Well, on Wednesday since we were downtown at the midwives place anyhow, we decided to swing by the OHIP office — that’s Ontario Health Insurance Program? Policy? whatever — and see what I needed to do to get the ball rolling with that.  After a delightful 2 minute wait, we were called up to the counter.  The lady there said (as we knew) that 90 days after my medical examination had been passed, I would be eligible for OHIP.  So I showed her my letter from Immigrations Canada that states my visa is okay to be issued anytime before my immigration medical exam expires on August 10th, 2009 — and since exam results are valid for one year, this obviously means that my results were valid as of August 10th, 2008.  Well, she doesn’t think this letter is good enough, so she goes to get the manager of her office.  The manager not only doesn’t think this letter is good enough, but says he’s never even seen this letter before and this is definitely not the “written confirmation from Citizenship and Immigration Canada that you have applied for permanent residence in Canada and have passed the immigration medical” that is necessary for my 90 day waiting period to begin.  They suggest that I get a form from Immigrations Canada that is specific to my medical results and bring that in, along with a few other items to confirm my identity and address, to begin the OHIP process.

Well, of course this is a huge disappointment.  I start crying as we leave the office and don’t stop until we’re halfway home.  All I can think about is the fact that some how, some way, no one out there is capable of helping me; the person I’m talking to is never the one that has answers for me, and I’m not going to have insurance when I give birth which means I’m going to have to do it at home because we can’t afford the $2500+ hospital bill.

When we get home, I email the office of Citizenship and Immigration Canada that has been handling my case and put in a request for the letter OHIP needs.  They reply that they “do not provide any such service”.  When I answer that they are Immigration Canada and hence they are the people that need to send me this form or, if they can’t, then it would be goddamned nice if they could point me in the direction of someone who can, they reply again that they “do not provide any such service” and that I should hurry up and return my visa materials to them.  So now, I’m in limbo once again — this time for OHIP, not for my actual immigration.  Monday I’ll be calling the help line and seeing if maybe, by some miracle, someone there knows what’s up.  Someone somewhere knows what I need and is able to provide it, so I just need to find that person.

Anyhow, we had spotted a UPS store nearby and decided to use them to send my visa stuff out on Friday.  After punching around quite a lot on her computer and saying she could get us a Monday, mid-afternoon delivery to Detroit (because it would be ‘significantly’ cheaper than a Monday morning delivery), she announces: “And it comes to… $46.21.”

What?  For a business-sized envelope containing a single sheet of paper, a passport, and four wallet-sized photos?  Why? “This is a courier service.  There are handling fees, and this is a Monday delivery.”  Right, because three days to get to Detroit is reasonable when it’s a three hour drive.

Chris says, “I work in the shipping industry, I know exactly how little space this envelope takes up on a truck and I know that you use sorting machines to handle where everything goes.  There is no reason for it to cost that much.”

She says, “I don’t set the costs for UPS.”

Chris says, “Okay.  We won’t be using UPS.”  We get our things and leave, then head to the post office. We  check on registered mail; they give us a “5 business day” window for a $7 fee… and when we ask how fast it would get there if we mailed it with their express mail service instead, we’re told again a “5 business day” window but $25.  We go for the first option.  How do these places even justify taking 5 days to send a letter to Detroit?

So yeah, that’s done.  For now.  We’ll see how things go on Monday.

Well, it’s been nearly two business weeks, which is close enough to ten days for me, and we haven’t heard anything from her.  She said her office would send us a letter to let us know whether things get approved.  I asked for an email or a phone call as well, and she said they can’t do that.  What the fuck am I giving you people my email address and phone number for if you can’t use them to communicate information with me quickly?  So every day I’ve been checking the immigration status website, and every day since early August it has said the exact same thing on my application status — “Interview scheduled for October 15, 2008.”

Despite having not heard back from her yet, we decided to go ahead and pay the fee we need to pay.  Chris drove up to the sponsorship office yesterday — only to be told that they can’t accept payment, but he could try the other immigration place up the street.  So he went there, which was a completely blank building inside with only a two-way mic to communicate with the people he needed to.  They told him that the fee cannot be paid until the application is finalized.  He told them that our interviewer said it needed to be paid before the application’s finalization; they told him she was wrong.

So, defeated, he goes back to work & gives me a call.  I call the Canadian immigration hotline to talk to someone, who tells me that yes, the fee needs to be paid before my application can be finalized.  I ask him if he has any information about the status of my application, he says he can’t even access my records because I applied as “living outside of Canada” and apparently, Canada Immigrations in Canada can only access records of people applying as “living in Canada”.  Because that makes fucking sense.  Anyhow, he tells me I can pay the fee to the sponsorship office online, and it should be $490.  He says it’s great that I have to pay this fee in particular, since it usually means everything is fine with the application and I should be getting approval soon — this isn’t a surprise, since the interviewer told us the same thing, BUT this is the first time someone has given us a figure, so that’s nice.

In fact, this is even nicer than I realized, because once I’m logged into my account on the Canada Immigrations page, there is NOTHING to be found about me needing to pay a fee.  But if I don’t log into my account and click on the “pay application fees” link, I can get to a page that lists something like 20 possible different fees that could need to be paid depending on what application I’m providing and what stage of the application I’m at.  We pick the only one that’s $490, and have to set up a NEW account just to provide credit card & payment application that doesn’t even ask for our case file number.  What the fuck ever.

So Chris faxes in a copy of the receipt along with a cover letter stating what fee it is and for which case file, and today I mailed out the same to the office.  My account page still isn’t updated with any information on the medical thing, so we tried to call the Detroit office.  After stumbling around trying to find the number, Chris gives it a call — and go figure, it’s a number where you can’t actually speak to anyone, it’s just an automated message.

Know what the message says?  SEND THE OFFICE AN EMAIL TO COMMUNICATE WITH THEM.

Sooooo, I sent them an email asking for an update on my application status as well as trying to confirm that I paid the correct fee to the correct office.  I tried really hard to be polite in this email, but as you can imagine, after five years of this constant back and forth with no one person assigned as a case worker that can help us out, it’s getting fucking exasperating.  Even more frustrating is the fact that I’m due in 103 days, but it takes 90 days from the date of the application’s approval for me to get Ontario health insurance.  I am praying that by some miracle, the approval process gets finished within the next 10-13 days, and then that Maia decides to take her time and arrives into our lives a few days late (due date: February 15th).  I mean, can you just imagine if I had the baby like two days before my health coverage kicked in?  That would be the world of Canada Immigrations taking one last, satisfying, peanut-laden shit on our faces.

Frustration levels: high.  Anxiety levels: getting there.

I remember when we first found one another, we would say how we just wanted everyone to feel the way we did; we wanted to share this ecstasy with the world, and know that everyone out there had found their soulmate, the way we had found one another.  Every breath of wind sang to us.  Every spark of light glittered to our eyes.  As things are prone to do, our enthusiasm settled into comfort as time passed; but today, in your laugh, I found that overwhelming love sweeping over me again.

Do you know how much you impressed her?  I do.  You were in there with her for nearly thirty-five minutes, sharing our story.  When I entered the room and sat down across from her, she opened the interview with this: “I really enjoy family class interviews, because they tend to be the most relaxing and interesting part of my day.  Your husband was very relaxing and easy to talk to, and I feel really positive about you two already, so this will be short.”  I said only, “He can be like that,” but in my mind I was cheering THAT’S MY BABYDADDY!

I was in there with her for less than ten minutes.  It was probably the worst interview I’ve ever given; I told her honestly that I had heard a lot of what you said, although I tried to ignore it all, so I felt really self-conscious about possibly repeating your answers and then having us end up sounding rehearsed.  She didn’t need to talk to me; she already knew from you that we were genuine.  I stumbled over my words, I chewed on my lip so incessantly that she mimicked the expression at one point in what I assume was exasperation, and I certainly didn’t represent us very well.  In hindsight, this is foolish — as it stands, we already finish each other’s sentences and use the same expressions and phrases.  That’s what happens when you spend so much time with your best friend.

So, although we still have MORE waiting ahead of us, I just want you to know how proud I am.  When I tucked you in to bed tonight, and you pulled me close to tell me that you were proud of me, I wanted to laugh.  I didn’t do anything.   But that’s just the way you are.  You’re not always the most romantic or expressive man, yet that makes the moments when you are even more touching.

I love you, Chris.  Thank you for loving me.

So tonight, Chris and I were snuggled on the couch watching CNN’s Candidates Revealed series, since we missed the first broadcast, and every once in awhile Chris would mutter, “Fucking elitist.”  Then we’d both laugh.  How can anyone in the American public earnestly put the ‘elitist’ label on this man?  A mixed race man born to a single mother, raised in a community without strong role models of his father’s race, one who lost his way as so many of us did on the way to becoming an adult?  We learned that for his first job out of college (which was not, btw, Harvard), he bought a junky car just so he could get around and be a community organizer.  We learned about him helping a development where asbestos lingered in the homes — but the government only planned to remove it from the manager’s office, and not even inform anyone else; Obama helped these people organize and have their homes made safe.  How can you label someone like that elitist?  I’m pretty sure that under any other circumstances, people would applaud selflessness and courage.  In fact, some might even toss around that overplayed ‘hero’ title that has so saturated our media over the past seven years.

My child will be born in Canada, but will have dual citizenship with the US.  I am a first-generation American and feel a great deal of guilt that I am not more grateful for this fact; my grandfather legally brought his wife, his son, and his 4 year old daughter to the shores of the US back in 1965, via a boat ride that was months long. Though none of them spoke English, my grandfather found a job and worked his ass off so his family could prosper.  They all learned English.  His children went to American schools, and his daughter grew up to be my mother.  Because of her family’s old-world values, she was not close to her father growing up, but these days, he plays a huge, loving role in her life and in the life of all his grandchildren.  He and his son, my uncle, are the strong male role models in my life, the ones I look up to as ideals of what a father and husband should be. It cuts me to the core to think of telling my grandfather, who worked so hard to establish his family here because life would be better, that I am glad to have moved out of the US.  That I feel his first great grandchild would be better off living in Canada, because at least here “liberal” isn’t a smear.

Barack Obama is just a man.  But his ideals, the ones I share and need the Supreme Court to share, fill me with pride.  When I know that America is on the path to a brighter future, where the citizens are its most treasured possession and are no longer the butt of jokes world-wide, then I will honestly be able to say that yes, I am PROUD to be an American.

Until then, this Canadian flag pin will stay lonely on my wallet.