*Note: This entry may sound bitter, angry or racist. It is not intended to convey such feelings. I love everyone.
Apparently, I am illegal. It's true. Daniel and I went to finally get our passports yesterday. We had to wait to get my new drivers license, had to wait until we had money to pay for them, then Daniel spent hours getting our stupid pictures to the correct specifications, per the passport page on the official government travel website. Well, we tried.
First off, the lady at the office said our pictures weren't on the right paper. Online, it just said it had to be on photo paper (which it was) but lovely hope-crusher lady said it had to be on PASSPORT photo paper. Thanks, government website. So we had to get new ones taken at the office, which is what Daniel wasted hours of his life doing our own pictures for, to avoid paying to have the same ones taken. Then, we go back up to the counter where my new best friend noticed my birth certificate and says it won't work.
Why, you might ask? ITS NOT LEGAL. It's apparently an abstract of birth, which is not a real birth certificate. It was thought up by some guy named Juan who needed to help his cousins. A few counties in California and Texas started handing these bad boys out to people coming over the border, but also gave them to legal babies being born in those counties. I was a lucky one. Maddeningly enough, it's legal enough to give me a social security number, a drivers license, a marriage certificate, a new social security card, a new drivers license and allow me to pay an absurd amount of my hard-earned money to taxes, but not freaking legal enough to grant me a passport.
So now what do I do? I have to get a Certificate of Identity notarized here, then send it to California (with a $17 fee of course), where within 15-20 business days they will send me a birth certificate (HOPEFULLY the right one). Then, I have to go apply for the passport, send that out (with a $100 fee of course), and hope it gets back in time for me to sit in the airplane seat I purchased months ago and fly my legal ass to Mexico. I don't know how much hope to give this, but I will hold on to what I've got. The lovely frizzy-haired lady who denied my passport application said that it has only been taking 2 weeks average for people to get their passports recently. Well, as I wait my 15-20 business days, I will wait and see if Daniel gets his in a reasonable time. We have 11 weeks from today.. let's see how this goes.
Until then, you can call me Rosario.
