Blogcoven » Visa

Found another excuse

dixie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:46:13 +0000

While attempting to set up an Irish bank account, I remembered another crucial piece of official documentation I needed but had completely forgotten about: the PPS (Personal Public Service) number. This is akin to the American Social Security number, and like a SSN, you need one in order to do most things having to do with money (like get paid). While you don’t need one for a bank account, you do need proof of address, and the kind and helpful teller pointed out the easiest and fastest way to get such a thing is to get a PPS number.

Of course, you need proof of address to get a PPS number too. They recommend using a recent bank statement. For a moment, I thought I was in a classic Catch-22 situation. Upon a moment’s quiet reflection and a quiet reminder that Ireland is a good and reasonable place, I stumbled upon a solution.

The Social Welfare office will not bat an eyelash if you show up with your passport, residency card, and your Irish spouse’s proof of address. I brought my marriage cert to provide the crucial link between me and my spouse, something I considered necessary given we have different surnames, but the civil servant waved it away and said “We don’t need your marriage cert, this is fine.” Apparently being able to place your hands on a piece of mail is both necessary and sufficient for proving one lives in Ireland.

Then again, it might have been that the mail I chose was a confirmation letter regarding the wire of money from my American bank account to the Wanderer’s Irish one. Wires are serious business, as was the quantity of money being wired. (Pro tip: If you’re wiring money abroad, verify the receiving bank can deal with foreign currency and wire the money in your home currency. The rate will be better. Free money is a good thing.)

The stars have been aligned for me this week. Registration was painless and almost enjoyable. The weather has been sunny and mild, even straying into Angelino levels of lovely. And when I showed up at the Social Welfare office armed with hours and hours of knitting, expecting to queue behind hundreds of dole/welfare recipients signing for their cheques, there was no one there save a cheerful civil servant who watched me take a ticket, then called me over. The entire PPS number application process took about ten minutes, and that was only because I took the time to fill out the form in legible block capitals.

Now I really don’t have an excuse for not finding a job.

Almost as if they wanted me to stay

dixie — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:10:51 +0000

After the multi-year, $1,000+ madness involved in getting an American green card (permission to live and work in the States essentially indefinitely), I had a difficult time accepting that the analogous process in Ireland would be so much simpler as to create a divide by zero error while comparing the two. I could not wrap my tiny head around the idea that all I had to do was show up, smile my way through passport control, and then visit the Gardai (police) once I was already in the country. My raging dislike of Delta aside, I could not believe it would be more difficult to physically transport myself than to obtain permission to stay. I woke up at 4:30 Tuesday morning from a combination of nerves and jetlag. It could not possibly be that easy.

Of course, it was that easy.

The immigration office had moved since I last had to deal with it, and had upgraded significantly. I insisted on getting there as early as we could to avoid day-long queues, so by 9:45 we’d arrived and had gotten a number. By 10:30, we were walking out the door with a registration card (it looks like a standard ID card and has a chip with my fingerprints on) and permission for me to stay and work for 5 years.

There was no: trouble over having a different surname, questioning over what exactly I plan to do here, request for evidence of cohabitation, suspicious looks implying somehow I am trying to cheat them out of their lovely country and culture, fee of any kind.

There were: smiles, clear and kind instructions, fast and efficient service, and astonished respect that I’d managed to preserve my registration documents from when I was here years ago. (“That thing is ancient,” I had been told at passport control. The people in immigration passed it around with reverence, flipping carefully through the pages as if they would crumble into dust if poorly treated.)

I suspect many things contributed to my experience, some of them a result of hard work and planning, others mere luck of birth. They did not check my qualifications or ask for my title, but I did list my occupation as “scientist.” Not only was I married to a local, I had an Irish marriage certificate and it was clear that the marriage had taken – after four years, such things stop being convenient and people start taking you seriously even if you’re applying for a visa. I think being American, fluent in English, and white helped significantly, though I did notice people ahead of me from Afghanistan and Cameroon who were processed just as easily as me without being white or American (though they may well have been fluent English speakers).

In any case, it’s done now and I have no excuse for not finding a job.

Return

dixie — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:54:20 +0000

I’ve neglected my corner of the blog so long I’m surprised there aren’t colonies of spiders and layers of cobwebs blocking my way in. The sad truth of the past year is that I’ve had nothing I wanted to share with the Internets: grim accounts of thesis writing, power struggles with my PhD advisor and committee members, panic over table formatting in LaTeX, terror in the face of overwhelming evidence of my own incompetence, and the eventual resolution of pretty much everything.

I could have written about the optimal use of 5 Hour Energy for fun and profit, or how to get a snake out of the US and into Ireland (hint: the latter is easier than the former). I could have liveblogged my commencement. I think someone live tweeted my defense. I certainly gave a blistering account of my flight(s) to Dublin over Twitter. But nothing seemed interesting enough to blog, and I certainly didn’t have the wherewithal to report in anything more involved than 140 character chunks. So the blog has heard little from me.

Leaving LA for Dublin presents a new set of blog-friendly circumstances, however: I am unemployed and full of observations. Last night saw my happy Dublin debut, in which I forgot where Cassidy’s was (if indeed I ever knew), met up with people I haven’t seen in quite some time, found myself a game, and had my first decent pint(s) in years. The process of legalizing myself may take a little time, especially if the international banking system fails me and decides to hold my vast riches hostage, but last night assured me I will not want for things to do in the meantime.

I first took it into my head to leave the States when I was 15, and every large decision since then was based at least in part on that goal. While I certainly have new ideas and plans, it’s strange and disorienting to finally be here, clutching two hard-won things, looking out towards new goals that are lovely but lack the timeworn substance of those promises I made to myself so very long ago. Luckily, there’s quite a lot I need to get done. By the time things slow down, the short-term plan should have crystallised appropriately.

At long last

dixie — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:46:51 +0000

The green card meeting
Went pretty well, all things told.
Wand’rer stays, we think.