Last week we finally received word about Benoit’s application for permanent resident status in the U.S. Normally, this process of applying for a green card when you seek it based on marriage to an American citizen, rarely takes longer than 3-6 months. Well, in our case, Benoit’s FBI background check took almost a year! A ridiculous amount of time by any measure. We had lost all hope. In fact, we had begun to consider retaining a lawyer so that when the statute of limitations at 18 months of waiting for an answer had passed, we could have some recourse to find out what was taking so long. Apparently, regardless of all the talk of how the new Homeland Security department is helping to bring the agencies together and make sharing information between them easier, they still don’t communicate. The DHS has NO idea what happens to a green card application after they submit it to the FBI for the routine name check. They have no way of knowing whether the file has been misplaced, lost, trampled, trashed, used as filler or packing material…you get the picture. There’s no way to know what is happening to your file once it gets transfered to the FBI. Hence, the long, arduous, anxiety-filled months of waiting on our part.

And then, just as simply as we first submitted our documents to the great abyss called governmental bureaucracy in the U.S. today, we received notification that our application was approved! Benoit should be receiving his temporary green card in the next month! Hip Hip Hooray! 3 cheers on this Thanksgiving week for the modern miracle of found paperwork and cut red tape. Somehow, beyond all our wildest fantasies, the U.S. government has managed to make Benoit a legal permanent resident of this country.

Now we have 2 and 1/2 years to rest up, regain our morality and strength to persevere before we attempt to run the next gauntlet of American governmental processes…that most revered, holiest of rites of passage, CITIZENSHIP. But for now, we rest, like a sated, tryptophan-induced comatose couple, smiles on our content little faces, peaceful in the knowledge that the first battle has been won.