So to work here I have to have a Social Security Number, and to get that I have to have an I-94, which states I'm permitted to work, according to customs and immigration and homeland defence. Apparently I was supposed to keep that little bit of paper the customs guy stamped after he'd finished trying to trick me into incriminating myself. This, after a 15hr flight. Meh.
I asked for help from my stylish and accomplished NYC immigration lawyer friend, who told me it was very important to DSS that I have the control number from the I-94. Bad news. Searched every bag, every pocket, couldn't find it. Remembered ... dimly ... a sign saying you could retrieve it from the net, probably why I tossed it.
A scant 10m before my DSS interview I tried this, only to run out of data on my AT&T mobile. Argh. 5m of talking to a solicitous but useless headphone-spacing unit at AT&T CustomoService, $5 buys me 100Mb. Find the I-94, stagger into the DSS office just as the final call comes up for my number. The Security Guard waves me through, because I was so nice and smiley and obviously inept, two hours earlier when I got my wait-in-line ticket.
I get to the interview window, the DSS officer looks at my phone screen, sees the I-94 and declares that's all cool, but he needs it printed.
Rush to nearest Kinko's about 1.75miles away, buy a self-service card (there's $10 I'll never see again) use google cloud print to get it to the Kinko's office, get delivery code, type it into the printer after inserting my card, and it stops ... out of paper. Over to the desk, help one of their customers (an old codger) connect to the local free wifi with his ipad, tell the desk jockey his printer's out of paper (why didn't it tell him itself?) Print 4 lovely colour copies of the aforesaid web page.
Back to DSS, back to Window 7 (I asked for Linux, but they didn't know what I was talking about) hand the printed web page to him, noting to self that he could have called it up himself using information from my passport, visa and admission stamp, just like I did. He writes down the number, same number as was on my mobile phone screen ... then he HANDS ME BACK THE FUCKING PAPER.
Lest I'm unclear here ... all he needed was the tracking number. He could see it on a web page, he could have used HTTPS to get the same web page from his own government, but no ... he had to COPY IT off a piece of paper for it to be considered valid.
Now, I realise there are people starving in the world, and there are wars and emergent diseases, and there are places where cholera is only a sip away, but all of those are just additional symptoms of the deadly contagion circling our globe: unrestrained stupidity.
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