Immigration Update

Yesterday marked two years since I moved to Mexico, so I thought I'd catch you all up on what's going on with our immigration case. If you've been following for awhile, you know Ibis had his immigration interview a year ago in Ciudad Juarez, then another that April. At the time they told us they needed another 8-10 months to review the case, then in October we found out that changed to 10-12 months.

The paperwork didn't get processed until May, so that means we're currently in the tenth month. For the most part, we don't spend a lot of time discussing our case. The decision will be made by an anonymous person 2000 miles away (I think) and we really have no influence over that decision, so for the most part, we just go about our days and focus on the here and now.

That's been more difficult as the deadline approached. The date I kept pushing out of my head is finally here and now we need to have an actual plan. A lot of you already know this, but last week we started an email campaign to Senator Stabenow (MI) urging her office to tell DHS to hurry up. Because of the way the laws are, one branch of the government cannot tell another to do anything, but we're hoping letters from several hundred people will help put us closer to the top of the list.

While this has been going on, I realized last week that my tourist visa expires soon. The last thing we need is another immigration headache, so I went into the local office for an extension. The very nice lady who helped me explained that I can't get it extended, so my two best options were 1) to drive to Guatemala (as that border is closer than the US) to get a new one, or 2) get an FM3 visa as Ibis' dependent. My understanding is that because I've been here for a certain length of time, I now qualify for a different FM3 than I did when I first moved here. It's the cheapest option so it looks like just as we're getting ready to leave, I'll have a more permanent status here.

On a side note, we haven't heard much more in terms of violence locally, but we did see a man arrested Saturday night. We were a little nervous having so many drawn machine guns nearby, but we were inside a restaurant so there was no danger. I have noticed more mobile patrols, so hopefully Calderon's additional troops are helping.