get a green card

We completed the Green Card application for my husband. It was a very thick and thorough stack of forms and documents and affidavits and certificates and photos. And nearly $1400 in cashier’s checks. We mailed it out on Oct 1st.

On Oct 13th we received confirmation letters from USCIS indicating that they had received our packet, cashed our checks, and the application was now being processed. I appreciated the acknowledgment and communication. What a relief to know it’s actually underway and moving forward.

Now we just wait for more news, for the call for the next step.

Really, it doesn’t have to be a green card. I’ll take a work visa, citizenship, a musician visa, etc… I’m non-discriminating against visa really! I just want to be able to work legally in the US for as long as I want, and be able to make life choices independently from that aspect of things. Universe, you know what to do!!!

My family want to go to Australia and they want me to go with them. I guess that makes the green card not needed. However I get pangs of not wanting to leave the country of my birth… I like Africa, it’s in my heart big time.

I am think seriously about immigrating, there is too much happening here in S.A that leaves you a bit uncertain about how safe the future is going to be. I am not sure I want to really live in the USA, but I am keeping my options open, So I might apply when DV2010 becomes available.

i`ve got to a point where i see very few possibilities in my dear country, USA seems to offer many, so i`ll start reading about the lottery and maybe i get lucky

Just because I’d love to go to the US so bad, I need to have that magic piece of plastic so this is something I really want. But who cares what I want… And I’m so pissed off that people from my country are actually the ones to be blamed for the fact that my country doesn’t qualify for taking part into the lottery another year in a row!! Why do they overstay in the US so people(like me)can’t have that chance to get the green card?! I always did everything according to the law and why can’t I get a chance to take part in a lottery?! With that piece of plastic I’d be the happiest in the world!! Yep, this is what I want!!

as they say.. if so I’m practically the winner in the Diversity Visa lottery already! ;) application form: http://www.dvlottery.state.gov/default.htm

it was really quick, no hiccups..all smooth sailing. It only took 1.5 years! Thanks lawyers!

At this stage of the Green Card application, I’m asked where I lived while I worked in satellite communications in Belgium.

Hell if I know.

Really.

I did not officially exist in Belgium.

I didn’t pay any bills, I didn’t have a cell phone, car, credit card or Internet access at home.

I lived in a hotel in Sint-Niklaas for the first month, then at some Bed&Breakfast afterwards for a few months, then at an extended stay hotel (a remodeled monastery near a church with some IDIOTIC tower clock that BANGED my brains out at 6am every morning for some IMBECILE call to some sort of mass since ancient times).

I was chauffeured to work and back by my boss or his wife. I received mail at the company I worked for. As such, I have no idea what the address was at any of those places.

Nevertheless, my experience in Belgium was the most enjoyable in my life. I did not have to worry about ANY of the usual quotidian annoyances. I was transported back and forth from work at precise times and did not take any work home. I could focus on work at work. At home, I could focus on reading, discussing philosophy with my pair-programming coworker, or watching movies. No errands to run, ever. Nothing to arrange or setup. No women. No Internet.

It was in Belgium where I read most of the books that changed my life. It was there where I watched most of the top-rated movies on my IDMB list. It was there where I shaped my philosophy, absorbing it from and debating it with my amazing co-worker.

I loved living in an ivory tower in Belgium.

In short, I sent my application on June 13th, a week later the USCIS deposited my check, a week later they send me the date for the biometrics apointment which happened last week (07/18).
And today I received the notification for the initial interview (09/13)... it’s going fast ! :)