7.5.00
Like A Frightened Rabbit Caught In The Hunter's Headlights
INS: Hello, I'm the INS. I'm not at all scary; I'm quite a friendly organisation. I'm just in place to stop all sorts of unsavoury characters from entering the US and living here without so much as a thankyou to lady liberty. Like small scared Cuban children, or stupid Australians falling in love with American citizens. As we all know, these types of people are actually trying to subvert our morally superior and all around upstanding nation, what with money laundering and drug smuggling and quickie marriages for the purpose of gaining employment and robbing our youth and unemployed of jobs they so rightly deserve. That's why I'm here - to make it uber-difficult for these people - if we can call such scum people - to come into our country to live. I make all the processes for securing citizenship as confusing to understand as possible; I make people cry by telling them that it might take up to a year for their paperwork to go through. That's me in a nutshell. Hello.
Readers: Hello, INS!
INS: Aha! I see one of them now. A snivelling little Australian girl sitting at her American fiancee's computer, freaking out as she tries to make heads or tails of our graphically intensive website, seeking answers from all over the web, finding out that it might take up to six months and thousands of dollars in plane travel to actually be able to marry someone she's loved for over a year and a half now. See what a good job I'm doing of preventing her from staying here? I'm wonderful!
sammy: <unable to speak, sitting in mute confusion, not even able to muster up a tear>
Well, that's what my evening has felt like so far. If only I was, say, quite rich and could afford an immigration lawyer. Why are legal services only available to those who are so wealthy they could use their excess money as toilet paper? Well, they're not, I suppose, but that's what it feels like. Given my paltry savings, I couldn't hire a lawyer; I'm going to barely be able to afford the forms from the INS in order to apply for a fiancee visa. Yes, I'm bitching and moaning, but wouldn't you be?
Tonight's reading has included Alvena and Arnaldo's dealings with the INS, which is a very comprehensive guide and not as confusing as the INS page linked a few paragraphs ago. It's a well thought out site with tonnes of information - and it warms the heart to know that people actually do overcome the rigmarole and red tape that immigration presents. However, I almost fell out of my chair when reading about possible timelines of six to twelve months to process the paperwork. Look - I know that there are probably thousands of American citizens wanting to marry foreigners (not to mention citizens from Australia, Canada, England, China, Japan, etc. etc., wanting to marry people who are foreign to their countries), but I just want to know what it is that makes it necessary to slow the process down so much. I doubt that it takes very long to look over papers and make sure everything is hunky dory; the act of making signatures and stamping paper with official seals and the like doesn't sound like stressful work, either. Do the delays come because the INS wants to make sure that the people applying for citizenship - in whatever form that takes - are serious about their decision? Putting them through a little extra hell to make sure that they're not just giving into an act of whimsy? Thinking that someone's going to pay out a few hundred dollars, spend all they have on airfares and pieces of paper and photographs and "proof", and then get sick of sitting around and say, "Thanks for your trouble, but we're not going to get married now because you've made us wait so long."? If that is the reasoning and logic - and this is purely speculative, mind you - then it's beyond screwed up.
I have enough problems to deal with on my own, in my head, without this added stress; I don't want to be sitting around seperated from my best friend and fiancee whilst we wait for the INS to decide when our lives can begin again. I just want to get married, settle down, get a job and go back to school, and actually be out there experiencing what life has to throw our way - not being bossed around by a federal department that probably needs to get organised and learn a little about people as opposed to "citizens" and "naturalised citizens" and "foreign nationals" and "illegal aliens".
Sigh.
Alright, alright, I'll quit my complaining for a moment or two.
That aside, I have been having a bit of fun lately. Given that most of the time I'm cooped up inside because I can't drive (I did think to get an international driving permit before I left Australia, but did I act on the thought before I forgot about it? Of course not. Billy suggested that I can drive legally here if I have my Australian driver's license and my passport on me when I drive, but he wasn't too clear on the source of his information... and I'm afraid to drive on the roads here besides), and Nathan works nightshift, I don't get to do too much "outside" activity - not something I mind terribly much, since I'm fond of being indoors. We did go and see "Keeping The Faith" last Sunday, though - reviews of this film say that it's a "great date movie", but I don't think a plot revolving around commitment and love is the sort of thing you'd feel comfortable viewing next to someone you asked out on the spur of the moment. I liked it; I'm not into romance movies as a rule, but it was quite funny, and Ben Stiller is cute. So there.
Friday was the most fun, though. The only low point was wanting to punch someone at the optometrist's office - I had an eye test about a week and a half ago and was promised my new glasses would be ready in four days (my existing pair have been patched together with a little superglue). Upon calling up the optometrist after the four days had passed, we found that they'd lost my prescription, and any record of me having been there in the first place. Good. So, I finally had the time to go in on Friday morning (after an entire night of no sleep - I ended up spending 27 hours in consciousness land before I laid down to take a nap), and I found the frames I'd picked out originally with suprising ease, and then had to wait around thirty minutes before the optometrist himself found my records and prescription. I can pick the glasses up next Wednesday. Let's hope the ones I'm wearing now last that long.
Our next mission was to find somewhere selling "Dogma" on video so we could own a copy for ourselves rather than rent it a million times - so the logical place to go was the only mall in town. It's kind of pitiful by mall standards, but it doesn't matter what sort of a shopping centre you're in - if there's a bookstore and somewhere to buy yummy-smelling perfume and other cosmetic items, there is fun to be had. In Waldenbooks ("May I help you?" asked the petite Asian manager in a twangy southern accent. "No, thankyou... we're just browsing and being loud and obnoxious.") the most laughs were generated by pithy "how to" guides concerning dating, sex, and divorce. Did you know there was a "for dummies" book about divorce? You do now. I felt an insane urge to take a pen and scrawl on the inside cover, "Don't marry someone you don't love" - that about sums up the purpose of that book. I just can't picture anyone seriously purchasing a book entitled "Divorce For Dummies". Or "200 Ways To Drive Him Wild", for that matter. Don't couples talk to each other anymore? "Instead of asking my partner what he likes," ponders the modern woman, "I'm going to trust the word of a book by an author I don't know." The winner in most laughable sex-oriented literature was "The Pocket Kama Sutra" - I think the bookstore manager thinks Nathan and I are a pair of perverts, but come on; haven't you ever felt like giggling like Beavis and Butthead at things like that?
Or maybe I'm just immature.
(Yeah, that's the most likely option.)
Hey. I heard that!
We didn't end up finding "Dogma" on video - to buy, anyway. We did find it at Blockbuster, and I watched it almost as raptly as I did the first two times in the cinema.
4:35am. Something tells me I should attempt to get some sleep - so I'll leave this here for the morning. Perhaps there will be more ramblings tomorrow; if so, I apologise now for the length of this.
>yawns< Goodnight...
