radish times

Sagas, my friends, never end, but sometimes there is a happy sub-ending (a cousin of sub-total). Today was one of these.

Today we had an interview at the USCIS (the INS, for those of you who haven’t followed all the name changes) and Peter became a PERMANENT permanent resident.

What does that mean? It means (1) he is no longer CONDITIONAL permanent resident (2) he now has 10 years or so before he has to renew it [really permanent, huh?] (3) we proved that we were really married by answering four questions, including “did you have lunch?,” and providing bank statements, retirement account statements, our lease, airplane tickets to Seattle and San Francisco and three pictures which we printed on our bubble jet printer (4) Peter can apply for citizenship this weekend - which should talk about a year (5) We waited two years, six months, 23 days and four long hours this afternoon for this.

Also exciting news, although it is not news yet, just exciting, is that my brother Paul and his wife Amy are expecting a baby any day now… (two official doctor due dates: Oct 18 or 20)… we are all waiting expectantly. And the couple requests that if you send out thoughts for their well-being that you send thoughts which concentrate on bringing on labor as soon as possible.

At 8 am this morning, Peter and I were back on Lafayette Street waiting on the INS line. Everything was just like before - except red tour buses don’t start running that early. The giant building that is 26 Federal Plaza loomed over us and the little park with its puke green benches and painted purple ground repulsed us. The building is 40 stories and has about 2400 windows on each side.

As I was looking up at it, I noticed that way up, about 20 stories high on the north side, there is an air-conditioner. It is absolutely the only one. I pointed this out to Peter, who promptly replied ” Of course. That is the room with the INS person. All the other rooms are empty.”

It certainly seemed this way to us as after 2 hours of waiting we were just approaching Broadway. Peter noticed that the street we wait on, the street that all poor souls with any immigration need in NY must wait on, Worth Street, is also (by special assignation) called the “Avenue of the Strongest.” We found this completely fitting. Everyone else trying to get into the INS perished before getting that far.

With the encouraging thought, we continued to wait. To our great, but premature, pleasure, all of a sudden the line began to move. Within about half and hour we were inside the building!!! Do you understand? We were INSIDE!!!

And what do you think the first thing they told us to do was? You got it! To form a line against the wall and wait. Why we waited for there against the wall watching the security guards strut around like peacocks, we had no idea. But they filled a little pen with a crowd of us and told us that we must wait. They told us the third floor waiting room was full. When asked why we had to wait if we didn’t have to go to the third floor, they told us we DID have to go to the third floor. Really, we didn’t have to but we did have to wait. It was about 30 minutes that we waited but in many ways it was the longest part of the day, at least for me. I was soooo angry and annoyed. After over 2 hours waiting outside - to be put in a little pen inside with no information about why you have to keep waiting was close to being unbearable.

Thankfully, after about 30 minutes, they let us go upstairs. We went up to the eighth floor to room 8-100. There we waited in line for about 40 minutes before someone came out and took our papers and told us to sit down. After that it was about 2 1/2 hours before they called us up….

…. and GAVE US THE STAMP!!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH! SUCCESSSSSSS!!!! Now we can travel and Peter can work and it is done. We don’t have to go back to the INS anytime soon!

While we were waiting Peter and I decided that it would be worth while to create a musical based on visiting the INS. In some way it is an irresistible thought as you are watching all the INS employees pop in and out of little windows like some kind of puppets all afternoon. There would be some differences between our INS musical and another you might go and see. The main idea would be to give people the idea of what it feels like to go to the INS.

In this spirit, while the musical would be scheduled to start at 8 pm… tickets would not be collected until 9 pm. The audience would be formed into a line stretching around the block and every 15 minutes or so the head of the line would be led into the theater, towards something that looked like a ticket collector, then out the side door, around the block and then back to the entrance of the theater to continue waiting. This way, people won’t feel so disheartened. Every now and again they will get to move up drastically…

At 9 pm, people will be let in. The will be forced to check their coats after standing on extensive coat check lines. There will be three or four coat checkers - but only one of them will actually accept coats at any given time. Then the audience will sit in theater for an hour or so before the show actually starts. But, it will constantly seem like the show is just about to start. The lights will dim and blink periodically. Security guards and staff will make commotion and activity in different parts of the theater but they will not speak with audience members. The curtain will jiggle. Music will begin and then stop only to begin again when the lights are dimming - only to be turned back off again very slowly.

At 10 pm, the curtain will open and the the most irritating nerve stretching music will begin to emanate through the theater. Actors will appear in little booths resembling the booths at the INS - but they will work silently on jobs that you can’t quite make up or understand. Every now and then, someone will approach the booths and talk with the actors in them but quitely enough so that the audience can’t quite hear. If you’re thinking that people will begin to leave at this point, you would be right if people could leave… however, the coat check which accepted their coats would be closed until the end of the play and all staff will have vanished. No ushers. No ticket sellers. No security guards. The volume of the irritating music will ever so slowly begin to increase. There will only be one working bathroom stall for the women - and it will be noisome. The men’s bathroom will be closed. At midnight, the actors will leave the stage. The music will cease and one mute coat check person will appear and begin to slowly return coats to their owners. No one will ever be reachable for comments.

Do you know that it is possible to see nine red double-decker sight-seeing buses pass between Broadway and Lafayette if you stand on Worth Street between 11 am and 2 pm on a Tuesday? Have you wondered whether there are

- three companies with buses that leave once an hour, or - two companies, one sending buses every half hour and the other sending buses every hour, or - one company that sends buses whenever they can fill them up?

Well if you don’t know this and you haven’t wondered this, you have probably never tried to go to the INS at 11 am on a Tuesday.

Sadly, we tried that very thing today but we didn’t succeed. In fact, we didn’t even get in the building. At 2 pm they announced that they weren’t letting anyone else in:

“We’re closed now. Come back tomorrow” “HEY YOU! WAIT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE CLOSED?!!@#@!#!!” “All the offices are closed to new people now. They…” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE @#$%@#$ CLOSED, MAN? WE’VE BEEN WAITING HERE FOR FOUR HOURS” “Calm down, sir. You can come back tomorrow” “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN COME BACK TOMORROW? YOU !@#@#%@#$#. I CAN COME BACK TOMORROW AND WAIT ANOTHER FOUR HOURS BEFORE YOU COME AND TELL ME I CAN COME BACK THE NEXT DAY. HEY MAN, SOME PEOPLE WORK YOU KNOW. ITS COSTING ME MONEY TO STAND IN THIS @#$@#%^%$&$%%#@ LINE…” “Please calm down, sir. I mean, you can get upset if you want, but I don’t understand why…”

Resounding echo in the mind of all people in the line: “YOU ARE RIGHT. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. YOU HAVE NO CONCEPTION OF HOW ENRAGING IT IS TO WAIT FOR HOURS IN THE COLD WITH THE WIND BLOWING DOWN YOUR NECK FOR NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING AND THEN BE TOLD YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN IF YOU WANT TO.”

And its not just that. Many people waiting in the line just have questions - many of them simple questions. There is no other way to contact the New York Office. They don’t accept phone calls, faxes or e-mails. Some people even stand in that line just to pick up forms.

Anyway, looking on the brighter side, Peter and I tried to think of reasons why it wasn’t as bad as it could have been: - the last time we waited 8 hours for nothing, this time we wasted only 3 - at least this didn’t happen when we were on vacation - and instead of wasting one day we would have wasted two - we never got close enough to the building to be harassed by the guards there - we at least got to turn the corner of Broadway. It was our goal for at least two hours and we finally achieved it - we had time to buy lunch - we wore warm clothes.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: try to avoid having anything to do with the INS (or officially it is now the BCIS - the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the Department of Homeland Security, of course)

Unfortunately we cannot yet avoid them. We will try again next week. We decided to go earlier in the morning - although one of the guards told Peter that when he got to work at 5:30 am there was already a line that went all the way around the block (and it is no small block around this Building… it is giant with a little park and everything). The guard thought there were about 1,000 people. So going early may get us in the building but it might not reduce the wait. We will see.

Correction: Please be advised of an error occurring in the April 17th, 2003 update received by you entitled “Even the INS has shining moments.” The title of this update was unspecific and misleading. The INS office in New York City never shines. It has not has one single shining moment or day since its inception all those oodles of years ago. A more appropriate, accurate title would have read “Even the INS has shining moments, except the office in New York which never ever shines even a little.”

While there is still no doubt about the stupidity of the INS, I would like to focus on an extraordinary occurrence which just transpired: the INS correctly processed our recent application — and not only that but they even combined two steps into one and did them both right. )) YEAH!!

If this does not seem like much to you - you cannot have considered the enormity of things they overcome: 1) They didn’t lose the application 2) They didn’t send it to the National Records Center 3) They didn’t misplace the check 4) They didn’t send it to the wrong department causing long delays 5) They didn’t bury it under a stack of papers in an empty office soon to be demolished 6) They didn’t claim to be the wrong department 7) They didn’t enter it into the computer under a different name They didn’t change their procedures and send it back 9) They didn’t put it in the “too hard” box (inside joke, see below explanation)

Just think. I am sure you can come up with at least 100 other things that could have happened. I assure you, Peter and I did while we were waiting for the notice to arrive.

So what it really means is that Peter’s permanent residence has been extended for a year. He has official permission to work and travel. If it takes them longer than a year to process our application, his residence will be automatically extended again. It means that the ball is in the INS’s court - and all we have to do is wait, but for the time being at least we are waiting without the worry that Peter will soon be illegal or unable to travel. Whew!

“Too hard” Box Story - You may or may not know that one of my uncles was a bureaucrat in the army for many years. He used to tell the story that each person would have a “too hard” box on his desk and anything that seemed to difficult to figure out would go in that box for the person who would someday replace him. If you are waiting for a response from some government agency, this story is not even slightly amusing.

In other news… I decided to go to Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. I sent my acceptance and check to reserve a place. It is a two year masters program.

So I am sitting in our old apartment (the one that we had before). It is really nice right now. It is about 4 o’clock and the sun is shinning in all the windows. It is really cold outside - about 19 degrees F (-6 C) but nice and warm in here. So far we have heard nothing from our evil landlord about moving out. That is good. At this point, no news is good news!

I am listening to the Spanish radio station because now that I have lived in Prague and studied languages so hard I HAVE to speak Spanish too. I studied it the longest of any language - so I feel that it is stupid not to speak it at least as well as I speak the others (which is not great but at least it is). Of course, Russian is still more important than Spanish - so I have been reading Малыш и Карлсон, который живет на крыше (or if those characters didn’t print normally on your screen, Youngster and Karlsson, who lives on the roof) by Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Longstocking. I have been taking it with me on the subway and reading it at home every day. And I have been talking and reading to the cats in Russian, just to hear it sometimes.

I got a job working at the Fund for the City of New York which is an organization committed to improving the lives of New York City residents. Specifically, I am a part-time program officer for the Youth Development Institute. Right now I am doing a bunch of miscellaneous projects - including researching foundations where we could get grants, editing, helping plan a publication marketing strategy. I fell so easily into this job that at first I didn’t take it so seriously. I had been talking to a former colleague of mine ever since we both left the Wallace Funds about working together. He took a job as Director of the Youth Development Institute. I wrote a paper for him last Fall. Peter and I saw him this Fall when we were visiting. At the time he said something like “I wish you were back in NY because I have so much work right now.” So, when we realized that we had to come back to NY, I e-mailed him. He said “oh I think there might be some possibilities.” I didn’t know what this meant - but when I got to NY I called and we talked once by phone, met once and decided my start date. So, it was really fast and really informal. I didn’t realize how great it was until my second day it slowly began to sink in that this was a real thing.

Anyway, I will be working 21 hours a week (three days). Peter and I are covered by Health Insurance. I can go in whenever I want and work from home when I want to. Nice, huh? Right now I am going to keep a regular schedule though, much of it actually in the office. I want to meet and get to know people. Also, it is much easier to concentrate on work in an office. At home, I think about calling Peter, or ICQing with him, or sleeping, or cleaning or….

I will also look for some other job/jobs for the other two days. I was hoping to find something working with refugees, immigrants, or kids. But first I need to understand what is around NYC - so I will start calling around and trying to see people from different organizations in the next couple of weeks.

So…apartment and job… two important things. The cats, also important, are good, although a little nervous (especially Krolik). They are trying this new cat litter, which I think is good so far… it doesn’t smell too bad and it isn’t expensive… of course, Peter will be the final judge of whether it smells too bad or not. I found another interesting litter made of cedar wood. IT is REALLY cheap and naturally smells good. But I only bought this one as a trial for a second small litter box because it was SO CHEAP that I thought something MUST be wrong with it. We will see… so far only one cat has used it…

Peter is good. We have been talking everyday. We have a super cheap calling card for people who talk for long periods of time at once. It is not so good as a general calling card because they charge 15 cents a day just to have it. Anyway, Peter moved out of our apartment at the end of January and moved in with Anton and Lina. So he had to sell everything that could be sold, give away lots of stuff, throw away what nobody wanted, and pack the rest into three bags. While he was working on it he was sure that he would never be able to fit all the stuff in the bags he had. But somehow he managed it and moved the three bags to Anton and Lina’s at the end of January. He is flying to NY next Saturday (Feb. 22). So that is all for now. A pretty long update - it gets that way when I don’t write for a long time. I hope you all are well. Let me know how you are doing when you get a chance.

So we’re back from Vienna. We spent two days there and got the papers we needed.

We went really early to the INS office. We were very disheartened to see a huge line already - but we only waited a few minutes before a man opened the door and said “Are there any US citizens? Please come in now.” There were only two of us. So Peter and I moved directly to the front of the line and were immediately admitted. (Complete discrimination!)

We went to the INS window and then waited about an hour while they prepared the letter of re-entry. When they were done they handed us two sealed envelopes, one addressed to the airline and one to the INS people at the border. So we have no idea what the letter says. We were joking that they wrote “Attention! These are crazy people. Do not let them in!!” But we trust that this is not the case.

We expect to be in New York sometime between September 20 and 27 and we will be there for two weeks. Right now we are looking at Sept 20 to Oct 6. We will buy the tickets sometime in the next day or two. I will let you know the details as soon as we know them.

Peter and I will be on our way back to Austria on Sunday afternoon. This time it is business, definitely not pleasure. We are going to pay a visit to the regional INS office there to see if we can get some things worked out. Our first order of business will be to get a letter of re-entry to the US for Peter. The INS officer I spoke to on the phone led me to believe that this should be no problem.

But we also have quite a number of questions for him - all about the lost file and what we should be doing about it. We sent a long e-mail today outlining our situation and our questions, so that they may be a little more prepared when we get there (wishful thinking, huh?). When I sent a draft to Peter to look at, he said “there are an awful lot of questions here, aren’t there?” but we couldn’t figure out which ones to take out. [INSERT: It is a really good thing we sent an e-mail! The man from the INS just answered. He said that Monday, September 2, was not a good time to visit ANY US facility because IT’S LABOR DAY!!! He saved us a really disappointing trip to his office. After reading his e-mail I felt really out of touch with American holiday’s! We may try to go on Tuesday instead.]

There has been virtually no progress in finding his file at the INS in New York. We hope that the people in Austria will help figure out what our next steps should be. Our contact at the Congressman’s office in New York was out of the office for most of August because of some medical problems. We hope to get back in touch with her in the next several days. I will let you know what we learn on Monday. I hope we hear something at least vaguely encouraging - but I’m not holding my breath.
We are planning to be in New York at the end of September, probably for two weeks. Today we found some pretty cheap tickets for the first two weeks in October. We can’t buy anything until we get the letter from the INS, but it looks like we will be able to find a nice price. Hopefully we will buy tickets on Monday or Tuesday.

I have been quite busy in the last several days. I have been making lists of lists of lists - an inherited trait (from whom?…I wonder…) and a sign that Fall is near. It feels good - although I am pretty wound up. It won’t last for very long and then I will fall into a pattern and won’t spend so much time planning everything. I will just do it.

I volunteered to be New Member Coordinator for Amnesty International (the English speaking section)last night. It means that I will be spending more time there (going to every meeting…a novelty) and that I will have more responsibility. They have never had this position, so it also means inventing a new position which I really like! This weekend we will be writing the job description for the position. The Amnesty group here needs a good deal more organization that it has - and I think that I, along with the new group coordinators who will be elected in a couple of weeks, will really help move it on its way.

I thought it was time for an update. And I want to start with a question. It is a multiple choice question so it shouldn’t be that hard. (Some of you already intimately know the answer to this question). If you moved to a foreign country and needed to get a residence visa based on the fact that you were married to someone working in that country, what would you have to do to prove that you were legally married?

A. Provide a copy of your marriage certificate.

B. Provide a notarized copy of your marriage certificate.

C. Provide a notarized copy of your marriage certificate and have the original on hand.

D. Obtain a new copy of your marriage certificate with the personal signature of the City Clerk, make a copy of it, and get it notarized. To hell with the original.

E. Obtain a new copy of your marriage certificate with the personal signature of the City Clerk, get an authenticity stamp from your County office, make a copy of it, and get it notarized.

F. Obtain a new copy of your marriage certificate with the personal signature of the City Clerk, get an authenticity stamp from your County office, attach an official paper from your State with the word Apostille in bold at the top, make a copy of all of it, and get it notarized.

If you chose F, you are correct. However an ever more accurate answer might read:

G. Obtain a new copy of your marriage certificate with the personal signature of the City Clerk, get an authenticity stamp from your County office, attach an official paper from your State with the word Apostille in bold at the top, make a copy of all of it, and get it notarized. Go to the office of the lady who will submit your papers to the foreign government. Sit there while she stares at your notarized thrice stamped marriage certificate with a puzzled almost panicked expression. Maintain your sanity and serenity when she looks up at you and your husband and says dramatically with some confusion, “But Mr. Gannushkin this is not an Apostille!” Wait several moments for the tension in the air to clear so that she can hear you. Calmly point out that she should read the large bold word on the top of the first page and stop trying to understand what all those stamps are.

And of course, if you were in the same position as we are here, you couldn’t possibly do all these steps yourself. So, I would like thank my father for getting the personal signature of the Clerk of the City of New York, the authenticity stamp from the County of New York and the apostille from the State of New York.

My awareness of and disgust with the enormity of bureaucracies across the world has grown profoundly in the past two years. I am completely surprised that there is not more violence in bureaucratic offices.

Man enters government building:

Man: Hello. I am going to the Food, Cat Permit and Return Visa Department of the Office of the Interior Order of Non-native Residents.

Security Guard: Dobry den. Prosim vas, mluvite cesky. (Good day. Please speak Czech.)

Man: I am sorry. I don’t speak Czech. As I said I am going to the F-o-o-d, C-a-t P-e-

Security Guard: Ne, pan Cizinec, prosim vas, tady jenon mluvime cesky. Jestle ne mluvite cesky, budete mit problemy. (No sir, please, here we only speak Czech. If you don’t speak Czech you are going to have some problems.)

Man: Please, sir. I just need…

Security Guard: Ne, ne, ne.. (No, no, no..)

Man is pushed out of building. Man goes home, yells at wife, smacks cat. Returns next day with Czech speaking friend. Enters building:

Man’s friend: Dobry den. Jdeme tamhle (Good Day. We are going there.)

Security guard: Yo, yo… (Yes, yes…)

Man and friend go to elevator. Spend 15 minutes finding floor of office. Arrive at office. See lots of people. Wait for 4 hours. All people gone. Woman comes out of office with purse and coat. Locks door. Ignores man and friend.

Man’s friend (in Czech): Excuse me, miss, but we have been waiting here for hours. Can we see someone?

Woman: Do you have an appointment?

Man’s friend: No, but we have been here for hours.

Woman: I’m sorry, sir, but you need an appointment.

Man’s friend: But we have this information sheet. It doesn’t say anything about appointments.

Woman looks at sheet.

Woman: Umm hmm. This is an old sheet. Appointments are our new policy.

Man’s friend: So how can we make an appointment?

Woman: The new sheet explains everything.

Man’s friend: How can we get a new sheet?

Woman: When you speak with someone here, you will get a new sheet.

Man’s friend: But how can we speak with someone here?

Woman: You’ll need an appointment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really have to go.

Man and friend watch woman leave. Man goes home, yells at wife, strangles cat. Next day, wakes up early, calls lawyer. Waits on hold for 30 minutes. Speaks with lawyer. Learns how to make an appointment. Lawyer hangs up. Mails bill for $500. Man calls special office number. Waits on hold for 45 minutes. Makes earliest possible appointment. Waits 2 months for appointment. Returns to office with friend.

Man’s friend: Dobry den. Jdeme tamhle (Good Day. We are going there.)

Security guard: Yo, yo… (Yes, yes…)

Man and friend go up in elevator. Wait one hour. Woman comes out of office. Calls man’s name. Man and friend get up.

Woman (in Czech): Ah ha! Which one of you is ?

Man’s friend: He is.

Woman to man: Come this way, please.

Man’s friend: We will both come. He doesn’t speak any Czech, so I will translate for him.

Woman: I am afraid that will be impossible. He only has an appointment for himself.

Man’s friend: Well, that really can’t matter. I’m just translating for him. It will be as if I’m not even there.

Woman: I am afraid is does matter. Only two people can fit in my office.

Man’s friend: We can leave the door open. I can stand.

Woman: The door must be closed, sir. It is official policy.

Man’s friend: Look, miss. This is really crazy. He needs a translator. We both need to be there.

Woman: If he needed a translator, he should have made an appointment for both of you. As it is, I cannot see you both. It is all clearly explained on the new sheet. I can’t understand how people can fail to follow such simple instructions. In any case, your time is up.

Woman walks away and reads next name.

Man goes home. Wife is prepared. Door to house has new lock. Man cannot get in. Wife advises him to come back the next day when he is calm. Two days later, man calls office. Wants to make new appointment. Gets message “The Food, Cat Permit and Return Visa Department of the Office of the Interior Order of Non-native Residents has been permanently closed. Please refer any issues or concerns to the Temporary Office for Issues Relating to Food, Cat Permits, Return Visas, Faucet Installation Lawsuits, Glass Blowing Regulations…..

Today I would like to tell you a tale. It is not a happy tale and its ending is yet unknown.

Once upon a time not very long ago in a land surprisingly close to your own, there lived two lovely young people much like your own relatives or friends. These two young people loved each other very much and desired to be able to live together in this beautiful land. However there existed at the same time in the same place a great evil. This source of the evil was the fear of the people of the land. They feared that people from distant lands would arrive and take their jobs and change their towns. So they decided to create an organization that would protect them against these foreign people. They called this organization Irritate Non-natives So-They-Will-Leave. However the directness of this title caused some concern in the high circles of the organization and it was soon renamed the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Now it happened that these two young people had to have some dealings with this Service, as one of the young people was a person from a distant land. So everything happened like this:

The two young people, young Peter and young Judy, were married in April of 2000. In May of that same year they submitted an application to The Service requesting The Service to give young Peter permanent residency in the land. They also asked The Service for permission for young Peter to work and travel in the time before The Service decided about his permanent residency. Now completing the application was not easy and not cheap. They hired a Professional Application Assistant and General Pain in the Ass (a PAA/GPA, otherwise known as a lawyer) to help them. Not only did they spend hours and days trying to locate obscure information about themselves and their families, but they constantly fought over the advice of their PAA/GPA.

The Service informed them they would wait three months for permission to work. This they did. In August of 2000, young Peter went to pick up his work permit. The Service also informed them they would wait three months for permission to travel. This they did not do. They waited 9 months for this permission… to be denied. The Service claimed that the young couple made a mistake in completing their application. The PAA/GPA claimed that The Service was evil and stupid. Regardless of which claim was correct, the young couple was unable to travel for almost 2 years.

In April of 2001, The Service invited young Peter to have his finger prints made. In May, they invited young Peter and his wife to a personal interview. At the end of the interview, young Peter received The Service’s approval for his permanent residency. The Service Official who conducted the interview placed a stamp in young Peter’s passport as temporary proof of the approval. The permanent card would be sent to the young couple within 6 months.

The young couple was relieved and happy. They relaxed and waited for the permanent card. They waited six months and then they waited some more. They waited seven months, eight months, nine months, ten months and then they could wait no more! The temporary stamp was good only for one year. The couple was living outside of the land in another little land across the big water.

They decided to act and did so decisively. They contacted their local representative of democracy. Their local representative of democracy sent a letter to The Service requesting to know the whereabouts of the missing card. Then he waited. He waited two weeks, three weeks, one month, two months. The young couple called him again. The temporary stamp had expired. Where was the card?

The local representative of democracy, now pressed by circumstance, resorted to using the telephone. He called The Service directly (a thing impossible for a private citizen like young Peter or young Judy to do). The Service did not have encouraging news. First they claimed they responded by letter to the local representative of democracy. However a letter was never received by him. They continued to say that The Service in the young couple’s city sent their file to the Vermont Office on July 8, 2001 for card production. After five hours of trying to call the Vermont Office, the local representative of democracy found out that as of March 14, 2002, this office had not received the file.

So where is the file now? Nobody knows. What will the young couple do? They will wait one week for their local representative of democracy to do some searching. Based on what the he finds out they will decide on the next course of action. Apparently there is something called a Diligence Search - but it sounds frighteningly bureaucratic and lengthy and the young couple is unsure. At present, young Peter cannot return to the United States. We will see what happens. We will see.