I need me one of them guvment jobs...

a few days ago, we got confirmation from homey security of mooki's application to remove conditional status from her permanent residency... they gave us a receipt number (used for tracking and all future correspondence on the case) and cashed our cheque for $545. the notice was dated january 4. we received it january 12.

on monday the 14th, I went to the homey security website to add this receipt number to my "portfolio" so I'd receive email updates as the status changes, but it wouldn't accept the number. I called the 800 number and tried the automated system with the same result. so I sat on hold for twenty minutes to ask if there was a typo or something (don't get me started about how the guvment doesn't make mistakes, they originally set her green card's expiration date at one year instead of two).

they asked me when the notice was mailed. "on the 4th, ten days ago."

"that's too new! you need to wait at least fifteen MORE days before it'll show up!"

it takes them four weeks to punch a damn number into the system for filing purposes. in the meantime, we have zero visibility on the case and have no way of verifying they're doing everything properly. by the time we DO get to see a status, it'll be much more difficult to correct any errors because the process will have moved on to another department.

four weeks to put a label on a folder and log it into a system. at least four weeks before we'll get a notice that she needs to go in and have her "biometrics" registered. again. when I first heard about biometrics, I was impressed. I imagined this whole system where they took all sorts of samples for cloning of an illegal army for the next gulf war or something. turns out that's just a fancy word for fingerprinting.

yup, we're paying another $80 to they can make sure her fingerprints haven't changed in the past two years. I was always under the impression that fingerprints were kinda like, y'know, PERMANENT, but obviously homey security disagrees. after all, I may have had mooki replaced with an illegal mexican or stepford robut in the past two years, so they need to make sure she's still the same person she was before.

talk about retarded. gotta love bureaucracy...