(no subject)
So I got my permanent residency visa today in the mail.
Kyle comes home with flowers and absinthe. We are really happy and excited until we actually read the fine print.
Turns out I have to LEAVE Canada, as in cross the border, and then turn around and come back, to get some official to sign one last form.
Of course we knew nothing about this until just now.
I swear to god, if someone wrote a book on how to immigrate to Canada, not like the thousands of pages of legalese you have to plow through, just simple, straightforward, what you literally HAVE to do to immigrate, that person would be a millionaire.
It would be like ten pages.
In simple steps.
Put aside about $1,500 for the application process itself, plus another $2,000 in traveling costs, plus another $1,000 in medical and legal expenses [this does not include the cost of getting married if you go that route]. Subtract the income lost by not being able to work for god knows how long.
It is an expensive process.
No wonder it's taken so long.
Lawyers base their entire income around idiots like me that want to change countries of residence. People to read the fine print and literally tell you what the next step is.
And you can believe I have the number of an immigration lawyer in my phone, just in case I get fucked around at the border.
I don't foresee that happening, but pigs are pigs. Five years of hard work is in the hands of someone else's arbitrary mood, someone's snap judgment. Someone probably with a high school diploma and a sense of omnipotence.
So I am probably going to cross the Sumas, WA border. I would like to go to Bellingham and do some shopping.
Then I want to come home as an official Canadian immigrant. Then I want to get really drunk and celebrate.
Edit-- 9 hours later. The absinthe tastes exactly like my toothpaste, which is fennel-flavored. Didn't sleep all night. Have a tummy ache from Absente, which is either french for Absinthe, or it's fake absinthe.
I have a strong fear and dislike of authority figures, none more than cops and immigration officials.
I know this is a formality, me crossing the border. These people are basically doing clerical work, it's no more integral to the outcome than getting something notarized or something.
I still am really anxious that they won't let me back in. Always a possibility.
God fuck I have so much shit to do. When I don't sleep I get really disoriented and forgetful.
I have to pack. And to be awake at 9:30 when someone sends me flowers. And to be on the seaboat by 4pm and the landtrain by 5. And find time therein to sleep and tailor a jacket and shampoo my hair and eat some healthy food and stuff my purse with fruits because I am afraid of what lurks in my mother-in-law's cupboards when I get hungry late at night, and about a million tiny steps in this stupid ritual I have to do every time I travel. I am not high-maintenance, but I am a neurotic retard that nags myself to death if things are not just so.
My parents will be here in Vancouver for Canada Day. If I don't become a homeless transient at the canadian border, then this is going to be a really good summer.
Kyle comes home with flowers and absinthe. We are really happy and excited until we actually read the fine print.
Turns out I have to LEAVE Canada, as in cross the border, and then turn around and come back, to get some official to sign one last form.
Of course we knew nothing about this until just now.
I swear to god, if someone wrote a book on how to immigrate to Canada, not like the thousands of pages of legalese you have to plow through, just simple, straightforward, what you literally HAVE to do to immigrate, that person would be a millionaire.
It would be like ten pages.
In simple steps.
Put aside about $1,500 for the application process itself, plus another $2,000 in traveling costs, plus another $1,000 in medical and legal expenses [this does not include the cost of getting married if you go that route]. Subtract the income lost by not being able to work for god knows how long.
It is an expensive process.
No wonder it's taken so long.
Lawyers base their entire income around idiots like me that want to change countries of residence. People to read the fine print and literally tell you what the next step is.
And you can believe I have the number of an immigration lawyer in my phone, just in case I get fucked around at the border.
I don't foresee that happening, but pigs are pigs. Five years of hard work is in the hands of someone else's arbitrary mood, someone's snap judgment. Someone probably with a high school diploma and a sense of omnipotence.
So I am probably going to cross the Sumas, WA border. I would like to go to Bellingham and do some shopping.
Then I want to come home as an official Canadian immigrant. Then I want to get really drunk and celebrate.
Edit-- 9 hours later. The absinthe tastes exactly like my toothpaste, which is fennel-flavored. Didn't sleep all night. Have a tummy ache from Absente, which is either french for Absinthe, or it's fake absinthe.
I have a strong fear and dislike of authority figures, none more than cops and immigration officials.
I know this is a formality, me crossing the border. These people are basically doing clerical work, it's no more integral to the outcome than getting something notarized or something.
I still am really anxious that they won't let me back in. Always a possibility.
God fuck I have so much shit to do. When I don't sleep I get really disoriented and forgetful.
I have to pack. And to be awake at 9:30 when someone sends me flowers. And to be on the seaboat by 4pm and the landtrain by 5. And find time therein to sleep and tailor a jacket and shampoo my hair and eat some healthy food and stuff my purse with fruits because I am afraid of what lurks in my mother-in-law's cupboards when I get hungry late at night, and about a million tiny steps in this stupid ritual I have to do every time I travel. I am not high-maintenance, but I am a neurotic retard that nags myself to death if things are not just so.
My parents will be here in Vancouver for Canada Day. If I don't become a homeless transient at the canadian border, then this is going to be a really good summer.