to some good news! The day before Christmas Eve, we got our notice from Immigration Services that we have an appointment date for my Adjustment of Status (green card) interview! It’ll be on February 15th at 10:30am. Which is nice, at least we won’t have to sit there for the entire day waiting! Only for half the day ;-) For anyone who knows the hell we’ve been thru with Immigration, or anyone who has been thru the hell of immigration themselves, I know you’ll be rejoicing and happy for us. For those who have no clue how it works, and thought I already had a green card, nope, but I will by February 15th! Fingers crossed!

Here’s a run down of the crap we’ve been through. At first our plan was to live in Canada, and James was ready and getting packed to move north. Until just before Labour Day weekend (which also happened to be my birthday weekend) 2001 that is. He had a small U-Haul trailer filled with some of his belongings and headed to the border to spend the weekend there and to meet some of my family. We had set a wedding date of October 5, and I wanted him to meet the rest of the family before that. We had called and asked Canadian Immigration 5 times if it was legal for him to move some of his belongings across the border before we were married and they said sure, no problem. But apparently what the help desk says and what is the rule are completely different things. Not to mention of course that the border guards can make up new rules when the feel like it and just ruin people’s lives willy nilly :-p

James got to the border, they pulled him over for inspection, then denied him entry based on a juvenile conviction which had been erroneously entered as an adult charge. The really stupid thing is he’d already been back and forth over the border several times over the year and half previous, and that charge had been investigated and cleared by a border official. This day however, the woman didn’t like his haircut, or had had a fight with her boyfriend and was PMSing that day, or all of the above, and decided he wasn’t getting in to Canada, because he’s a menace to society. BUT! If he could prove he’s got wedding plans, and produce the bride at the border, and the court documents that show he has been rehabilitated the following morning, she may consider letting him through. Yeah…right! I had to work, and could not get away at all, so my Mum went in my stead, taking along with her copies of our wedding invitations, and the contracts for the minister and the reception hall. James managed to get the court documents and STILL the woman would not let him cross, saying she asked to see the Bride, not the Bride’s mother and then she decided he was harassing the border officials, so banned him from ever entering Canada, pending a stack of paperwork that typically takes Canadian Immigration about 5 years to get to.

So, that not only ruined our engagement party, and my birthday, but we had to cancel the wedding. I had a small nervous breakdown.

Then September 11th happened, further adding to my breakdown, and looking back, I’m amazed that I survived the month.

I finagled some vacation time from work, and on October 30th, 2001 we got married at the county court house in Lenoir, North Carolina with a couple of James’ friends in attendance.

James started getting paperwork together with a lawyer here in the US, who turned out to be completely inept, and just further fucked us up with Canadian Immigration. So I hired a guy in Toronto, who, despite his best efforts, was unable to fix what the US lawyer had messed up. This all took quite some time, and in the meantime, I found out that the company I was working for was being merged with a competitor, and layoffs were likely. I pretty much volunteered to be first out the door, and we proceeded with the paperwork for me to move to the US.

This unfortunately also got majorly fucked up by lawyers, and delayed us another year and a bit, we finally gave up on lawyers entirely and I did it myself. I finally got my K3 marriage based visa in September of 2004. But it was discovered that I required surgery, so rather than pay several thousands of dollars for it in the US, I stayed in Canada an extra month, and then moved south on October 11th, 2004. Still barely recovered, but after 7 months of being away from my husband I was ready to go even if my guts were falling out the incision :-p

This K3 visa thing does not allow me to work, so I had to separately apply for Employment Authorization document (EAD), and I received that in February 2005. Once I had that, I sent in the application for AOS, and figured I’d have about 12 to 13 months to wait to hear anything. Others going thru similar immigration process at the Charlotte NC office had waited about that long, so I wasn’t going to worry about anything for a few months. Until of course they sent us the dreaded Request for further evidence (RFE) asking for me to submit a medical examination. Which of course I had already done, because it is a pre-requisite to the K3 visa being issued. If anyone at USCIS actually knew what they were doing, they’d already know that.

Well, I wasn’t going to pay another $400US to have another medical done, so we contacted Senator Dole’s office once again (she had helped us already a few months earlier when USCIS had lost our K3 application) and they were able to discover that my medical record had been misplaced, but with prodding they were able to locate it, so another deportation panic was averted. To be honest, I have been dreading deportation notices ever since, for any reason like they’ve lost my medical record again (but of course won’t own up to it, they usually say it was never received), or that they’ve sent out interview notices and I didn’t show up or whatever….but, we received the notice, and so far all is well. I just need to go thru our files and get all of our evidence together that yes indeed, we are in a bonafide marriage, and I didn’t just marry him for the Green Card. Anyone who knows me can well attest to that, I was quite happy where I was in Canada spank you berry fudge!

Anyhow, to make a very long story short, once we survive this interview, I should be granted a 10 year Green Card, and we won’t have to deal with US immigration again for 10 years. Unless we move, and then we just have to make sure to send them address change notices. That I can deal with! And no, if you’re wondering I have no intension whatsoever of applying for citizenship when I’m eligible (3 years based on marriage based green card), other than being able to vote, I see no benefit to it. Unless they change the laws somehow to require me to become a citizen, I’ll be quite happy to just keep renewing my green card every 10 years. Or better yet, finally getting James’ paperwork in order so we can move back to Canada would be nice.

So, the long road will hopefully finally come to an end in February. Barring any unforeseen issues, and the interviewer doesn’t send us in for further investigation for some inexplicable reason. I see no reason they should, but it has happened to couples who are more prepared and organized than we are, so I won’t open the champagne just yet! But we just may have a Green Card party on February 15th! ;-) That’s a Wednesday in case you’re wondering. Maybe Lost will be a repeat, so our party won’t interfere! LOL! It’ll be a nice Christmas/Valentine’s present all in one tho eh?  ¶ 11:10 AM