The current Canadian administration is obviously compensating for something. Its new guide for immigrants who wish to become citizens of our apparently overly femmy, tree-hugging land, Discover Canada, puts a heavy emphasis on characteristics most people had assumed had gone out with disposable dresses and EZ Bake ovens, stuff like The Queen and the (glory days of the) Canadian military. That oughta make them feel right at home.
I say we make our own guide, where the Queen lives at Church and Wellesley and the military is largely found recovering from PTSD in hospitals across the country, with substandard social and health benefits. Hey, if people are going to go through the trouble of moving here and getting a passport, the least we can do is be honest with them.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
No pay no way
The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that sponsors are not automatically responsible for debts incurred via their immigratory (?) sponsored relatives social support, the Globe and Mail reported today. Instead, sponsors should be given a moment to explain themselves, in the name of procedural fairness.
I'm all in favour of fairness, but it's not like sponsored aren't warned ahead of time. I was beaten over the head with reminders about the potential costs of sponsoring Mr. O.
A way to reduce this cost to the governments (the benefits of immigration notwithstanding) is to provide new immigrants with an open work permit, so they can, you know, get a job while waiting 24 months for their papers to come through. Just sayin'.
I'm all in favour of fairness, but it's not like sponsored aren't warned ahead of time. I was beaten over the head with reminders about the potential costs of sponsoring Mr. O.
A way to reduce this cost to the governments (the benefits of immigration notwithstanding) is to provide new immigrants with an open work permit, so they can, you know, get a job while waiting 24 months for their papers to come through. Just sayin'.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Cold hard card
Mr. O got a telltale envelope in the mail today: his PR card. Was it worth the wait? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are some facts about the Canadian PR card, described by Captain David Myers of the Florida State Fraud ID Unit as "the most secure ID document in the world today" or as I like to call it, "the Ferrari of cards."
Justification for this claim, unashamedly pasted from a handy LaserCard two-pager:
Justification for this claim, unashamedly pasted from a handy LaserCard two-pager:
Following a several year evaluation, the LaserCard® Optical Memory Card was selected for this ID card application, based primarily on the following advantages:Phew. Wasn't that impressive? And for the icing, some Facts at a Glance:
1. High Data Capacity: The 1.1 megabyte optical stripe holds securely all required cardholder information, and can be updated as needed in the future.
2. Cost effectiveness: The LaserCard provides interoperability, future flexibility and growth, tamperproof data storage, durability, and long life.
3. High level of security: The PRC protects the privacy of the cardholder better than the previous IMM 1000 paper form it replaces. Secure information is stored digitally on the optical memory and cannot be erased or fraudulently altered. The optical stripe includes overt, covert and forensic security features and is irreversibly marked with the embedded hologram eye-visible likeness of the cardholder.
4. Durability: As part of the new Canadian PRC 5-year life-time requirement, the LaserCard® was tested and met all stringent durability standards tests as conducted by independent laboratory, Battelle Test Labs of Ohio. Success in the 10-year lifetime U.S. Green Card, and Border Crossing Card programs gave added assurance to the Canadian government.
5. Compatibility: The LaserCard complies with a full suite of inter national technology and application standards, including those defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The Canadian PRC was the first optical memory card to fully comply with ICAO standards for optical memory-based travel cards.
6. Interoperability: Sharing the same technology foundation as the U.S. Green Card and Border Crossing Card, the new Canadian PRC is compatible with U.S. inspection systems and vice versa as part of the U.S./Canada Smart Border Accord. Global interoperability is assured by courtesy of the Logical Data Structure Technical Report first published by ICAO and subsequently as
an information exchange standard by ISO.
7. Flexibility: Optical memory card meets the need for certain card authentication, positive ID, and a future growth path.
• Implemented in June 2002, and by October 2008, more than 2.5 million cards issuedThere. Mr. O now has a Ferrari in his wallet. Looking at it from that point of view, it was a bargain.
• Canadian PRC awarded prestigious International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA) 2003 Élan Award for Technical Achievement
• Judged the most secure card in the world by independent forensic document specialist
• Interoperable with U.S. Green Card and Border Crossing Card
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Landed
This morning we drove to Etobicoke, where Mr. O became a permanent resident. They sent him a letter which said "Decision granted" as of June 29 - and I still love the cryptic-elliptic bureaucratic style of these little missives, which, however, I shan't miss.
But aren't you curious what the interview was like? Imagining Green Card with Gerard Depardieu and that woman from the L'Oreal commercials? Yeah, it was kind of like that, or at least it was in my head on the way there - I was inexplicably nervous about the whole thing and even suggested we practice the basic facts about our relationship. Alas, we got to the office right at 8 a.m., which was the time of our "appointment" according to the letter, at which point we realized of course there was no appointment, or rather that everybody had the same appointment, because we sat down in what turned out to be not enough chairs in a wide room with a very, very low ceiling and circa 1969 ceiling tiles.
The Venetian blinds whip up on cubby 3 and an invisible male voice starts calling out names. He's no pro and the mic keeps cutting out but eventually the first lucky PR catches on and goes up to the window. And, uh, proceeds to complete the whole interview over the mic. "Do you have any children outside Canada? Do you have any criminal record here? Have you ever been deported? Oh you have? How did you like that?" etc. Repeat about 12 times before Mr. O got his turn and heads up, by which point other cubby holes are flapping and people are crowding around the chairs...He waves me over and the invisible voice actually has a young friendly, maybe French Canadian face and he addresses me by name and reminds me of my three-year responsibility as sponsor. He asks the immi (I can still call him the immi, can't I?) the same questions in the same cracking mic voice and then has Mr. O check his vital info and sign inside the green box and he sticks the photo on and Congratulations! You are now a permanent resident of Canada. You can sponsor your family. Call OHIP and tell them your status has changed. He gave him a piece of paper he will need when he applies for Old Age Pension. I heard previous generations cackle like gobbledy ghosts in my ears at that one.
Sigh. He made it all sound so fancy. Then he says, "we're going to get you a new SIN number so go sit down and one of my colleagues will call you up in a few minutes." So we plop back down I beg off to go get my coffee from the car and come back to find a horrible child has taken my seat and Mr. O is still waiting...and finally he is beckoned to window 5 and she pronounces his name perfectly and all minor nitpicks and blemishes are overlooked because now he's a Canadian like the rest of us. Or will be in approximately four weeks when the card arrives; for now don't leave the country or there could be trouble. Phew.
And then he calls CIC to try and get his open work permit application - which he had to file in case the PR didn't come through in time - cancelled and they've changed the system to amke ti 35 times harder to get a real live person than it was before and he finally gets one and they put him on hold and then the line is disconnected. And all this before lunch.
Cheers to Mr. O for hanging in there, and specifically for not leaving me and hightailing it back to Finland, where you can always get a real person on the line, even the taxman. I love you.
But aren't you curious what the interview was like? Imagining Green Card with Gerard Depardieu and that woman from the L'Oreal commercials? Yeah, it was kind of like that, or at least it was in my head on the way there - I was inexplicably nervous about the whole thing and even suggested we practice the basic facts about our relationship. Alas, we got to the office right at 8 a.m., which was the time of our "appointment" according to the letter, at which point we realized of course there was no appointment, or rather that everybody had the same appointment, because we sat down in what turned out to be not enough chairs in a wide room with a very, very low ceiling and circa 1969 ceiling tiles.
The Venetian blinds whip up on cubby 3 and an invisible male voice starts calling out names. He's no pro and the mic keeps cutting out but eventually the first lucky PR catches on and goes up to the window. And, uh, proceeds to complete the whole interview over the mic. "Do you have any children outside Canada? Do you have any criminal record here? Have you ever been deported? Oh you have? How did you like that?" etc. Repeat about 12 times before Mr. O got his turn and heads up, by which point other cubby holes are flapping and people are crowding around the chairs...He waves me over and the invisible voice actually has a young friendly, maybe French Canadian face and he addresses me by name and reminds me of my three-year responsibility as sponsor. He asks the immi (I can still call him the immi, can't I?) the same questions in the same cracking mic voice and then has Mr. O check his vital info and sign inside the green box and he sticks the photo on and Congratulations! You are now a permanent resident of Canada. You can sponsor your family. Call OHIP and tell them your status has changed. He gave him a piece of paper he will need when he applies for Old Age Pension. I heard previous generations cackle like gobbledy ghosts in my ears at that one.
Sigh. He made it all sound so fancy. Then he says, "we're going to get you a new SIN number so go sit down and one of my colleagues will call you up in a few minutes." So we plop back down I beg off to go get my coffee from the car and come back to find a horrible child has taken my seat and Mr. O is still waiting...and finally he is beckoned to window 5 and she pronounces his name perfectly and all minor nitpicks and blemishes are overlooked because now he's a Canadian like the rest of us. Or will be in approximately four weeks when the card arrives; for now don't leave the country or there could be trouble. Phew.
And then he calls CIC to try and get his open work permit application - which he had to file in case the PR didn't come through in time - cancelled and they've changed the system to amke ti 35 times harder to get a real live person than it was before and he finally gets one and they put him on hold and then the line is disconnected. And all this before lunch.
Cheers to Mr. O for hanging in there, and specifically for not leaving me and hightailing it back to Finland, where you can always get a real person on the line, even the taxman. I love you.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Final stretch
The criminal check arrived safe and sound today (despite a mysterious and unwarranted name change from Mr. O to Mr. W ?!?), which means we have a month or so to get it under the nose of the right person at CIC, who will hopefully waive the need for a renewal of Mr. O's work permit before the permanent residency is official. So we can have some summer. 'N' stuff.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Halfway home
Our woman in Abu Dhabi sent the papers back by FedEx today, so Mr. O should have his certificate of good conduct in a week or so. It only took us six months to pull it all together. And while I'm not celebrating yet - I wouldn't trust FedEx with my compost - it feels good to be one step closer to ending this entire ordeal. The ungrateful immigrant is grateful today for friends, and friends of friends.
Now if we get those documents to CIC before his work permit expires in June, hopefully he won't have to apply for another one before he gets his permanent residency. Hard to believe it's taken us almost two years to get to this point (I remember being outraged at the thought of nine months), and during that time the process has alternated between albatross and minor annoyance. The joke is, we don't know where we'll end up. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is planning to move to the UK, about the hassles of immigration, and how you are heavier than you think - the modern life is full of baggage. Already in the time we've been here we have accumulated so much stuff, and it all weighs on you and makes it that much harder to just pick up again. It would be easy to stay, like sleeping in on a Monday morning.
But on more than one occasion, many courtesy of an immigration-inspired frustration, Mr. O has declared that he's not staying here permanently. So it's possible we're going through all of this for nothing. We're lucky, we have options.
Now if we get those documents to CIC before his work permit expires in June, hopefully he won't have to apply for another one before he gets his permanent residency. Hard to believe it's taken us almost two years to get to this point (I remember being outraged at the thought of nine months), and during that time the process has alternated between albatross and minor annoyance. The joke is, we don't know where we'll end up. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is planning to move to the UK, about the hassles of immigration, and how you are heavier than you think - the modern life is full of baggage. Already in the time we've been here we have accumulated so much stuff, and it all weighs on you and makes it that much harder to just pick up again. It would be easy to stay, like sleeping in on a Monday morning.
But on more than one occasion, many courtesy of an immigration-inspired frustration, Mr. O has declared that he's not staying here permanently. So it's possible we're going through all of this for nothing. We're lucky, we have options.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Strange love
Evil, predatory foreigners who marry Canadians for the holy grail of a residence visa seem to be the immigration fear du jour in the media these days...Not that I don't feel sympathy for these women, but it's not like they didn't know the risks when they signed up for sponsorship.
The larger problem seems to be the weird imbalance in the spousal sponsorship system, in which one spouse becomes financially responsible for the other's potential misfortune. Never mind the opportunities it creates for weasels and cheaters, who have all responsibility lifted off their shoulders by the government (score!). It puts a strange, archaic twist on even those genuine relationships - in which both partners have good intentions - and ultimately has to be supplemented with a private agreement between the partners that they'll work it out - and pay it off - together if things go south. Y'know, a marriage. For the CIC to try to play it otherwise is pretty much asking for trouble.
Even worse: the polygamists are coming! Ahhhhh!
The larger problem seems to be the weird imbalance in the spousal sponsorship system, in which one spouse becomes financially responsible for the other's potential misfortune. Never mind the opportunities it creates for weasels and cheaters, who have all responsibility lifted off their shoulders by the government (score!). It puts a strange, archaic twist on even those genuine relationships - in which both partners have good intentions - and ultimately has to be supplemented with a private agreement between the partners that they'll work it out - and pay it off - together if things go south. Y'know, a marriage. For the CIC to try to play it otherwise is pretty much asking for trouble.
Even worse: the polygamists are coming! Ahhhhh!
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Tax this immigrant
Mr. O and I did our taxes this week and were feeling pretty smart about it, thanks very much. But we paused when we realized that Mr. O pays CPP and EI fees - to the max, in fact - that he is himself ineligible to receive.
Hmm, maybe immigrants aren't such a drain on our precious system after all...ahem.
Hmm, maybe immigrants aren't such a drain on our precious system after all...ahem.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Success, with a twist
An update from our woman in UAE:
"Just letting you know that I went to the Ministry of Interior today (apparently they changed which department handles these forms), and submitted them. I have the mobile number of the agent, and he said I can come pick it up when it is ready. Will let you know when I pick it up...so far so good!"
This woman managed to do in 3 days what a professional, multinational courier service failed to do in 3 months. Am seeking out online flower and gift basket delivery as we speak...
"Just letting you know that I went to the Ministry of Interior today (apparently they changed which department handles these forms), and submitted them. I have the mobile number of the agent, and he said I can come pick it up when it is ready. Will let you know when I pick it up...so far so good!"
This woman managed to do in 3 days what a professional, multinational courier service failed to do in 3 months. Am seeking out online flower and gift basket delivery as we speak...
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Happy to be here
The travel bug that had me going for nearly a decade seems to have entered some kind of cocooning phase, because I have absolutely no desire for transatlantic travel these days. Call me crazy, but my top five world destinations at the mo are the T&T Supermarket on Cherry Street, the Toronto Zoo, Prince Edward County, Quebec City and That Place in New Brunswick with the Giant Plaster of Paris Lobster (there's at least one).
The farthest I can imagine flying - and really I could skip flying altogether as I crave a stick shift and four wheels at the moment like a pregnant woman craves pickles - is Cuba, and somebody else would probably have to pay my ticket to drag me that far. Don't believe me? I have to go to France for work this summer and right now I'd rather stay home and watch Law and Order...I don't know what's come over me. Or how about this: Mr. O is going back to Finland for a family party in May - by himself. I'm tempted to claim some great blast of eco-consciousness or blame it on the recession but in all honesty I am far more interested in travelling in Canada right now than anywhere else. I'm excited about roadside fruit stands, campsites with historical plaques, and motels with carpet on the walls.
Perhaps I'm reverting to my North American landlocked ways. And, since it may very well be temporary, I'm enjoying it. Now where is that road atlas...
The farthest I can imagine flying - and really I could skip flying altogether as I crave a stick shift and four wheels at the moment like a pregnant woman craves pickles - is Cuba, and somebody else would probably have to pay my ticket to drag me that far. Don't believe me? I have to go to France for work this summer and right now I'd rather stay home and watch Law and Order...I don't know what's come over me. Or how about this: Mr. O is going back to Finland for a family party in May - by himself. I'm tempted to claim some great blast of eco-consciousness or blame it on the recession but in all honesty I am far more interested in travelling in Canada right now than anywhere else. I'm excited about roadside fruit stands, campsites with historical plaques, and motels with carpet on the walls.
Perhaps I'm reverting to my North American landlocked ways. And, since it may very well be temporary, I'm enjoying it. Now where is that road atlas...
So far, so good...
Laura emailed on Friday to say she'd received the package and will take care of it early next week (which there means Sat - Thurs). I am very eager to find out if this DIY tactic works...and how long it takes after she delivers it (fingers crossed) for them to get the certificate back to us. Mr. O's work permit expires in June, which means we'll have to get the certificate to the CIC well before then.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
It's who you know
We spent two months wondering what would come of our begging letter to CIC to waive the requirement for the Emirati police certificate. It wasn't so unreasonable: Mr. O had lived in the country for exactly one month longer than the six-month exemption, and had a total of two speeding tickets (goes with the territory over there, mom) on his record. We had tried to deliver it according to the instructions provided, and failed. It was worth a try.
Of course, they didn't go for it. I wasn't surprised by that. What surprised me was the near-illiteracy of the response we received. First, the letter was a cut and paste from the CIC site, and the crucial sentence, the sentence that informed us that our request was denied, was actually missing the word "denied." Lucky we both have good grasp of English (something so easily taken for granted, but that should never be when dealing with immigrants), we managed to intuit that much.
What made me really angry though was that the author of the letter (identified only by a code number) didn't seem to have a great grasp of English him- or herself. In "clarifying" the instructions for us once more, they had attached a print out of a page from the CIC site, which instructs the applicant to get the fingerprints, etc. legalized at the Emirati embassy in Ottawa - highlighting this part and actually telling us to send the application package there instead. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyone who had any comprehension of subordinate clauses (and working for the government you'd think that would be prerequisite number 3 or 4 at least) would see that the documents which were notarized by the Embassy were then to be shipped off to the UAE. Either out of sloppiness or sheer illiteracy, our "helpful" CIC fuckwit was sending us down a path to ruin, or at least to failure to get the documents in before Mr. O has to apply for another open work permit in June.
I wasn't having it. It was obvious that we weren't going to be successful by Canadian methods - it was going to require some special effort. The UAE site had a suggestion: to find a "friend" who lived there who could deliver the papers for us. "Friend" means a) male b) Arabic-speaking and c) possessed of half a brain and a little resilience. Unfortunately, Mr. O's former employer no longer had an office down there, and we had no way of reaching their former fixer. I started looking online for a lawyer in the UAE who could act on our behalf, or at least recommend someone who could, but Mr. O balked at the potential fees (he is, at this point, entirely fed up with the cost of this whole endeavour), and the need for early morning phone calls was too much for us.
I sent out messages to the two or three people I knew with connections there, and put out an APB on Facebook. Within a week I had heard back from a Finnish couple who also worked for the same company, a Danish friend of mine now living back in Copenhagen, and a friend of a friend who was working down there at the time. This last one, we'll call her Laura, has a few friends who might fit the bill, so we wrote her up a big letter last weekend and sent everything down there to her on Monday. If that doesn't work out we'll try the alternatives, because we have options now. After feeling a bit amputated it's very good to have friends come to your aid. We knew from the very start that this part wasn't going to be easy.
We also heard from a few unexpected sources, like a friend we've only known here, who, it turns out, lived in the UAE as a child, and still has family in the country. Even after a year and a half of Finns coming out of the woodwork, it still surprises me when I make connections to these tiny places. A constant reminder that we are not on our own.
Of course, they didn't go for it. I wasn't surprised by that. What surprised me was the near-illiteracy of the response we received. First, the letter was a cut and paste from the CIC site, and the crucial sentence, the sentence that informed us that our request was denied, was actually missing the word "denied." Lucky we both have good grasp of English (something so easily taken for granted, but that should never be when dealing with immigrants), we managed to intuit that much.
What made me really angry though was that the author of the letter (identified only by a code number) didn't seem to have a great grasp of English him- or herself. In "clarifying" the instructions for us once more, they had attached a print out of a page from the CIC site, which instructs the applicant to get the fingerprints, etc. legalized at the Emirati embassy in Ottawa - highlighting this part and actually telling us to send the application package there instead. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyone who had any comprehension of subordinate clauses (and working for the government you'd think that would be prerequisite number 3 or 4 at least) would see that the documents which were notarized by the Embassy were then to be shipped off to the UAE. Either out of sloppiness or sheer illiteracy, our "helpful" CIC fuckwit was sending us down a path to ruin, or at least to failure to get the documents in before Mr. O has to apply for another open work permit in June.
I wasn't having it. It was obvious that we weren't going to be successful by Canadian methods - it was going to require some special effort. The UAE site had a suggestion: to find a "friend" who lived there who could deliver the papers for us. "Friend" means a) male b) Arabic-speaking and c) possessed of half a brain and a little resilience. Unfortunately, Mr. O's former employer no longer had an office down there, and we had no way of reaching their former fixer. I started looking online for a lawyer in the UAE who could act on our behalf, or at least recommend someone who could, but Mr. O balked at the potential fees (he is, at this point, entirely fed up with the cost of this whole endeavour), and the need for early morning phone calls was too much for us.
I sent out messages to the two or three people I knew with connections there, and put out an APB on Facebook. Within a week I had heard back from a Finnish couple who also worked for the same company, a Danish friend of mine now living back in Copenhagen, and a friend of a friend who was working down there at the time. This last one, we'll call her Laura, has a few friends who might fit the bill, so we wrote her up a big letter last weekend and sent everything down there to her on Monday. If that doesn't work out we'll try the alternatives, because we have options now. After feeling a bit amputated it's very good to have friends come to your aid. We knew from the very start that this part wasn't going to be easy.
We also heard from a few unexpected sources, like a friend we've only known here, who, it turns out, lived in the UAE as a child, and still has family in the country. Even after a year and a half of Finns coming out of the woodwork, it still surprises me when I make connections to these tiny places. A constant reminder that we are not on our own.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Our man in academe
A friend put me on to Jeffrey Reitz today, who's a prof in ethnic, immigration and pluralism studies at the University of Toronto. The rumour is he conducted a study into the CIC processing centre in Vegreville, AB, and found rampant racial discrimination and probably the bones of small animals and god knows what else. I am hunting for it and shall post it here when found.
Touchdown
So they tried to deliver the effing package one more time, and one more time it was rejected, apparently by security guards who rejected the package on the grounds that it had to be addressed to a particular person, who shall remain a mystery, at least for the time being. I'm thinking back to Karri's phone call with someone at the Abu Dhabi police station there, who couldn't give us a name "because there were several people" it could go to and am wondering if we were lax in our investigations or if there really is some kind of broken link somewhere. I'm assuming that other people have successfully gotten their documentation through, and then back, so probably a bit of both.
At any rate, the FedEx tracking status sprung back into motion and we could follow the stupid thing across Sharjah and so on right up to our door today, and it's waiting for us at the FedEx depot, hopefully with some flowers and a big I'm sorry.
So Mr. O is now writing a letter to the CIC explaining the entire debacle and including photocopies of the documents, and hoping they can come to some kind of solution, on a case by case basis, as they say. My fear is that this is going to set back the entire process even more than it has been already, and June isn't really that far away, in immigration years (kind of like cat years, or is it dog years?). At this point the whole thing has become a kind of irritation in what is otherwise a very normal life, so in a way I feel cheated, as if we've kept our end of the bargain by being good consumer citizens and getting jobs and paying taxes and doing all of that shit, and these formalities are just here to make us older before our time.
And the same goes on the CIC's end: with all the issues of immigrant integration and wasted skills and poverty and systemic racism within the system (more on that later), I'm highly doubtful that they are going to do more but ask that we send it all again, and we'll be stuck in the kind of feedback loop that I have to assume accounts for all the 46-month long unresolved cases on Trackitt. Freaky.
At any rate, the FedEx tracking status sprung back into motion and we could follow the stupid thing across Sharjah and so on right up to our door today, and it's waiting for us at the FedEx depot, hopefully with some flowers and a big I'm sorry.
So Mr. O is now writing a letter to the CIC explaining the entire debacle and including photocopies of the documents, and hoping they can come to some kind of solution, on a case by case basis, as they say. My fear is that this is going to set back the entire process even more than it has been already, and June isn't really that far away, in immigration years (kind of like cat years, or is it dog years?). At this point the whole thing has become a kind of irritation in what is otherwise a very normal life, so in a way I feel cheated, as if we've kept our end of the bargain by being good consumer citizens and getting jobs and paying taxes and doing all of that shit, and these formalities are just here to make us older before our time.
And the same goes on the CIC's end: with all the issues of immigrant integration and wasted skills and poverty and systemic racism within the system (more on that later), I'm highly doubtful that they are going to do more but ask that we send it all again, and we'll be stuck in the kind of feedback loop that I have to assume accounts for all the 46-month long unresolved cases on Trackitt. Freaky.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Breaking point
Today we woke up on a mission. I called FedEx and had a heart-to-heart with the random call centre guy, who gave us the same "update" from Dec 14, and promised to have somebody call us back about it asap. I told him if somebody actually called me back, I would fall off my chair. Then when I got to work I wrote a strongly worded letter and faxed it to FedEx HQ in Mississauga. Mr. O, meanwhile, was on the phone with the CIC, trying to ascertain just how we would go about completing his immigration process sans Emirati Certificate of Good Conduct.
Lo and behold, somebody from FedEx called him back this afternoon, somebody with a name AND a private extension. They told him they would call Abu Dhabi to establish the whereabouts of the package (which Mr. O has all but accepted as lost by this point) and either attempt to redeliver it or send it back to us. Mr. O also asked for a letter explaining the reasons it couldn't be delivered, if that turned out to be the case, and/or the reasons for its disappearance, for the sake of a consolation prize for the CIC.
This miniature shitstorm, after months of laissez-faire neglect of my blog and our little experiment, has started me thinking about breaking points. We are all trained to have faith in these little institutions (like mail) and when they break down, I for one am incredulous, until it becomes clear that if I don't do something about it, nobody will. This no doubt makes me spoiled, as spoiled as anybody used to paying money to have things done for me by others. It's a shock when this doesn't happen, or when the system breaks down. And yet, when it does, really there's nothing in place here to help us out. No consumer advocate, no 6 'o clock ass-kicking camera-toting watchdog. Nobody really gives a damn.
Lo and behold, somebody from FedEx called him back this afternoon, somebody with a name AND a private extension. They told him they would call Abu Dhabi to establish the whereabouts of the package (which Mr. O has all but accepted as lost by this point) and either attempt to redeliver it or send it back to us. Mr. O also asked for a letter explaining the reasons it couldn't be delivered, if that turned out to be the case, and/or the reasons for its disappearance, for the sake of a consolation prize for the CIC.
This miniature shitstorm, after months of laissez-faire neglect of my blog and our little experiment, has started me thinking about breaking points. We are all trained to have faith in these little institutions (like mail) and when they break down, I for one am incredulous, until it becomes clear that if I don't do something about it, nobody will. This no doubt makes me spoiled, as spoiled as anybody used to paying money to have things done for me by others. It's a shock when this doesn't happen, or when the system breaks down. And yet, when it does, really there's nothing in place here to help us out. No consumer advocate, no 6 'o clock ass-kicking camera-toting watchdog. Nobody really gives a damn.
FedEx nightmare
We are caught in a FedEx purgatory: the documents haven't been delivered, and yet they haven't been returned. The minimum-wage morons at the FedEx 1-800 number (oh yes, morons is kind) are alternately outrageously unhelpful and outright rude and defensive. It's been over a month now, and we've gotten exactly zero answers for our trouble. I am ready to kick some serious courier ass.
Of course, if they're lost, there's nothing we can do. It would be a huge relief at this point just to get them back. And considering the $150 we paid for the delivery, we've got jack squat from the courier company. (One relatively nice but equally useless moron told us the package was sitting at the AD end, waiting for an account number to be charged to ship them back. Um, another $150? I smell a scam.) Problem is, according to the CIC website, the papers must be delivered by courier, and nobody else is returning our phone calls. Welcome to the black hole. Knowing Abu Dhabi bureaucracy, I doubt that anybody knows what the hell is going on.
Which is fine, sure, I have no use for those documents anyway. It's not like we forked over a couple hundred bucks and spent several months collecting them. It's not like they're crucial to Mr. O's immigration or anything. We'll just call up the CIC and explain, and they'll just waive the whole police thing (really it was just a test of our commitment, to show we really care).
Of course, if they're lost, there's nothing we can do. It would be a huge relief at this point just to get them back. And considering the $150 we paid for the delivery, we've got jack squat from the courier company. (One relatively nice but equally useless moron told us the package was sitting at the AD end, waiting for an account number to be charged to ship them back. Um, another $150? I smell a scam.) Problem is, according to the CIC website, the papers must be delivered by courier, and nobody else is returning our phone calls. Welcome to the black hole. Knowing Abu Dhabi bureaucracy, I doubt that anybody knows what the hell is going on.
Which is fine, sure, I have no use for those documents anyway. It's not like we forked over a couple hundred bucks and spent several months collecting them. It's not like they're crucial to Mr. O's immigration or anything. We'll just call up the CIC and explain, and they'll just waive the whole police thing (really it was just a test of our commitment, to show we really care).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
