So it didn't all go as smoothly as we had hoped.
As we stood on the chairs and poured documents onto our case officer, and she pranced around her cubicle squealing 'Paper! Paper! OoooOOOOoooooo Paper!', suddenly she turned a little unhappy. Apparently they're trained to spot missing documents as they cascade down.
And one of mine was an official document of the wrong country.
My UK vaccination record needs to be a certified US vaccination record. The fact that I had a medical in order to get into the US was fine by them; I don't need to have another medical.
The fact that I had my vaccinations checked and a missing one slapped into my arm on the same day as the medical isn't, apparently, fine by them. I need to take my vaccination history to a Civil Surgeon, who will, I hope, simply copy the sheet from English Medicalese into American Medicalese and onto the appropriate form, and charge me for the privilege. I may also have to have a chicken pox shot, or something like that. Buying your own chicken, giving it the pox and shooting it isn't sufficient.
But seriously, the imposing bureaucracy was made very personal and human by our case officer, who sped through our details with efficiency and enquiring interest (she doesn't really like paper that much) although I hesitated slightly over the oath. There were no bibles present, but before the interview proper Krissa and I had to stand with our right hands aloft and say, "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God."
The atheist in me is nevertheless a British atheist; he hesitated awkwardly for a moment and then thought it best not to make a fuss.
The good news is that this doesn't hold my case back too much; I already have appointments made for tomorrow (two less than inspiringly competent English-speaking secretaries made wildly different quotes for their boss's services, so I thought it best to cover my bets and book with both) and we can then FedEx that bloody form over to our wonderful case officer and things can progress as planned.
Then, two months or so down the line, yours truly will be a bona fide permanent resident of the US.
Which is lovely.
Brilliant.
I thought that there was some whole First Amendment thing that is supposed to stop this kind of persecution of atheists?
The atheist in me is offended by you having to say "so help me god", but I'm pleased you didn't fight that battle and everything went well. Congratulations on the smooth first steps!
That's great news, man. But I'm wondering, where were you when we were all getting chicken pox in back in school then? Or are they just vaccinating you because it's the excuse they've been waiting for to poke you with needles?
Oh I got it, all right.
I was convinced they had it wrong, and they did.
I had chicken pox, but because everyone in the US is vaccinated against it and I hadn't been, regardless of whether ti would do me any good, I had to be vaccinated.
Or so they said.
The Doctor said different.