Friend or Foe?

Right - let me make this quite clear. I am all for any country keeping out nasty foreigners with questionable hygiene who refuse both to integrate and to work. However, when it comes to ME, I tend to reach for the deodorant and get rather righteous and irritable.

Yes - it was time for us to renew our visas.

The whole procedure is a process of documentary obstacles, with only the most tenacious applicants being awarded the Big Prize ("Yes, another 2 years of 6 foot snow can be yours for the low, low price of your sanity!").

The first step is to apply using the visa application system on-line. Except it was written and completed by a really distracted 15 year-old who was taking his GSCE in Computing Science a year early, and forgot about the testing module. The initial screen informs you (rather optimistically) that the process may take 25 minutes to complete. It took me fours hours. For each application. A little like an original BBC text-based adventure game ("Hit troll", "What troll?" etc), it would either intermittently throw you out of the system as you had not touched the key-board for 3 seconds (this was timed, by me, sobbing very very quietly, so that the pixies couldn't hear), or, on using the drop-down list-boxes, would redirect you out to a completely random screen on the Homeland Security web-site. "Oh , yes," said one of the Brits, "It's been like that for about 12 months. When it happened to us we told our company they would have to do it for us". Unfortunately, I did not have that sort of privilege, so had to plough on. Finally, I was in the position to scan in the photos and print out all the forms we needed.

Then came the Book Your Interview challenge.

The interview could be done within the USA (but only 10% of visa renewals are awarded this way), or go out of the country (but not Mexico, as that can take upto (or at least) a month).

However, this is further limited to the fact that an interview could only be booked through the internet, and only within the next 6 weeks. At eleven o'clock at night.

Eventually, we got an interview in Halifax (the "I Love Halifax" blog will be written when I've stopped the valium).

Off we went, in our posh togs, just in case.

As it was being renovated, we had to sit on the floor in the corridor outside of the consulate. Now and then a disembodied voice would direct us to move along the line, go to the back, come to the front, present a form, wait at the coffee shop downstairs. On entering, we were then told that the hand-bag had to be taken to another building two blocks away and checked into a hotel locker; that the bottle of water had to be left at the desk (in spite of us having to wait for 3 hours); and that "Your daughter cannot bring her MP3 player in.You may not believe this - but once we had someone in and it took down all the computers and printers".

No, actually, I don't believe it - because that was the plot of a FILM!!!

And all the time, you have to be hyper-aware of your facial expression as each sneer and upwards glance will be punished by being thoroughly pushed to the back of the queue again.

We presented the papers - our forms, passports and the company 3inch petition, and were then told that the print-outs I had done at home were not a high-enough quality for the machine to read in the bar-code (even though I have seen the girl on the till actually type in the number BY HAND for the milk I buy each week - so if our local Target can do it....).

But, no - we had to go back to the hotel, and hope that its antiquated broad-band connection (powered by weevils) would be fast enough for us to log on to the website (after firstly trying to remember the URL, and then the password (mother's grand-mother's maiden name, apparently. It didn't help that I, of course, had to make one up, and couldn't remember if it was Phyllis or Kevin). So, clutching the reprinted forms, we then ran back to the Consulate - just before the security guard locked up and took in the flag). Yes, everything's now OK, but, um, we can't possibly say when the visas will be printed. Because they are printed from Washington, you see. And we have no control over it. Come back tomorrow. And no, you can't have the phone number, you must just come round.

So we did. Twice, by which time it was Saturday, and we had to wait until the following Monday - 24 hours before we were due to fly out.

With much trepidation, we again approached the Consulate door, and whispered the magic words in tremulous voices. The door opened a crack, and the passports were slid out.  L. Frank Baum obviously based his famous story on something very similar.