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No, the title of this blog entry doesn’t mean I am filing for another “foreign” wife, requiring yet another Green Card. I’m crazy but not that crazy. Besides, Janet might object and take the bolo to me – or her 🙂

What it means, for those not familiar with the Green Card process, is that the initial Green Card obtained after Janet arrived in the U.S. and more importantly, after we married, is considered by our friends at the USCIS and Homeland Security to be “conditional” and after two years we have to apply for the “conditions” to be removed. The “conditions” apparently being that you have to pay more money to remove the “conditions.”

So now, two years after we married and two years after we filed for Janet’s “conditional” Green Card, we are back at it, putting together a packet of papers large enough to bring down yet another rain-forest.

Now I get it – really and truly. There are reasons to confirm that the woman approved “conditionally” as a US resident a couple years ago is still eligible to be an “unconditional” U.S. resident. Well, that and the $590 windfall Homeland Security is going to get from us.

They will take Janet’s bio-metrics, the fancy 21st Century word for what used to be called fingerprints. After all, I may have substituted a new Janet for the old Janet and they have to check. Either that or her fingers may have been altered by the whitening lotions many Filipinas love.

Other than the standard Federal Form, what kind of documentation do they require to prove that we are still happily married, living together, and spending money at the malls this holiday season? Anything and everything that has both of our names on it: tax returns, bank statements, statements from all our utilities (Homeland Security has to check out the garbage situation here in Casa Weisbord, right), medical statements, insurance statements, a beneficiary statement from my employer, airline tickets and itineraries for travel together. Plus of course, we’ve made Walgreens a bit richer  by printing every photo taken of us together over the course of the past two years. Considering the fact that the Philippines is the selfie capital of the world the number of pictures we are printing is decreasing the world’s silver content several percent.

If all that isn’t proof enough, the USCIS politely suggests that we obtain affidavits from friends verifying (upon penalty of death) that we are still married and living together. Unfortunately Facebook and blogging friends don’t count, otherwise I’d hit you all up for your signatures in blood.

What’s even crazier than the process I’m describing (and it’s frankly more Draconian than I am describing) is that because we are married, in just one year, Janet will be able to apply for U.S. citizenship, making her 10-year Green Card irrelevant. Well, irrelevant except for the $590 Homeland Security’s gonna pocket now and the $680 they get next year when we apply for the citizenship.

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Now despite my standard sarcastic tone I really do not object to all of this; well other than the $590. I think the country has a right to protect itself from people who are here illegally via immigration fraud.

And no, I am not stupid enough to get into the current brouhaha about refugees from a certain destabilized Middle Eastern country or who destabilized it. You can all argue among yourselves – I’ll wait.

What I will say is that the fiance and spousal visa process, as well as the Green Card process is made more difficult and lengthy by many of the people who try to apply, scam, and cut corners in the process. I will be talking (or bitching) more about that in my next blog piece – I promise!

For now Janet and I have one more essential piece of evidence to obtain to prove that Janet is ready to be an unconditional, no shit permanent resident of the United States – a trip to Walmart, with photographic evidence. But first Janet’s wondering where we put our noseplugs 🙂

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Here’s a few random conversations that Janet and I have recently had:

Now that my retirement is, while not around the corner, at least within view, we talk more and more about the type of home where we would like to ultimately live. The other day Janet told me she would like “an underground place” in our future home.

“You mean a basement?” I asked, confused.

“No, of course not,” she replied. In fact there are few basements built in homes in the Philippines. If you find one, good chance it was built by an expat. Not sure of the reason for the lack of basements – perhaps the risk of typhoons. “A place dug under the ground,” she added.

After I quizzed her a bit I realized that what she was asking for was – a bunker. My mind wandered humorously to thoughts and images of Hitler and Eva’s last days and of the bomb shelters paranoid Americans built in the 50s and 60s.

“If you’re worried about storms, I would think a basement would be better,” I told Janet.

“Of course it’s not about storms. We’d drown underground in a typhoon.”

“Then why do you want an underground place?”

“War,” she stated matter of factly. I suppressed a giggle.

“If the Chinese attack the Philippines, I don’t think Alcoy or Valencia (two of the places we are thinking about moving to) would be at the top of their attack list,” I said.

I tried to reason with her stating that war in the Philippines was highly unlikely. She reminded me of the Japanese in WW2. I told her that even if there was a war, Alcoy would be an unlikely battle front. She reminded me again of the Japanese in WW2 and told me that the very neighborhood in which she grew up had been much larger before the war and had in fact been renamed after the war.

I found it strange that a person born generations after the end of WW2 could still be so impacted by it; but that terrible memory is a huge holdover in the Philippines.

There was no sense in arguing further and I finally promised her that if war came, we would have the resources and the car to escape.

“What about my family?” she asked. I should have known that response was coming.
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“I don’t think they’ll all fit in the bunker,” was all I could add.

———-

Janet works very hard at her job and comes home almost daily with stories of bumps and scrapes and cuts she got at work. In the culture I grew up in we would call her a bit of a klutz. But she’s an awfully cute klutz, so I think I’ll keep that word to myself.

Yesterday she told me that she banged her knee hard enough that she yelled out “Oh shit,” at the top of her lungs. Her co-workers laughed and chastised her.

I know that she not only curses when an accident happens but she has been known to curse at her employees, although they all still like her. I imagine they think her outbursts are cute.

I remarked, “You seem to curse a lot more than you used to.” She agreed. “Did you curse in the Philippines?”

“My mother would scold me if I did,” she replied. But I knew that she had not lived at home the last five years before she arrived in the US, working and studying in Leyte.

“I didn’t curse there either,” she said. “Remember, I went to church daily when I was there.”

I felt a twinge of guilt that while I have supported her religious beliefs and activities and would drive her to church on Sundays when she first arrived in the US, I knew that she hadn’t attended in a very long time. I suspect that the church experience here just isn’t the same as in the Philippines.

“So you just curse more because it’s more standard vocabulary in the US?”

“Yes, that’s true. And because I learned it from you,” she laughed.

Oops.

———-

 A couple days ago completely out of the blue Janet asked me, “What do you think about kids with electronic gadgets?” I told her what she already knew; that my teens have iphones and Macbooks, seemingly like most kids around here.

“I don’t like kids with all these gadgets to play on. Now, two year olds have phones.” I agreed but know that in the US it’s hard to get around it. All kids have them and what is the alternative? “Going outside? Where there are bugs? Don’t be silly.”

“I want our child to play outside. How old were your kids when they first got phones?”

It was long enough ago that I couldn’t remember. And before the kids had iphones they had ipods and Gameboys.

“Well, I don’t want our child to become a gadget addict.” After some back and forth we agreed that 12 was a reasonable age to get one of these new fangled electronic gadgets.

“Of course,” I reminded Janet. “By the time a kid of ours could hit 12, that phone and those gadgets will be built into your brainstem.” I then looked over at her, holding her iphone 6 and chatting on Facebook Messenger. “And you might have a tough time telling a kid he/she can’t have a gadget when you’re on your phone all day,” I added smiling.

“I’ll tell him I’m working.”