Posted on by David Drucker

Wet Ground, Losing Ground

As the Novem­ber rains have start­ed, so also has a show­er of gloom come upon us. With­out going into a lot of detail, it seems that our fail­ure to get Land­ed Immi­grant Sta­tus has had a domi­no effect on our sit­u­a­tion; These days, new work­ers in Cana­da usu­al­ly have Per­ma­nent Res­i­den­cy (Land­ed Immi­grant sta­tus) by the time their first year’s Work Per­mit is up for renew­al. That obvi­ous­ly was­n’t the case for us.

Because our prob­lems with Pam’s fin­ger­prints, I’m now hav­ing to do the unusu­al step of try­ing to get a renew­al of a work per­mit. We thought this would be a sim­ple rub­ber stamp on a form at the bor­der or some oth­er office, but at this point, it does not look either sim­ple, or even like­ly, in that it involves lots of more paper­work, and some oth­er details involv­ing my employ­er that I’ll leave out for the moment.

At this point, there’s a strong prob­a­bil­i­ty that a month from today we’ll both be out of the work­force, back where we began again. Pam is even in the midst of a con­tract, and will be forced out of it, and this pains her a great deal. While a brand new Work Per­mit (for Pam, this time) will solve most of our prob­lems for the time being, that will also require pro­cess­ing (about 55 days, our Lawyer reports, and we haven’t even sub­mit­ted that yet), so there will be an inevitable gap before we can work again. In addi­tion to wait­ing for this new work per­mit, we are also wait­ing for the fin­ger­prints (still bare­ly read­able) that we sent to Cal­i­for­nia and Con­necti­cut to be accept­ed and for them to send us Police Cer­tifi­cates, along with Mass­a­chu­setts, who for some rea­son did­n’t need fin­ger­prints.

It’s a hell of a way to enter into the Hol­i­day Sea­son, but it’s as if those unread­able prints have thrown us right back to the start­ing line. That’s not entire­ly accu­rate, but it sure feels that way.

I don’t think that words can express our lev­el of frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment.

4 Replies to “Wet Ground, Losing Ground”

  2. Thanks, Mike.

    Although I’m some­what less con­cerned about this elec­tion, both Pam and I are more than used to the idea that we’ve left for good (if we don’t starve to death, which is, thank good­ness, unlike­ly).

    Yes­ter­day, the week­end before the elec­tion, Bush was stump­ing in Nebras­ka. One won­ders just how tough things are for the GOP when he’s rel­e­gat­ed to one of the least pop­u­lous states in the coun­try for the final days of the cam­paign.

    That said, I would­n’t be sur­prised if the Repub­li­cans stay in con­trol of the Sen­ate, and the next 2 years are a com­plete and utter stale­mate (except for Bush mak­ing up for 1 veto — against Stem Cell Research) in the first 6 years with a steady stream of them in the next 2. This trans­lates to the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of the crest of one wave meet­ing the trough of anoth­er: utter equi­lib­ri­um and (as the pop­u­lar phrase goes), gov­ern­men­tal grid­lock. Good­ie.

  3. Hi David

    Sor­ry to hear about your frus­trat­ing times. I read your blog and then saw your beau­ti­ful orchids. Hope there is a flash of colour soon in your sit­u­a­tion. Just remem­ber, this time of year, when it is rain­ing in the city it is snow­ing in the moun­tains. You should try snow­shoe­ing this win­ter, its incred­i­ble up on Mount Sey­mour, Cypress and Grouse. An enchant­ed world.
    Regards MJ

  4. Hey there…

    Sounds like you guys are going through the same work permit/permanent res­i­den­cy issues as my boyfriend cur­rent­ly is. Thank­ful­ly (and hope­ful­ly) he’s still at the col­lect­ing stages of all the doc­u­men­ta­tion, and won’t have any of the has­sle it seems you have had. (His blog is: http://www.goingcanuck.com — He calls him­self a refugee of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, ha!)

    Glad I hap­pened upon your site… I’ll put you on my blogroll! Good luck with it.

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