How to Become a Citizen and Get Married and Divorced in the Same Day

Yup, Dear Daughter is eleven now.

When you adopt a child they no longer give you Citizenship papers for them even though they automatically become citizens when the adoption is finalized (like 10 years ago). I guess the Government found the paperwork unnecessary and cumbersome.

So someday you will need those Citizenship documents to produce them for another Government agency because the two agencies couldn't possibly communicate with one another and verify Citizenship. If you don't have a paper to produce who you are then you don't exist. And no, the adoption paperwork (from 10 years ago) was not enough for them.

We spent Monday morning at the Immigration office. If you need to provide your children a lesson in Civics just sit in the Immigration office waiting room for a while.

Notice the different treatment that people receive.

I won't elaborate.

The woman that waited on us and signed all of our paperwork was very nice and VERY excited that the daughter was now a Citizen. At age 11, DD was not so excited but put on her happy face and waved her obligatory flag.

So when we applied for her Citizenship 6 months ago we had to pay $450 to file. See we were told that even though she was a Citizen, we weren't PAYING for her to BE a Citizen we were merely paying for the paperwork to be processed. Ahhhh- that makes so much more sense now. I'm so glad someone explained that to me.

But at least it provided a photo op for a family photo.

Oh, and did I mention that as we were leaving the Immigration office we noticed on her Citizenship paper that she was now MARRIED? So we went back to the window and explained to the man that we needed it changed and he yelled at us and asked how old our Daughter was. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense since we were there for Citizenship status and not MARRIAGE. So the woman came out and was all kerflumped because everything was all notorized and then we had to re-sign all 50 pages again and wait another 1/2 hour for the real certificate that said DD was now SINGLE.

Somewhere down the road I know I am going to have to

provide a divorce decree to yet another government agency.

Welcome to America baby girl, welcome to America.