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.

Prints Charming

When we started the process of immi­grat­ing to Canada, I knew we’d prob­a­bly be lucky in some ways, and unlucky in oth­ers. Our expe­ri­ences so far have been mostly lucky. We found a beau­ti­ful place to live, both of us have had suc­cesses with employ­ment, we got a good lawyer, and of course, we speak the lan­guage and brought enough funds to begin with. We’ve filled out the forms, got­ten a clean bill of health and have gen­er­ally been able to jump through all of the hoops that the bureau­cra­cies of the US and Canada have put before us.

Until now.

The prob­lem is my wife’s fin­ger­prints, or rather, lack of them. It seems that a small per­cent­age of the world’s pop­u­la­tion can’t pro­duce a read­able fin­ger­print. Besides the obvi­ous ones with­out hands or arms, there are oth­ers, like my wife, who sim­ply have dry skin and don’t have much in the way of ridges on their fin­ger­tips. While this char­ac­ter­is­tic might come in handy if you were a mur­derer or bur­glar, it does pose a sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cle if you want to immi­grate. After three con­sec­u­tive sets of prints sent to the FBI and three sets sub­se­quently rejected, the FBI has finally flat-out refused to say that she isn’t in their data­base. Reach­ing this dead end has taken about 4 months and a cou­ple hun­dred dol­lars in fees and postage.

All is not lost, though. Our lawyer was able to deter­mine that we could in fact get around this seem­ingly impass­able obsta­cle to ever get­ting Landed Immi­grant sta­tus by obtain­ing a Police Cer­tifi­cate (like the one I got from Cam­bridge, Eng­land) from every state that my wife has lived in since she was 16. For­tu­nately, she only lived in 3 of them. If she had moved around a lot, we would really have been out of luck. So we now have yet another obsta­cle, but after another few months, we may finally see the day where we’ll get Landed Immi­grant sta­tus (and hence Per­ma­nent Res­i­dency). That Holy Grail of Per­ma­nent Res­i­dency means that either of us can work where we wish, put down roots and plan for the future far more than day to day. I’m not hold­ing my breath, though. There have been so many times when we thought were were near­ing the fin­ish line, only to have it moved fur­ther into the future again.

I have learned that the one thing that you need to immi­grate, more than money, influ­ence, tal­ent, friends, fam­ily, or any­thing else is patience.

Waiting for the FBI and the Fireworks Competition

It’s been a longer than we expected wait for any response regard­ing our paper­work for Landed Immi­grant sta­tus. This week, I decided to call the lawyer we’ve dealt with dur­ing the whole process to find out if he knew any­thing more than we did (or per­haps he could find a way to expe­dite mat­ters). After a lit­tle phone tag, I found out yes­ter­day that the hold-up has been Pam’s fin­ger­prints. It’s not that she’s on any watch-list, but that the prints just don’t come out well enough. Appar­ently years of wash­ing dishes, dry hands, and other wear and tear have left her with fin­gers that just don’t offer much in the way of a well-defined print. She’s had them done twice, and the sec­ond time, the fel­low doing the prints looked at the first set (which had come back with the ‘Rejected’ stamp on them) and declared “I could read these!”. He explained that the FBI requires prints that are read­able by a machine rather than a human. So, we find our­selves in limbo, iron­i­cally because the FBI won’t clear Pam’s fin­ger­prints. This is par­tic­u­larly irk­some, as so much of our future deci­sions are on hold because of this (and even the abil­ity for us to stay here). Our lawyer said that there’s really noth­ing we can do, and that we’ll just have to wait while the prints and Pam’s records make their way through the FBI’s labyrinthine bureau­cracy. I’m hop­ing that the wait won’t be much longer, but there’s no telling how much longer this will take. It’s a good thing that my work per­mit didn’t depend on this!

If it’s Sat­ur­day, Then This Must be China
Last year we very much enjoyed watch­ing not one night of fire­works, but 3 of them. Each year, Van­cou­ver hosts a Fire­works com­pe­ti­tion in late July to early August. Last year, 3 coun­tries, includ­ing Canada, China and Swe­den were the par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries (Swe­den won). This year, it’s 4 : Italy, China, the Czech Repub­lic, and Mex­ico. We saw Italy’s per­for­mance last Wednes­day from Vanier Park. Tonight it will be China, who will open their dis­play with the music of ‘The Yel­low River Con­certo’, a piece that has the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being the only fairly well known piece of con­cert music that was writ­ten by a com­mit­tee, (the Yel­low River Com­posers’ Com­mit­tee, of course), although there is an arti­cle in Wikipedia that attrib­utes it as an arrange­ment of music from The Yel­low River Can­tata by Yin Cheng­zong. The Yel­low River Can­tata is attrib­uted to Xian Xing­hai (1905?1945), so I’m not sure where the Com­mit­tee attri­bu­tion on so many record­ings (includ­ing the one I heard a few times when I was a kid) came from. Next Wednes­day it will be the Czech Repub­lic, and the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day, Mex­ico fol­lowed by the ‘Grand Finale’. I remem­ber how I was sad that we’d leave the Fourth of July Fire­works behind, but they seem to be replaced nicely with more than enough pyrotech­nics, although with­out all of the kitschy Amer­i­cana we indulged in on the Banks of the Charles.

This Year has 400 Days

For those not in Canada, there is a pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion pro­gram on the CBC called ‘This Hour Has 22 Min­utes’, which is actu­ally a par­ody on another, ear­lier TV Pro­gram called ‘This Hour has Seven Days’, a hard-hitting CBC news mag­a­zine from the mid-1960s (which some have said inspired the US pro­gram “60 Min­utes”). The “22 Min­utes” bit refers to the fact that a half-hour tele­vi­sion pro­gram is actu­ally 22 min­utes long to make room for com­mer­cials. Why am I refer­ring to a Cana­dian ref­er­ence which is in turn, upon another Cana­dian ref­er­ence? Because today, in Cal­en­dar or Clock-time, we’ve been here for exactly one year. It sure feels like longer, so I’m esti­mat­ing, for a nice, round num­ber, an extra 35 days.
In this year we:

• Sold our house and bought a condo
• Sold our car
• Packed up and moved all of our possessions
• Got to know a new city
• Set up a new home network
• Got new bank accounts, credit cards and ATM cards
• Got Work Per­mits, Med­ical Care Cards and Social Insur­ance Numbers
• Got New Driver’s Licenses
• Got a new Job (David) and 3 Con­tract engage­ments (Pam)
• Met some new friends and acquaintances
• Applied for Landed Immi­grant Sta­tus (Per­ma­nent Residency)
• Hosted friends and fam­ily who came to visit on sev­eral occasions
• Had friends over for din­ner, and went to more than a few pic­nics and parties
• Joined a Game­lan (David) and ran a Doc­u­men­ta­tion Com­pe­ti­tion (Pam)

That’s only part of what we did in the past year. It does feel longer, but on the other hand, I could have also said that this year con­tains 300 days, because it also feels like it has gone by very quickly. That’s what a major change to one’s life will do.

Today, maybe partly to cel­e­brate this anniver­sary, I took a ride around the city. Pam was feel­ing like she was com­ing down with a cold, so I went out by myself and rented an elec­tric scooter. I drove all around, from due east of our place for some errands, then back across the Bur­rard Bridge, to Sun­set Beach, and then across town (north) on Chillco Street, where I con­nected up with the route around Stan­ley Park. I went all the way around the Park, and then returned across the bridge, meet­ing Pam at Granville Island. Now, there are prob­a­bly some who are won­der­ing “Are you allowed to take an elec­tric scooter all the way around Stan­ley Park?” To this I have to answer: Appar­ently, No (Oops). I was mis­in­formed, but nobody told me to get off the path. The next time I do this, I won’t be able to feign igno­rance. Any­way, no one (includ­ing me) was harmed by my lit­tle jaunt around the sea­wall, and the trip, which took about an hour, was a blast. The weather was per­fect, and I must have seen a mil­lion peo­ple at every point, on the beaches, the parks, the bridges and streets. I got sev­eral great views of the city, as well as the moun­tains (wish my cam­era were work­ing, but that’s another story). This truly is one of the most gor­geous spots on the planet, and year later or not, I’m still in awe of just how beau­ti­ful it is.

So it’s been a year. Tonight, Pam and I will sit down to another meal of good, healthy food, nearly all from the mar­ket at Granville Island. She is right now doing a lit­tle tidy­ing up on the ter­race. which con­tin­ues to bloom (roses and hostas at the moment). I read some of my old entries from a year ago, and although I do rec­og­nize the writ­ing and the per­son behind them, I’m not entirely sure whether they and I are the same. It will take a bit more time (but prob­a­bly less than another 400 days) to know for sure. What I do know, is that we’re now set­tled and con­tent, and that is a far nicer place to be than ‘about to move’ and anxious.

The All-Purpose Pretext

Since we moved here, I noticed that even though I had changed the billing address on my Amer­i­can credit cards, my state­ments for some of them were con­sis­tently too late to be able to pay them on time. I phoned cus­tomer ser­vice for one of them, MBNA, and after some dis­cus­sions about pos­si­ble ways of fix­ing this, they admit­ted that they couldn’t help me yet, but the rep­re­sen­ta­tive encour­aged me to check my bal­ance online peri­od­i­cally and at some point in the future, to con­tact cus­tomer ser­vice again to see if they could get what I wanted. What I wanted was to get my state­ment via email (or at least, an email to be sent when the state­ment was read­able), the way I get with my Invest­ment accounts. Since this par­tic­u­lar credit card was even con­nected to my Invest­ment accounts (that’s where the bonuses for using the card go), it seemed pos­si­ble that maybe they might do this in the near future.

That was 6 months ago or so. After get­ting my state­ment for this past month late once more, I decided to give MBNA a call. The ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive had a south­ern accent. That wasn’t all that sur­pris­ing. What I wasn’t pre­pared for was a full dose of unabashed Amer­i­can propaganda:

Me: (after the usual account exchange of secu­rity and account num­ber infor­ma­tion) Hello, I’ve been con­tin­u­ing to get my state­ment too late to be able to pay it. I know that I’m in Canada, but is there any way that you could send the state­ments ear­lier or send an email noti­fy­ing me of them?

Ser­vice Rep: Oh yeah, we’ve had a lot of trou­ble recently get­tin’ state­ments to peo­ple OUT­side the US because of the guv-ment. They now have to check all of these statements.

Me (gasp­ing in aston­ish­ment): You’ve got to be kidding.

Ser­vice Rep: Oh no, not at all. This is nec­es­sary, after what those ter­ror­ists did down here. You watch the news, dontcha?
Me: Are you telling me that I have no choice, that this is the US gov­ern­ment who are hold­ing up your statements?

SR: I told you, to peo­ple in other coun­tries, you’ll be get­tin’ your state­ments late from now on. It’s a new pro­ce­dure. If you want to talk your Sen­a­tor about this, you can do that, but there’s nothin’ we can do.

Me: Can’t you just send the state­ments out a lit­tle ear­lier to make up for this?

SR: Sir, we send those state­ments as soon as we can already. The guv-ment just has to do this to keep us all safe. I’m sure you under­stand that.

Me: I can’t believe this. No one told me about this months ago. Is there some­one else I can talk to about this?

SR: You’re talkin’ to me. Now I sug­gest you check your state­ment online, which you can eas­ily do from www…

Me: (break­ing in) I do that already, I really just want you to send me the state­ments ear­lier or send an email so I’ll know when to check…

SR: We won’t do that. That’s jus’ some­thing we don’t do.

Me: OK, that’s it. I’ve had it. Please can­cel the account.

SR: (almost relieved): I’ll be happy to do that, sir.

It didn’t go much longer beyond that. I think at some point I almost heard her mut­ter some­thing about for’inners.

At any rate, I believe I’ve learned some­thing. The behav­ior of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion is now being imi­tated every­where, even by the Pri­vate Sec­tor: When you find your­self at odds with your customer/citizenry, blame the idea of Ter­ror­ism. The Bush gov­ern­ment has lit­er­ally got­ten away with mur­der and may­hem by using the umbrella expla­na­tion of “9/11 Changed Every­thing”. The rights of Pris­on­ers of War, the right to a Free Press, the pri­vacy of phone con­ver­sa­tions, med­ical records or finan­cial trans­ac­tions; every­thing is up for grabs under the “We have to fight the Ter­ror­ists.” excuse. I didn’t think I’d be hear­ing that par­tic­u­lar spiel recited to me from a credit card com­pany like MBNA, but I guess this is a game that any­one can play. So, if you get lousy ser­vice or a shoddy prod­uct from some Amer­i­can com­pany, don’t be sur­prised if they pull out the ulti­mate ‘Get out of Jail Free Card’ that has the num­ber 9 and 11 on it.