misslynx, posts by tag: immigration - LiveJournal

It is a glorious day, for several reasons:

The sun is shining... Grass is turning green again... Little shoots of crocuses and other early bulbs are starting to come up... And best of all, as of 11:45 am today:

kettunainen is now a permanent resident of Canada!!!

It took soooooo long... But today it all became official. She'll have the card in 4-6 weeks, and in the meantime she has a paper attesting to her status. No more worries about immigration, ever!

For anyone who hasn't already seen this in kettunainen's journal, we got some amazing news today!

We heard from the lawyer who's doing our immigration application today -- just a few days after CIC told her that there was no news and everything was massively backlogged, what should turn up in her mail today but... Taikakettu's work permit!

So, she is now legally able to work in Canada until May 2007 (and she should have her permanent resident status well before then), and can also apply for OHIP now. The lawyer said that this is basically equivalent to the Approval in Principle, even though they didn't actually include the Approval in Principle letter.

So anyone who knows of any job openings that sound good for a well-organized, detail-oriented Virgo sort of of person, who doesn't overly much like dealing with the general public, but does like nitpicky, detailed work that other people would find tedious, and is especially good at organizing and creating systems and that sort of thing, send'em her way. She's also good with editing, proofreading and research.

The next thing we can expect to receive from CIC is either an interview request, or a request for the Right of Landing fee -- which, happily, has now been cut in half from what it was at the time we originally applied. So even more good news on that front.

I have, for the past few days, been feeling slightly sick to my stomach and also achey through the middle of my body, as though I'd either been punched in the stomach at some point, or been doing lots of abdominal exercises. I think I have belatedly clued in to what this is: massive stress. My whole body clenches up in knots when I read about the situation in New Orleans, and having additional stresses like end/beginning of month cash flow worries, family issues, occasional fights with kettunainen, health worries (my own plus a brief cancer scare regarding my teenage nephew), etc. have not been helping. I need to learn how to let tension out of my body before it gives me an ulcer or something.

I have discovered that I was running a $78.92 account credit with Dreamhost, my web host. Not sure where from - maybe past referrals or something. It is now gone, because I donated the lot of it to the hurricane relief fund through them, which means they have to match it. Am now obscurely worried that too many people will donate through them, and trying to match everyone's donations will drive them into bankruptcy. Most of their past monthly charity efforts have netted around $200-300 in donations. If I, in my relatively impoverished state, kicked in nearly $80 on this one, and they have something like 10,000 other customers, many of whom are better off that I am... Well.

I was not initially sure which was more upsetting, the rampant violence and what not of the people in the city as the social order breaks down, or the government negligence that led to things being as bad as they are. But really, if I think about it a bit, I know which one is worse. I don't necessarily want to kill the people who are looting and shooting and all that (well OK, the rapists, maybe). But the people in charge, who sold off wetlands for development despite knowing they were an essential buffer against storms, failed to put any money into improving the levees after years of warnings that they were too weak and wouldn't withstand a major hurricane, ignored the advice of a UN disaster planning consultant who asked them repeatedly what they planned to do for people who couldn't get out of the city on their own and was met with silence as a response, shut down the bus and train service before giving the evacuation order, and are now turning back would-be volunteers from other countries at the border, announcing they don't want or need anyone's help, and sending in the National Guard with orders to shoot to kill...Those I would like to see die a slow and painful death. Ideally, drop them into the worst part of the city with no food, clean water or transportation -- and let people know who they are and what they're responsible for. Failing that, some kind of mini-Nuremburg trials once this is all over and as many people as can still be saved have been.

But of course, that will never happen. It's not enough that the US government think it's the world's police force and goes around bullying other countries constantly; they don't even give a damn about their own people, at least not those who are poor, don't own cars or have the wrong skin colour. Gods. My citizenship ceremony, a week from now, can't come soon enough for me. I know the default these days is that you get dual citizenship unless you specifically renounce your citizenship of origin, but I really feel tempted to, as soon as it's over, walk down to the US consulate, rip up my American passport, and throw it at them. And just say fuck you, fuck your wars and your arrogance and your homeland security bullshit, fuck your racism and your homophobia and your fundamentalist nutbars, fuck your psychotic patriotism, especially when it's hypocritically coupled with criminal negligence toward your own people. Fuck all of it. Here's the citzenship I was born with, take it back because I don't want it any more. Land of the free, my newly Canadian ass.

But of course, I won't do that. Because I am too polite to vent at a bunch flunkies in dead-end civil service jobs. That's what I have Livejournal for. :-)

Citizenship exam at 8:30 am tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

In today's mail:

1. A GST refund cheque. I am still unused to the idea of Revenue Canada actually giving me money, rather than taking it away, and tend to regard things like this with the awe most people reserve for spontaneous appearances of divine images in the clouds.
   
   
2. A small package containing 5 BPAL imps, acquired from a member of the bpal.org forums. Since starting to have a wee bit of disposable income again, I have made a number of small trades and purchases of BPAL stuff via the forums and the alchemylab community, and while I am now on a no-new-orders resolution for a while since I seemed at risk of getting carried away, it's now time for the imps (sample vials of perfume oils) I've already ordered to start showing up. In this set: Belladonna, Malediction, Dublin, Tintagel, and a bonus partial imp of Greed that she apparently threw in just to be nice. I am currently wearing the Belladonna, and smell kind of herby-flowery and poisonous.
   
   
3. Most astonishingly, a letter from Citizenship and Immigration Canada telling me to come in and write my citzenship test on August 12. Back in December, they said it would be 12-15 months. It's been 7 and a half. Wow. If they've streamlined the permanent resident process half as much as they seem to have streamlined the citizenship process, kettunainen could be landed and able to work much sooner than we thought. Now I have to find that damn study guide they sent me back in December.

I have a renewed respect for the power of snail mail. Who knew so many good things could arrive in one day?

Well, now. Apparently, no transit strike after all.

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On the bright side: ask, and ye shall receive. A few days ago, I posted something about wanting to live in a more weird and magical sort of world, and then what should happen but, on Parliament Street, en route to picking up the cheque that covered the first half of our rent, I saw a dog-faced child!

Well, OK. I suppose technically I did not. But it all depends on what you mean by "saw". Is what you see really what's there, or the explanation your brain initially comes up with while trying to make sense of visual input? If the former, then what I saw, I suppose, was an orange pomeranian which had been dressed by its demented owner in a pink sparkly little-girl T-shirt and was sitting in a baby stroller -- and sitting up in a disturbingly human-like posture, at that, not with its paws down the way dogs usually sit, but sitting back on its haunches with its paws up on the safety bar in front of the stroller. But if you take "saw" in the latter sense, then I definitely saw a dog-faced child because that was what my brain told me I was seeing when I first looked at it.

Hey, I wanted weird and magical, and apparently I got it. I suppose it's all a matter of perception...

Went to see the lawyer today, and gave her all but three of the mega stack of government forms required for me to sponsor kettunainen for permanent resident status in Canada, plus a four-page relationship essay, and went through a stack of supporting documentation including plane tickets, photos, greeting cards, lease agreement, doggie adoption agreement, etc., sorting out what will and won't go in the application and what more we need.

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And the lawyer is very happy with her web site, so that's good. First site I ever did using the Mambo CMS and it was a pain in the ass, but the results seem to be well worth it. She's getting me the login info for her domain registrar and then it's just a matter of waiting for the DNS changes to go through before it will be live at http://www.YourPassportToCanada.com - all you Americans interested in moving here, check it out. Though for the next few days you'll still need to go to the test site instead of the actual domain.

Now I just need some clients to actually pay me. Much work still coming in, but of the three clients who I was anticipating getting paid by this week, I have been paid by precisely none of them thus far. But I suppose there's still hope something will come through tomorrow...