Thursday, January 25, 2007

Immigration: Yall Are Still Funny!

So whenever you send in an official form to Immigration, they send you back a receit. It has number and it states that they’ve received your form and—usually—the overpriced, non-refundable fee you sent in to submit said form. Then it states what the next steps are.

I’ve received my receipt for submitting my N-400—the meta-form, the form to end all forms, the citizenship form. And it has this hilarious line:

“You will be notified of the date and place of your interview when you have been scheduled by the local USCIS office. You should expect to be notified within 540 days of this notice.”

540 days? Who the hell says 540 days? I pulled out my calculator and realized that is 1.4 years, but only if you count a year as 365 days. But you know there are weekends so it’s really like the kind of math that made so my SAT scores sucked. Anyway--two years? Or something. I think the conversation when they were composing this form went something like:

“Don’t say two years. Sounds like too much! Sounds like we take too damn long. That would depress them. Just tell ‘em… 540 days!”

And then somebody high-fived somebody for their tact.

Anyway, this means I had better start studying for my Naturalization Exam, god knows it’s just around the corner. I’ve downloaded my study tools on-line, include the index card format...

Sample Questions--the almost petty ones:
What are the colors of our flag (I like the pre-emptive use of the “our” here!)
How many stars are there on our flag—and what color are the stars?
How many stripes—what color are the stripes?
What is the 4th of July?
(a sample follow-up is “Independence from whom?”)
Who is the President of the United States today?

But then there’s the tough ones:
What do we call a change to the Constitution?
How many changes or amendments are there?
(note that if I didn’t know the first answer, they just gave it to me in this question!)

They also have various ways to get at a topic, presumably based on how big a dumbass you are (which I think is very considerate; let's be frank, not every wannabe citizen will be smart--one can't control for that):
What is the Legislative branch? OR
Who makes the laws? OR
What is Congress? OR
What are the duties of Congress?

AND A Nancy Pelosi question here:
Who becomes president should the president and vice-president die?

AND an Obama question here:
According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become President. Name these requirements.