in case you were wondering . . . .

[swan_tower]

Keep this in mind when the immigration arguments flare up.

Legal immigration to the U.S. ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Comments

[gollumgollum.livejournal.com]

God, that's BRILLIANT. Having been indirectly involved in helping someone get citizenship, it's sooooo true. Let's not forget the random, kafkaesque bureaucracy and hoops you have to jump through that may or may not help your case.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I got the link from a friend who is trying, along with his wife, to get U.S. citizenship. He mentioned recently that it would be easier and quicker for them to live in Canada for three years, become citizens there, and then come back here.

And they're both Harvard graduates. Our immigration issues extend way beyond the people who just swam across the border.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I'm in year... Four, right now. Not counting the abortive attempt of the non-immigrant path. Believe it or not, the immigration option proved to be the easier of the two.
Also, I hate the Rainbow Bridge FTO.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Rainbow Bridge FTO?

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Free Trade Officer. They pretty much have the final say on whether someone gets a NAFTA work visa or not. And at the time, as we found out later, they were *unofficially* told to refuse as many as they could. Isn't it great how the government is keeping its trade agreement obligations?

Though even that time doesn't beat the experience at Toronto Airport.
"Your experience doesn't match the definition of technical writer."
"What definition are you using?" (There are two, and I read them both before writing up the resume)
"I'm not going to tell you that."

Rainbow Bridge is one of the crossing points between Ontario and NY.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh. Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo features in a manga I'm currently reading, so I was a bit confused. :-)

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

AH! That makes sense :)
Incidentally, you *are* going to WFC this year, right?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

No. <sad face> After the summer I had, and given that I'm traveling within about two weeks to *both* sides of the con, and how expensive it would be to get there . . . I decided that taking a break was the better part of valor.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Oh. Damn. No BrMarie. No Leah. No Jamie. No Elise. Possibly no Mris.

Dude. This is gonna be one lonely con.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

A bit of that, too. Some of the people I normally look forward to seeing won't be there, which removed part of the draw -- but it's a vicious circle, since the more of us don't show, the less encouragement there is for our friends to go.

Also, I totally spaced on contacting the programming folks, which was another nail in the coffin. They might still have been able to hook me up with something, but I didn't have a plane ticket or a hotel room or a registration yet, so deciding to go would have been an awful lot of effort.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. And ever since I became an adult with actual work obligations (and NO FREE TIME EVAR!!!1!!ONE!), cons got so much more expensive.

You know, I can probably point at a particular threshold I crossed, when suddenly the bottleneck resource stopped being money and became time.

Why is that a depressing thought? (possibly because I'm four days behind on 5000 words of articles)

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

For random future travel reference, if you haven't come across it already:
http://www.igougo.com

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

This illustration shows why I get annoyed with our immigration system. I mean really people!