Why?

Why does it all have to be so difficult? Short version of the back story. My husband is British. We have been trying to get his permanent residency in the United States. I won't go into the gory details, well at least not in this post, but I will say that it has been nothing but one problem after another. One minute you have one issue sorted out, here comes another. We are finally making progress though! At least it feels that way. The hardest part is still to come, but I think we are going to make it through ok. Now for the rest of the story...

The hard part that is upcoming is proving that we are truly married, and it wasn't for convenience. That we truly love each other and that is why we married. We have to prove that we live together and take are operating as a family unit. One thing that immigration asks for as proof is that both of our names are on the utility bills. This isn't the only thing they ask for, but it is the one that led me to my blog.

You see, you can't be on any bill in this fine country unless you have a social security number. To have one of those, if you weren't born here, you have to prove that you are legal to work. Well, my husband finally got his employment card in the mail, so we headed straight for the social security administration. The process there was easy and painless. It took only about a week to get his card in the mail. With that number I decided to start putting him on the bills. This is where things got a little hairy. This wasn't the part I expected to be hard. Maybe that is why it was so frustrating.

My first call was to the local gas company. That was a cake walk. No problem there at all. Then I called the phone company. No real issue there either, except that even though we are both on the bill now, only my name will show as there isn't enough room for both on the printed bill evidently. I heaved a big sigh as that kind of defeats my whole purpose, but no worries, one bill probably wouldn't make that much difference. It was my call to the electric company that put me over the edge.

Don't get me wrong, that gal helping me was great. She was friendly, and knew what she was doing. She was not the problem. The problem was that the electric company verifies social security numbers. I have no idea how, but they do. She tried to verify my husband's and it came back invalid. This is probably because it was brand new, and I explained this, but it still came back invalid, so there was little the poor gal on the other end of the phone could do. She started to tell us our options. Instead of the social security number we could provide two other forms of ID as long as it was certified, and original, and presented in person. Sounds like a hassle, but easy enough right? If only!

You see, the forms of ID they will accept are a US Birth Certificate, which he doesn't have as he wasn't born here, as US Passport, which he doesn't have as he in not a US Citizen (yet), a driver's license, which he doesn't have yet, but may get soon, and a whole list of other documents that pertained to legal entry in the US, but the only one he had was sent in with the applications we sent to immigration. There is only one of these that we can even hope to come up with, and that will be weeks from now at best.

You see my frustration? How do we show the proof we need to for the change in immigrant status, if we can't get proof until he is naturalized? Oh well. I have faith in the system. I have to at this point. Without faith in the system, I would have nothing else, as I have seen no other proof that it works...yet. Lets just hope, that for our sake, faith and hard work will be enough.