Hello,

Here is the continued posting of "What's been going on with us lately"...

1. Our laptop computer stinks, I daresay, and hope 'it's' not listening. We are looking for a new one, but are still slogging along with this relic. It's amazing that it has lasted this long, considering it was 'used' when Steen bought it five years ago, and since then it has lived with us near the sea in the salty air. Like an old joke... Our laptop is so old it has a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk drive.

2. Our internet connection, Pacific Wi-Fi, has been down more often than up. We don't know why.
When we could get online, our touchpad mouse would invariably quit working. We tried an external mouse - unreliable. Then one day, our neighbor Don aboard Sand Dollar suggested a USB mouse, and what do you know? It works - for now.

3. We have been... (such a long story), dealing with Immigration. No, not New Zealand Immigration, but U.S. Immigration. In short, Steen's greencard, which would have expired in 2009 and up for renewal, became VOID after we had been out of the country for twelve months.

Which means he currently cannot come back to the States on anything more than a three-month tourist visa. Anything else would require starting the long immigration application process all over again, with personal interviews, original identification certificates, an established U.S. residence, etc., etc. and months-long decision-making processes.

Which means... we can't follow our latest plans to come to the States in May for eight or nine months to work and see family. Of course we didn't know about the twelve-month policy voiding the greencard, or we would have acted on that information sooner.

Would checking into American Somoa have stopped the twelve-month clock? We don't know.

After a week of independent research, we have resigned ourselves to the current situation. An upsetting part of this experience was the lack of help we received from the U.S. Consulate here in New Zealand. Steen called and then I called, being the American, thinking they would be helpful and give us information about how we might want to handle this situation or what our options might be... if any.

The U.S. Consular told me that she could only help me if I was a New Zealand resident... and then she referred us to an immigration website. That was it. Thank you -goodbye, don't call us anymore kind of attitude.

Who would have thought that an American in a foreign country would be treated that way by their own Embassy and Consulate? She assured me it would do us no good to go to Auckland or the capital, Wellington, to the U.S. Embassy itself. She said they would just refer us to either the website, or to a 1-900 number (at $3.50 a minute), which, by the way, Steen had already called and spent forty dollars... and had been given that very unhelpful Consular's office extension number.

Our disappointment with the fact that Steen could not currently live or work in the States was compounded by the dismissive attitude of the Embassy and Consulate. We felt alone in a foreign country with no one to advise us.

We read through pages and pages of immigration websites, and tried to decipher ambiguous legal wording. There MAY have been a way for Steen to get a 'Returning Resident Visa', an outside chance, but without hiring an Immigration lawyer, we couldn't have attempted that route by ourselves.

Well, that was it in a nutshell...

Going On:
A couple of weeks from now, we'll take the boat to Australia, go to the States for three months, not work, see family and then return to Australia. They have a shortage in skilled Construction Project Managers and Designers, so hopefully we can work there.

As Mr. Conductor says, "We're out, but not down..."1

-something a little lighter for the next posting.



1. from the fairly bad movie "Thomas the Tank Engine and the Magic Railroad", and the occasionally intellectually starved parents of a three year old.