You Want to Be an American: 5 Circles of Immigration Hell
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 7:37 am
Step 1:The Application
Time: 3-6 months
Cost: $1,000
As a bright-eyed Australian starting my immigration journey, I looked forward to my dealings with the American government. After all, these guys are powerful enough to run the whole world, right? Surely that whole operation must run pretty smoothly.
I studied the instructions using my best American Bureaucracy to English dictionary. I carefully ticked the "no" box on the question asking "Are You A Terrorist?". I accordingly prepared all the pieces of information that the Department of Homeland Security requested: my original birth certificate, proof of citizenship, lists of every address I've ever lived at, details of every employer I've ever worked for, a police check, a dozen passport-sized photos, affidavits, a stack of financial documents. No problem.
I sent it all in with the several hundred dollars of "processing fees" and knew it would take 3-6 months for them to process it.
I was rejected.
It turned out my initial application was returned because, while I had attached a police certificate that proved I didn't have a criminal record, I hadn't attached fingerprints. Apparently, according to the DHS, the Australian police force is not yet advanced enough to have thought of prosecuting crimes using fingerprints. The Americans, therefore, needed a set of prints to make sure I hadn't got away with any crimes that had slipped past my homeland's investigation system, which consists mostly of shoving suspects against walls and yelling "YOU CALL THAT A KNIFE?" until someone confesses.
Fine. Do it again, fingerprints attached this time. Now we advance to...
http://www.cracked.com/article_18552_so ... -hell.html