Us Citizenship

Well, I have finally applied for US Citizenship. Got together all the necessary paperwork and amazingly enough it was not really that hard. I say that now, but I have just sent in the application, I still need to be finger printed, interviewed and tested on the history/facts about the US. So I’ll need to brush up on some of the trivia about the history and government. They also make sure you have basic English skills, well I think I have those, although a number of people will be a bit dubious about that, seeing that they have a tough time understanding me.

What made me get this done with little procrastination, was that the application fee is going up by about $300 after 31 July 2007. So as you can see, I just managed to squeeze in before that date. Not sure exactly how long the whole process will take, but it should be about 6 months or longer.

I’m having to apply for a new passport, seeing that mine is expired. So I am going to be running a little experiment between the services of the 2 governments. I have found it a real pain to deal with the SA Embassy about passports. I have applied in the past for a new passport and a temporary passport, but only received the temporary passport and never got my permanent passport. I have tried emailing them, but the posted email address bounces back.

So I am going through the process again. I started about a couple of weeks ago, sending off for BI-9 forms, which are for finger prints. Those have just arrived, I’m going to have to get my finger prints taken and fill in a couple of forms and will be sending that off. Must mention that I sent a self-addressed stamped envelope for them, but it appears that the envelope I sent was too small, as they sent a large manila envelope with the BI-9n forms in it, so that was nice that they did that.

So we shall see which we get completed first… US Citizenship or SA Passport… let the games begin.


general

357 Words

2007-07-27 20:00 -0400