Immigration Blues

BeJAYsus! The trauma of becoming legal! The last few weeks have become consumed almost entirely with the quest of progressing my case to become a permanent resident. I guess I have become deluded over the years by my UK-based perceptions of what it is to be an immigrant; you know - Government-assisted housing, welfare cheques, talk-show deals... OK, so I didn't expect to queue up with a number, deli counter-style, at the Immigration office and be handed a Green Card and a 3 bedroomed terraced house in the suburbs. But neither did I expect the sheer depth of detail (and, dare I say it, utter LUNACY) that goes along with an application to become a 'Landed Immigrant' (I know - I think I, of all people, deserve a title that doesn't make me sound like I floated up to the harbour with 25 of my family members after crossing the Pacific in a makeshift raft).

So, where to begin? How about the fact that I cannot work until my residency is granted, despite the fact that I am married to a Canadian and quite obviously in pursuit of a life here? Or the fact that when I entered the country in December, I couldn't tell the man at the booth my REAL reason for coming to Canada - instead I had to lie through my teeth and tell him I was 'backpacking' despite having two mobile home-sized cases filled with such backpacking essentials as an ipod sound station and Jasper Conran bedlinen. Best of all is the fact that now I am here and I have started the application process, I can't leave Canada until it's approved. Which could be up to one year. Like, WHY??? Basically if I leave, I am not guaranteed re-entry. In the 'guidelines', it's OK to leave on 'Family Business'. OK, great - my nephew is being christened in June and I am Godfather. So I call the CIC call-centre and ask if this is OK. 'I can't advise you of that, Mr Britton', I am told. 'It's up to the Immigration Official when you return as to whether they feel you left Canada for a valid reason'. When I RETURN? So, let me get this straight - if I want to go to my Godson's christening, I do so at my own risk and hope to God that the Immigration Official I get when I come back is some right-wing family values nut who understands why I left? 'I'm sorry Mr Britton, that's all I am able to advise you at this point'. It's amazing that the concept of a call-centre as a barrier between the consumer and the real decision-makers exists at government-level as well.

That brings me to the application form itself, which makes an Irvine Welsh novel read like 'See Spot Run'. Some of the questions in here beggar belief; why oh why oh WHY do Canadian officials need to know the colour of my mothers EYES? And as for the 'guidance notes', which are there 'to assist you in completing your application'... well, it seems to ME that there is something FAR more complex going with these purportedly 'helpful' pages of evil. From what I can gather, the entire application is a test. You see, Canada isn't daft - they want good quality, top-drawer immigrants, and good quality, top-drawer only. It seems to me that that Canada wants you if you are either

A) Rich or
B) Intelligent

I guess BOTH is preferable - maybe there's a deli counter line-up for those kinds of applications - but one or the other will do. If you are rich, it stands to reason that you are welcome. If you are intelligent, then you are probably more likely to find gainful employment. How to ensure that you are either one or the other? Well, you need to be friggin' Steven Hawkins to complete the application on your own, and if there is anything wrong with it when it's processed (and I mean anything, from a badly-correlated address history to a misplaced apostrophe) then the whole caboodle is returned to you. So when an application lands on 'The Desk of God' that is complete and legible, I guess you're in. Like a degree, it doesn't matter what subject it is in, it guarantees a certain level of intelligence. How to guarantee wealth, or at least means to survive? Well, let's imagine for one second that you're as dumb as a sack of hammers. How on EARTH do you complete this monolithic beast when you can't even do joined up handwriting and you think 'grammar' is an affectionate name for your Mother's Mother? Easy - you pay an immigration lawyer to do it for you. $10,000 dollars later and you are the proud owner of a shiny laminated PR card.

So, it seems in order to get into Canada you can be clever-yet-poor or dim-but-rich. But Allah help you if you are skint and stupid...