City of Immigrants
I love this town. After the dentist the morning I dropped into City Hall to apply for a Marriage Certificate. “Wrong office.” Oh. “When did you get married?” Not long enough ago, apparently. You have to wait 3 months before you can get a certificate. Actually I’d read that before but didn’t believe it.
| “But my wife is applying for permanent residence.” |
That seemed to change things. He grabbed my paper and wrote down an address and told me I should talk to the folks there to see if I could get things sped up. I don’t know if they’ll solve my problem right away but I love the idea that this guy’s attitude changed the moment I told him what we were up to. I realized that he was almost certainly an immigrant himself as he spoke with a pronounced accent.
If they can’t help me at the office I’ll give our MP a call. Apparently it’s fairly common for them to intervene to get things moving along.
16 February 2006 at 15:27
[...] Well, despite my moment of hopefulness the people at the deaths/births/marriage certificates place were no help whatsoever. “You have to wait. No there’s nothing you can do to speed it up.” This simply isn’t true. I hope to encounter the same person very shortly . . .as opposed to two months from now! [...]