I have been trying to get a passport for, well, it seems like my entire life but more recently for a trip to the UK in March avec Eduardo. For those who do not know, I was adopted when I was like 9 months old, thus my citizenship was established through my parents and it was when I was like 8. Anyway, so I have been abroad once; to Germany and Poland for this vocal jazz tour I took in college. I got that passport thanks to the kind heart of a friend's influential father, as well as a Senator I truly loathe but have to pay thanks to, Henry Hyde, who wrote a great letter which pushed the INS and Passport Services to actually give me a passport without my certificate of citizenship which has been lost (although I have every other imaginable piece of documentation which verifies my citizenship, this form is pretty much the gold standard). Anyway, to make a long story short, I am pissed off at the government again (when aren't I). They make such a big f-ing deal about illegal immigrants when the process and those who work with it are such jerks. Its no surprise that if you're immigrating to the U.S. past the age of like 5, your primary language isn't English...but that just seems to piss off the INS workers even further, prompting them to act like this woman I knew growing up, who hosted like a million foreign exchange students and when speaking to them (or at them, more like it), would speak Slowly and Loudly...as if that helps them understand, volume and conversation at like telegram-composing speed. I just don't understand people who are in a profession that they a) visibly hate and b) take out on the people who are held hostage to the process...its not like a business where if someone is rude and inappropriate to you, you can just go elsewhere. Anyway....this all relates back to the chow chow i've been reading about illegal immigrants, the Minutemen, the big f-ing fence, etc. I don't understand why people hate immigrants so much - and it isn't just the contradictory evidence that we are a country founded on immigration, etc.,. but just a sense of frustration at this misdirected anger...no one takes responsibility for anything anymore and it really pisses me off. I have seen, through this whole process, the cream of the American bureaucracy...and also, regular Americans who still cannot identify Dick Cheney (who's photo is in like every federal building along with GW and Condi). I heard a man today tell a 6 year old that Dick Cheney was Chief of Staff. Seriously.
So clearly I have no end in this ramble, but it pissed me off and I needed to vent.