A Speaking-With-Immigration Tip

I’ve called the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services several times the past couple of months. The folks I’ve talked with have always been kind, courteous and helpful. If I had one complaint, and I do, it’s that getting to talk to a real live person is somewhat of a chore.

At least it used to be.

The first time I called Immigration I listened to their voice message and was delighted to learn that staff was on-hand from early morning to evening (I don’t recall the exact times). I listened as I was told to press 1 for something, 2 for something else, etc., waiting for that moment I’d be told to press X to speak to a live person.

I listened a second time and still didn’t hear the cue to talk to a live person.

So I pressed some buttons – I don’t recall which ones – but a person answered and told me that based on my button pushing I needed info on I really didn’t need info on. I apologized for mis-pressing and told her I didn’t need help with what she was offering. She was kind enough to address my problem and asked if there was anything else I needed prior to our hanging up.

Weeks later I called again and still didn’t hear a cue for talking to a real live person. I did hear the cue, however, for getting a person on the line to talk about what the lady I talked with before had mentioned. So I pressed that button. When the person came on the line I apologized for troubling them and explained I didn’t know of any other way to talk to a real human at Immigration. The person I spoke with told me if I just stayed on the line and didn’t press any buttons someone would eventually pick up.

Which, in retrospect, makes sense. One of the cues had said, “If you are using a rotary dial phone, please stay on the line.” I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to follow this cue – maybe I was too caught up in wondering who still had a rotary dial phone these days.

The next time I called I didn’t push any buttons.

In short order a person picked up at the other end and started speaking to me very fast. And very Spanish. When I finally said, “I don’t speak Spanish” the person immediately went into English.

And they gave me the information I needed.

So.

My wife and the Canadian children are all at our home in Ohio. The American children are with us this week as well.

And my parents are visiting.

This brings us to 12 people that need to be fed at each meal.

Two nights ago, the youngest daughter came down, after the supper dishes were done and asked my wife, “When are we going to have dinner?” I could see my wife replaying the dinner routine in her head as I was doing the same thing.

“We’ve already eaten,” she said.

“But I was upstairs,” she said. And she’d been with her sister.

And in case I’ve made that too vague… we missed feeding two children.

In our defense, the dinner shout had gone out. And the house is full of clutter from moving new furniture in and old furniture out. And there had been a beehive of activity after the “dinner’s on” announcement.

The two sisters did get fed, and seemed happy enough.

Still, last night we did a head count.

The last trip I made to BC was made on short notice as my wife and I had a last-minute meeting we needed to attend; she was waiting on the OK to leave the country with the kids. As we didn’t know what might happen, I hadn’t purchased a return ticket (well, I had one, but the return was weeks away – I’d gotten it with my frequent flyer points and had to select a day way out in order to get a trip I had enough miles for) since there was a chance I might need to stay longer than a weekend.

And the chance presented itself. Word came down that the children would be able to move (which was more formality than anything else – nobody was arguing they couldn’t leave).

So… we decided to bust our humps, put the finishing touches on the house, and make it market ready.

I put in a call to work and told them I’d be taking a week of vacation. As bold as this might sound as a last-minute move, my boss knew it might happen before I left and was cool with it.

My wife had recently had new toilets installed, new sinks, new countertops, and linoleum in a bathroom and the laundry room, so the place was looking pretty good. The biggest problem we were going to have was that there had been mirrors glued to walls in three of the bathrooms that had needed replaced and a contractor had pulled them down… which left residue on and tears in the drywall.

As a team, my wife, the older kids and I worked at cleaning and fixing and the younger kids simply tried not to do any more damage than absolutely necessary (sometime over the weekend an accordion door was broken and at some point in the recent past a pocket door was knocked off track and needed re-hung).

I was putting the final coat of paint on the walls when the realtor came for an 11 a.m. walk-trough. He’s going to oversee the fixing of the accordion door and have someone hang mirrors.

Then there was a lot of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

We left for the border around 7 p.m.

Now, above I said we were waiting for word the children could move. And you might be of the thought that we were waiting to move with the children… this isn’t the case. The Canadians had more than a month left before school started and my wife thought they might drive me to Ohio and then head north to visit her family near Toronto. The ability of the children to move freely around the countries made this doable as, prior to August 1, they were only allowed to be out of British Columbia for two weeks at a time. (The house is going to be shown while we’re gone, but we’re still waiting on paperwork from the US government, and the house is full of my wife’s things… though it all looks very tidy.)

You’ve all been there.

You go away for the weekend, decide to stretch it out for a week and your blog explodes.

So where was I? British Columbia.

And what took a week? Driving from Vancouver to Central Ohio. Well, in all honestly, that only took four days… and a bit of another day. I’ll write it all up when things settle down at work.

While I don’t think it’s a good idea to post travel plans in a blog, I’m going to do just that. Not because you folks don’t know where I live, but because by the time this posts my house will be full of my relatives.

I’m currently on my way to Vancouver. Like last time, this time I’m flying right into Vancouver… I’m not going to Seattle to have my wife pick me up and then drive two hours to British Columbia.

The reason I’m mentioning this at all is I want to tell you about my most recent ticket-buying experience. Well “buying” is a little bit of a lie, I guess, as I used my Frequent Flyer miles.

Anyway, and keeping in mind that the following dollars are for demonstration purposes only – they’re close to actual costs but not dead-on – this is how it all went down:

• If I were to fly, roundtrip, into Seattle it would cost about $400. (And I will resist the urge to complain about how my boys and I flew to Seattle, 54 week ago, for $160 each. Again, roundtrip.)
• If I choose to fly into Vancouver it costs $700 roundtrip.

Flying to Vancouver is significantly more.

Using my miles for a roundtrip ticket:

• Flying to Seattle would run 40,000 miles.
• Flying to Vancouver would be 20,000 miles.

I chose to fly into Vancouver for the 20,000 miles.

And even then I had to sort of game the system. In order to make it work I selected a return date in late August and I’m likely going to have to eat that ticket. Still, in the past I’ve used 40,000 miles for a one-way to Vancouver… so it’s still a win.

We — the American faction of the family and the Canadian faction — are all getting very eager to live together as one gigantic, international, unit. This past Thursday the American children and I were out for dinner and they raised the question, as they often do, of when their new brothers and sisters will be joining us. I know my wife gets the same questions on her end (as do I when I’m up there).

“Soon” has typically been the answer as my wife and I don’t have solid dates. 

I flew into Vancouver this past weekend… via Denver. As Denver is the Mile High City and Vancouver International Airport is a mere 14 feet above sea level I fully expected our pilot to announce “we’ve started our initial descent into Vancouver,” as soon as the wheels went up and that we’d glide into Canada able to brag about our reduced carbon footprint; this, it appears, pushes no-idle too far as our pilot felt the need to fully thrust us to 33,000 feet and roar across the border.

Flying into Vancouver is an incredible treat when compared to flying into Seattle and then driving two hours. I don’t do it often as it costs several hundred dollars more. Which makes this all the more puzzling: My next trip up I’m using my frequent flyer miles… I can fly, round trip, to Vancouver for 20,000 miles — the same trip at the same time to Seattle is 40,000 miles. 

This last trip we made some more progress in getting the house ready to sell. My wife had new countertops and sinks put in the bathrooms, old bathroom mirrors removed, and new carpet put down, throughout, this past week (she’s quite the remodelling organizer) so we’ve entered the home stretch. She and I spent some time clearing clutter, putting things we don’t want to move on the driveway for pickup and separating other things for donating.

And… we still found time to go to the beach with the kids. (What’s the use of being near the ocean if you can’t get in it?)

(I just got off the phone with my wife. In the background I could hear people working on baseboards. Sweet.)

I received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security yesterday. It came regarding our I-129f paperwork which is the form we filled out for the K3 and K4 visas (the K3 for my wife and the K4 for the children).

When I sent the I-129f (Petition for Alien Fiancée) in I had a fear I’d gotten a late start on it. I could have sent it in as soon as I’d gotten the first Notice of Action (NOA) for the I-130 (Petition for Alien Relative) but it sort of slipped my mind.

So it went in late.

After I mailed it in I did some reading and found info that sending it in at all might have been useless or, per one poster, have added a delay to the immigration process. It seems the K3 and K4 visas are being phased out as they had been put in place due to the fact the I-130 route took so long. As I-130 processing times have been greatly reduced, current K3 and K4 filers are being converted to I-130’s.

Blah blah blah.

Anyway, I’d left a line blank on the I-129f. It was the line asking if I’d had any form of criminal past. I’ve not, and I intend to tell them that, but I also intend to tell them to withdrawal our I-129f petition as we don’t need it… the I-130 was approved, after all.

I’ve got to say this doesn’t make me the happiest person alive:

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Some of the most mind-numbingly boring stuff I read in college came from Joyce. Man, I yawn just thinking about it now.

But, that’s what the I Write Like website kicked out when I had it analyze a snippet from Canada Day and Independence Day.

Poking fun of Canadian currency got me this:

I write like
Ian Fleming

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

That’s more like it.

Our Magic Immigration Ball has moved.

I noticed this only after I received the second Notice of Action in the mail. I’d signed up for text alerts but I either missed the text or it was never sent. (I likely missed it – I just checked some old texts looking for it and found one from my brother that he sent in reply to something I’d sent him… and his text came just a minute or two after mine was sent. Just last night I was wondering why he’d never replied. I really need to figure out how to work my phone a bit better.)

The people I work with know I go to Vancouver on a regular basis; I’m guessing most of them think the trips are all vacation-like in nature. While the family and I always set aside some time for fun, a lot of what is going on falls into the work category.

This last trip had me pulling up some old linoleum and replacing a bit of subfloor, yanking a toilet out as part of a bathroom remodel (pros will be coming in to do the harder stuff) and hanging a boatload of blinds. I also sort of supervised (that is, let into the house) a plumber who started removing sinks and faucets; he also put in two new toilets.

I put up at least a dozen blinds this trip. I’ve got a pretty good system down and can have one mounted in pretty short order. When you consider they don’t weigh all that much it’s really rather surprising that hanging a bunch of blinds could make me as sore as it did. How sore did it make me? Sore enough that when we all went to Fat Burger the gal behind the counter asked me what I’d been up to to make me move so stiffly.

In my defense, hanging some of the blinds had me stretching at odd angles.

So it was likely that. Or the fact I’m almost 50.