Changed my Mind

Dena had a brilliant idea - look in the scrapbooks for dates for entries/exits into the USA, after all, pictures were taken - scrapbooks made.... So we did. Between that and my passports (past and present) and I compiled quite a comprehensive list. This required a seperate piece of paper attached to the N400 form. So off my form went with my $795 check ($180 for biometrics) on June 13th.

On June 15th I received notification of receipt of the form via email. If you send your N400 with your email address to one of the three "lockbox" receiving centers in the US then you will receive update notifications via email for the duration of your application for citizenship. Seven days later I received my official snail mail letter stating that they are in receipt of the application. Then I received a notice of my fingerprint appointment for July 14th. I'm so excited. Ironically on the 13th I was pulled in to the Customs & Border Patrol office in International Falls, MN for a document check. Where is International Falls you ask? Just see the next blog post with the picture, its on the Canadian/US border to the East of the purple line. They took my picture and my fingerprints....then on the 14th, again. You just have to shrug and laugh.

Freedom of Information Act

I've been dragging my feet in filing my American citizenship for the sole reason that one question is incredibly difficult to answer on the form. The question is - "since you received your permanent residence card, itemize your travel outside the Unitied States". This section of the form included exit and re-entry dates, where and duration. I would think with the exit and re-entry dates you could figure out the duration without me having to fill it in, but hey, it's the government so ours not to question why.

I received my permanent resident alien card (you didn't know I was an alien did you) in December of 2001. I was thrilled. Little did I know that I should have been keeping track of every time I left the country? Throughout the past 10 years I've gone in and out countless times sometimes more than once a day. This was simply a matter of geography as most of my relatives live just over the border from the US (see map insert).

As you can see by the picture the shortest path from Winnipeg (Canada) to my Gramma's house in the little rural hamlet of Morson, NW Ontario is through an area close to the NorthWest Angle - the US. Don't get me started on this geographic abomination....

So how was I to determine the ins and outs to/from the US? After contacting United Airlines whom I was a high status frequent flyer for many years and fruitlessly asking for my statistics an epiphany hit me - The Freedom of Information Act would save me! Herein called the FOIA. I wrote away and filed a request - 2 months later I received a note back that it was filed incorrectly. Now since the form was simple and my request straightforward I couldn't figure out how I screwed it up. I called them. That was a waste of time. You get a different group that basically tells you that your only contact with the FOIA people is by mail or email. Naturally I had emailed them first. After about a week of frustration I received an email from someone stating that they had re-submitted my request and here was the new tracking number. Two months later I received an envelope in the mail. I was so excited - finally! The envelope contained one completely illegible copy of my passport (I think). Useless. This all was somewhere around October 2010.

Last week I received a CD in the mail from the FOIA. Shocked I ripped it open and popped it in to the drive only to discover 2 documents on it. One from the FOIA people telling me that they forwarded my request to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the other from CBP stating that they felt the request was answered with the original response from FOIA. Confused and hopeless I surrendered. Fine, I'll just renew my green card.