2003-02-26 - 6:56 p.m.

For them's what cares....

After six weeks of waiting, Steve's immigration petition was rejected for failure to send in the correct fees. They sent us this information on a letter which includes a chart, showing the fees from three years ago. We had sent the correct fees - their letter is out of date. Isn't that comforting?

(The real reason we got bounced is that we apparently neglected to send in the fingerprinting fee. The directions mention this fee once, in the section on fees, which we didn't read because we had the little handout they'd given us with the current fees on it!!!)

I can only assume this is some cunning ploy to screw up everyone who applies, since if they followed this new sheet, they'd just get rejected. Again.

This kind of bureaucratic nightmare makes me ashamed to be an American. If we could just give up and leave the country now, I would, in a heartbeat.

(The website has a confusing mass of two or three different sets of fees, depending on where you look. Yet they advise you to check the website for the most up-to-date information....)

So, it's back into the queue (with a nasty letter to the processing office), and another wait before they even begin to process our application. I'm now hoping Steve will get done in time to go back to England this summer. And of course, he can't work for another two-three months. Oh joy.

Ah well. My opinion of the federal government just dropped another notch, and with Georgie-Porgie in office, I didn't think that was possible.

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