Immigration
After years and years of struggle with many battles won, and even more lost, my legal immigration war ended in my favor about a week ago. I am now officially a permanent US resident. Among my rights are the right to reside and work in the US and the right to leave and re-enter the US freely as I please. The coolest of all is that I'm going to have this status permanently, so I'm not going to have to renew it to keep my rights (except for when I apply for my citizenship in 5 years).
Olga's legal immigration struggles still continue, though now her getting her green-card is really only a question of time. Few Americans have a good idea of what moving to America entails. When we were just thinking of moving to the US, we had no idea the legal side of it was going to be this complex and difficult to get over. It turned out to require a lot more creativity than one would think. I've spent countless hours on it and it's been very stressful for me (and some of the people who helped me out), and now it just feels as if a huge weight's been lifted off my shoulders.
Quite a few people helped Olga and I out with our immigration stuff. This never would have worked if it weren't for them. It's crazy, because some of those people aren't on very good terms with each other, and they were still willing to put their differences aside to help out Olga and I. I'm going to go ahead and list some of the people who tried hard to help us with our immigration issues in appreciation of their efforts:
Vasili and Tatiana Galchenko
Alan Belanger
Jason Garfield
Peggy Reuss
David Deeble
Arthur Lewbel
Andrew Conway
Scott Seltzer
Penn Jillette
Jon Wee
Owen Morse
Masaki Nishikawa
Tim Furst
Benji Hill
Barry and Sue Bakalor
Mark Bakalor
Erinn McNeill
Oprah Winfrey
I'm sure that Oprah lady reads my blog religiously, so I had to mention her. She helped out quite a bit in the final stages of the immigration process.
