Immigration

Moving from Canada to the U.S isn't as easy as you might think. When Brad came into Canada in November 2008 after we came to California for his dad's wedding, customs almost didn't let him into Canada and I started having a Panic attack.We tried to think of anything we could do to be together in either Countries but the only way we could do it legally was to get married, we sat and talked about it for a while and we knew we would be together forever and that we were going to get married sooner or later so we decided we needed to do this to be together. First thing we needed to do was apply for a petition to be able to apply for a visa. Waiting for that approval took forever, it was about Six months before we got anything back, when we got that we needed to apply for the fiance visa. We needed to show proof of us knowing each other, take pictures, send a bunch of paperwork and a large check. After a few more months we received a letter saying I needed to go to a U.S embassy and get a physical. My mom and I hopped on a plane and headed to Vancouver for a couple of days. I had a physical and an interview with the embassy, the interview went very well but my xray showed an abnormality on my lung, so I headed back to Edmonton and had a visit with my doctor the next day. Luckily a few years prior they thought I had gallbladder stones so I had had an xray done then and the abnormality showed there, was the same size so my Doctor wrote it off as a what he called a "Fat Pad".
I sent the results to the embassy and got a call saying they received it and were now processing my visa.

In the meanwhile, we started planning the wedding, we decided since most of my family is in Montreal and some kind of all over the place we decided to have it in California, who wouldn't come out here, and we figured since Brad's family is all out here why not. Now the problem was people aren't going to want to come here and pay for a hotel room for a week or just fly all the way here for the weekend, so we figured we'll do it on a cruise ship and then it's a wedding and a trip. So we send out the invitations for September 20th 2009 in San Diego, on the cruise ship before it sails. Everyone books their cruise tickets, we get a nice room for a honeymoon, we book a hall for the wedding everything is set.
I get the call that my wedding dress is ready for  my first fitting after waiting for 5 months, so we're getting ready to head out when I see my mom standing at the kitchen counter looking devastated holding a piece of paper, i ask her whats wrong I see a FedEx envelope and my passport which I figured the government sent back with my visa in it.I read the letter and it says after I enter the States, I can not leave until I've gotten married and gotten my Permanent Residency card, which can take up to a year. So my mom my sister and I are off to my wedding dress fitting with no wedding to go to, I was devastated. I was sitting down waiting for them to bring me my dress and I was balling with my mom and sister consoling me, people were looking at me feeling all bad I'm sure they all thought that My fiance had canceled the wedding, which was not the case, was almost as bad.

So a month and a half before we come down to California and we have no venue and my family is all booked to come to Cali for my wedding, so we HAVE to have it on that weekend, and that was the last week of work I had at home, so tying up loose ends at work and contacting every hotel in the city that was vacant for the 19th (because they were all sailing off on the 20th, i couldn't do it that day anymore) and having people just laughing at me that I was calling for a venue two months before the date, plus now we had the budget to factor in, with all the cancellation fees we had about 3500$ for 120 people wedding. So i called and called and after I told people my story a lot of people tried to help, calling people who had some of their venues booked making sure they were still using it, I was almost at the point of bribing people until we got lucky enough one of the local hotels was available for a venue for 150 people or less and was very inexpensive, we booked it right away.

After the wedding we applied for my permanent residency which didn't take as long as they said it would at all, I got the paperwork saying I needed to go to a government building in L.A with my husband so they could ask us a few questions, I'm assuming to make sure we knew each other and he didn't buy me or the other way around, I got approved that day and got the letter stating so a few days later and my permanent residency card a few weeks later.

I thought I was out of the woods but here comes that hard part, getting my California I.D and my Social Security card. I can't get my I.D without my SSC, and when I applied for my SSC the bozo made a huge mistake and I ended up waiting 3 months longer for my card, meaning i had to wait 3 months longer to find a job and once i got my card, I applied for my I.D which they said 3 weeks and I had to wait 4 months for them to contact the USCIS to make sure I was legit and I got it. I've been here since August 15 2009 and I JUUUUST last month got my I.D. Out of everything I had to go through I had the most problems with what should have been the easiest.

I'm still on probation since we were JUST married when i applied for my permanent residency, so before out 2 year anniversary we need to apply for them to remove the probationary status off, or they can send me back to Canada. Hopefully I have a job then or I'm going to look like a total bum :P I'll post updates about this when it gets that time, just thought I needed to share this information with the people out there... Immigrating is NOT fun, it's costly and nerve racking but if it's for the right reasons or person, it makes it all worth it.