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.