Adoption Stories: Citizenship Has Its Privileges
This post won’t be so much advice (not all of them are advice, just my personal experience of the adoption process) but a bit of a rant.
Since we adopted internationally, a lot of the work we had to do involved the INS - now USCIS. There are parts where we have to prepare paperwork to bring an orphan into the country and have her become a citizen, and parts have to do with our family going out of the country.
I don’t remember specifically which part of the process this was, but it was long before we traveled. We needed to visit the USCIS office to get lots of identification - fingerprints, thumbprints, palm prints, etc. done.
Now, I tend to reveal my politics a bit on this blog. I don’t like the idea of giving benefits to illegal aliens who aren’t paying into the tax base. But this is different. Folks who are illegal aliens and intend to stay that way generally don’t visit the USCIS offices. They tend to stay beneath the radar.
I have a great deal of respect for a person who can’t sufficiently provide for or care for their own family in their own country, so they decide to go to another country. I have a lot of respect for those who work to save up to move their families here if they choose to play by the rules - to get the right permits, to begin the process of becoming citizens. Part of the great diversity of our country is the folks who came over on boats and went through all the hoops necessary to become citizens.
When we arrived at the USCIS offices for our appointment, the office was filled with many, many, many people who would be waiting in line for most of the day for a piece of paperwork to fill out to become legal. We were also warned to get to the offices as soon as they opened because we would be in queue for several hours. K had to go with us as well (she was 4 at the time), and so we came well prepared to spend several hours at the USCIS offices.
We never sat down in the waiting room. We checked in at the front desk, explained what we were there for, and were immediately whisked past all the hundreds of waiting people straight to the task for which we came. We were given some sort of priority, either because our task was different from what everybody else was there for, or we were different from the folks who were there.
That frustrated me. Somehow we were chosen to be more important than people who were trying to make a legitimate living for their family. I’m glad we didn’t have to sit on queue for several hours. I just feel bad for those who chose to play by the rules who did have to sit on queue for several hours.
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willathome posted this
