18 Years

This is my 3000th post.

This, in addition to the 107 posts I have written on the closed blog, The Higher Path.  It has taken me quite some time to reach this number of posts ~ and as it happened, I did not notice myself approaching this number.  I only noticed with my last post, two days ago, that I was at 2,999.  Just in time, as it happened.

The subject today is not a comfortable one.  And it isn't about D&D.  I've been holding off writing it for exactly 15 months now ~ and even now, I can't tell the whole story.

Some readers will have been following me long enough to have heard the name Tamara.  My partner Tamara is an American citizen living here in Canada with me, as she has been doing since May 2, 2002.  We came here together after my living with her a month in Flint, Michigan, where she was when we met.  After that lengthy time, there was no way of our remaining together without coming back here to Calgary, as at that time my daughter was only 13.

At first, we did not know for sure what to do.  Tamara came into Canada at a time when U.S. citizens did not need a passport to cross the border.  Still, we knew that sooner or later people here were going to notice that this non-citizen had been in the country for at least six months ~ at which point we feared our being separated.  I will tell you frankly: neither her nor I could bear the very idea.  And so we did the very best thing we could do: we did nothing.

Whether that was right or not became a constant discussion of the first years of our being together.  In the end, knowing it was wrong, we loved each other.  We still do, more deeply than we did then.  And so Tamara stayed here and we made an agreement very early on.  In order to keep from compounding one wrong upon another, Tamara agreed that while she was in Canada, she would not get a job.  She would not work under the table.  This would mean that whatever I did, I would be forced to support her, no matter what.

And so I have, these last 17 years.  If some readers have wondered from time to time why I seem to be perpetually in a situation of dire straits, this is why.  Throughout the 2000s, I had good work; and I had a very good job for the first half of the last decade.  But it has been five years since I have been able to find a proper office position, most of that time being dominated by the fall in oil prices, which has produced a recession here in Alberta that will not go away.  Since 2015 I have been forced to work a series of low-end, largely restaurant-based jobs, doing things like cooking or customer service, just to make ends meet.  If it had not been for Patreon, we wouldn't have made it.

Progressively, Tamara and I have become older.  I was 37 when she came to Canada; she was 43.  Today I am 55 and Tamara is 61.  And as we have both aged, this mess we put ourselves into has become increasingly more difficult.  No one ever did turn up to oust Tamara from the country; but health issues have meant that from time to time I've had to pay for things out of my own pocket, because while I have health care, she does not.

This came to a head in July to October of 2018.  At that time, Tamara began to develop cataracts, a clouding of the lens in the eye which leads to a decrease in vision.  We looked into how to have them treated, which informed us that ~ even if we had the money ~ the procedure could not be done in Canada on a U.S. citizen because it was considered optional.  This meant, to manage the issue, we'd have to send her back to the States.

She has no family there or connections.  And we haven't the money to set her up properly to live on her own, particularly as she was finding it increasingly hard to see.  So we took the next best option, as of November 2018.  We came clean.

We sought out a lawyer and explained our situation.  For these last 15 months, we have been jumping through hoops in the hopes of retaining immigrant status.  This has so far cost us about $5,000 ... which we have managed to pay through austerity, hard work and (about 10%) with the help of Patreon and direct donations.  It has been a year of self-denial and a great deal of stress; and yet, steadily, we've gotten closer and closer to our goal.  This, despite the very real danger that we will be forcibly separated after being together for 17+ years.  And worse, Tamara has been reduced to where she is forced to get about with a white cane, to let cars and others know that she can't see all that well.  I am right here, beside her, making her as safe as I can; but progressively, we're losing this battle too.

On top of all this, we found out through the government examining Tamara to see if she had a communicable disease (standard policy, as most immigrants are just arrived from overseas) that she has diabetes type-2.  As I say, our age is catching up to us.  I'm fine and healthy; I recently had a full battery of tests to check me for cancer and what else, but I'm good to go for a while longer.

Writing this today, we're closing in on the last step.  Tamara managed to obtain her first ever passport from the United States in mid-January, which included our travelling to American soil (so-called) at the U.S. Embassy in western Canada.  Thank the spirits the office was in Calgary and not in Vancouver, Winnipeg or Edmonton.  I don't know how we would have swung a trip like that.

And now we have an interview to meet with the government immigration officer on February 25th, to look us over personally.  We've been together so long, I don't think there are any questions they can ask us that won't produce positive results ~ but of course we're both scared and stressed out of our minds at this point.

And we've also been asked for an "immigration landing fee" of $490.  To be produced by the 22nd.

We don't have it.  My friends might, but I've been around the horn once already and most of them are hurting from the recession also.  The tradespeople I know are struggling to hold onto their property as their facing constant and inconsistent layoffs.

I can't afford to take an advance from work.  There'd be no way to pay for March.

And so, hat in hand ... can the reader help?  Can you make a donation?

I don't need all of it.  I'll get whatever I need from someplace, one way or another.  Supporting Tamara all these years, I've learned how to eat hand-to-mouth ambidextrously.  But I have turned to the internet in times of troubles before ~ and you've come through for me before.  I apologize that I have to ask again.

Please.

I love her.


UPDATE:

Please do not donate.  We've received the money already.  I'm on the verge of tears.