Here are some of the forms needed for immigration. They range from requests for demographic information: name, age, address, and so forth to forms needing to be sent to police as well as the FBI. These police/FBI certificates reveal if there has been any criminal activities in any of the states and/or countries I have lived since I was 18. If I have lived in the US or out for 6 months or more then I am obligated to get a report. Here is a partial list: Rome, Italy, Frankfurt, Germany, Washington, DC, Mount Rainier, Maryland, Miami, Florida, & Maine: Poland, Lewiston and Portland. There is a requirement that I get a fingerprint card from the FBI which necessitates my going to a police station or finding a private fingerprinting business [who knew they existed? Isn't that illegal?] in order to provide the FBI with the prints. There are costs associated with procuring these reports. Another form is called the Medical Report: Section A - EDE which I must take with me when I go to the medical examination by a designated medical provider. Of course the medical providers are in Canada. A list is attached with the forms. There are fees attached to all of these forms. For example, the medical examination will cost $200. to $250. dollars Canadian. I have hired my sister, Mary at MLB@Trimtabllc.com to assist me in this endeavor. She does this sort of thing for a living through her business. She is patient. She is kind. She is polite. I can be refractory [stubborn, recalcitrant: I am trying to improve my vocabulary :)] and mulish.

Canadians offer a plethera of information and websites on immigration. This site: www.cic.gc.ca/english/index.asp is very comprehensive. All the information one could possible need is located here. And the forms, of which there are many, are also available at this site. I was advised to hire an attorney. In Canada attorneys are referred to as either solicitors or Queen's Counsel. Solicitors are not admitted to the bar and cannot plead cases in superior court. A Queen's Counsel is a barrister [a lawyer who can plead for the defense or the prosecution] who has been appointed to be counsel to the Queen or if there is a King, the barrister is referred to as the King's Counsel. In order to qualify to be a QC, a lawyer must be a solicitor for 10 years. The lawyer I hired is a QC. His retainer was $4800.00 Canadian or, at the current rate of exchange, $4560.00 American. For a fantastic read get Leon Uris' "QB VII" which refers to Queen's Bench, Courtroom Seven.

I planted this tulip tree [Liriondendron tulipifera], also known as tulip poplar, yellow poplar, canary whitewood, in my front yard sixteen years ago. It was a foot high. It is now over twenty feet high. It bloomed prodigiously for the first time this year. The flowers are so pale they sometimes are invisible. The sapling emigrated from western Massachusetts in a Folger's coffee can which was nestled in an old box stuffed with outdated sheets of the New York Times. No one took notice when we crossed the borders of New Hampshire and Maine. It was indistinguishable from other saplings: a long and thin wisp of a twig. Intentionally setting forth to transplant one's self might seem as simple as the journey made by this young tree. No guarantees.

According to the Advanced English Dictionary, an application on my iPhone, immigration, a noun, means in part: "....the body of immigrants arriving during a specified interval..."Immigrate, a verb, is defined as "...com[ing] into a new country and chang[ing] residency." I am in the process then of migrating, transmigrating, arriving, getting to Canada. William Least Heat Moon writes in his book, Blue Highways: "Maybe the road could provide therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one." The journey is engaged and I am traveling along very worn paths.

First Blog Post 25 June 2010

My reason for immigrating is Love. Yes, I have fallen in love and the object of that love lives in Canada. My idea of immigrating was showing my passport, filling out a few forms, kicking back while they were reviewed, and then getting high fives, you're in, from Canadian immigration. How wrong could one person be. It's been exhausting.