My other half has purchased a condo and pays taxes. However, he cannot get a permanent dirver’s license – which means he cannot buy a car or purchase insurance. If he wants a car when he visits he has to rent a car and that is more far more expensive than owning. He finally received a six month visa. When he finally received a driver’s license it was only for six months. Buying a car and insurance with a six month license is still impossible. He cannot receive satelite dish service because he does not have a Social Security Card. Technically, one should not have to give a Social Security number to anyone other than one’s employer. The technical complications of living here with a six month visa are enormous! More than one expected!

One begins to understand why there are illegal immigrants living in the USA when one goes to the national website for applying to the lottery for a Green Card. The English instructions are so complicated and unclear that no one can understand them. I have three degrees and the site makes no sense. Can you imagine how difficult it is to try to accomplish what you want to accomplish when you cannot make heads or tails of what you are supposed to do because the site uses language that 99% of native English speakers cannot understand? The site says that one’s application must be perfect or it will be discarded. The African clerk at my supermarket won the Green Card lottery and when I try to ask him how he did it, he cannot answer the question because he does not understand the question. Because the site is not decipherable, alternate sites for “walking one through the process” abound and most are there only to take one’s money and are of no help at all. My mate lost $2,000 trying to get a Green Card through two sites that were there just to take one’s money… And no one closes them down!!!

Our own Consulate and Embassy sites in Italy where one applies for a visa is not very different. It’s a humiliating and unhelpful process. IF their publicized phone number works, one is sent to another telephone number that charges by the minute to give out information. No one wants to talk to you unless your pay. There are also the enormous costs for the visa which limit who can apply for one. Then there is a special fee to send the visas by protected mail. It cost a months salary to get a visa for mother and son. That did not include losing a days salary because one had to go to the city of the Consulate to be interviewed. Those were just the costs! That does not include the timed application one has to fill out that’s not written in one’s native language. I tried to fill it out for him as I have typing training and it took four tries to be successful. One has twenty minutes to fill out the application or lose it all and start again. The application says to keep saving – which we did – but the save feature did not work and we lost all the information each time. I have since checked out the US Embassy sites in other countries and they are not any different.

It makes one understand that the problem with illegal immigrants has everything to do with the process and that we are our own worst enemy. Were I foreign, I would seriously consider being illegal too!

There is nothing friendly about trying to become a citizen of the USA or the process to get a visa. Once one is here, it does not get any better. I know from experience. My partner sleeps with an American flag tucked in his pillowcase in hopes he can one day be a citizen. All he gets is rebuffed and I become more embarassed that I am an American…