January, 2003:

I really don’t want Jess to have to sit on a bus alone from Buffalo to Dallas. And I really don’t want her to have to wait on the Canadian side of the border in the event that she gets denied again. I’m considering calling my Uncle that lives near Buffalo and seeing if he’ll let me stay the night with him while I wait for Jess to make it to the border. He owns a bar and a hotel there and I am pretty sure that he’d let me stay. If I got there late Sunday night, I would be ready to meet Jess, either at the border to take her home, or at the Buffalo bus station to pick her up and drive her here where she belongs. I’d do it if I could find someone to go with me. I’d ask my brother, but I’m pretty sure he has to work and wouldn’t be able to get off on such short notice. Additionally, it would cost about $300 to drive out there, and I don’t really have the money. I don’t know what to do.

Traducion en français:

(This translation took me well over an hour because I’ve decided not to use the computer to help me look up words. I think that forcing myself to spend time looking up the words in a dictionary makes me really not want to have to do it again, and therefore, helps me to remember what I’ve looked up.)

Je ne veux pas vraiment que Jess s’asseoir seul sur un autobus de Buffalo à Dallas. Et Je ne veux pas vraiment que elle attendre à le bord canadien de la frontière en cas de elle encore ne permit à entrer dans le Ètas-Unis. Je suis compte tenu de téléphoner à mon oncle que vivant près de Buffalo découvrir si me laisserait rester avec le pendant que Jess arriver à la frontière. El y a un bar et un hôtel je suis certain que me laisserait rester. Si y arrive tard dimanche soir, je serais prêt à la rencontrer à la frontière que se reprendre à Sudbury ou à la gare routière que se reprendre à le maison. Je le ferais si j’avais quelqu’un pour aller avec mois. Je demanderais mon frêre mais je suis certain el travaillera et el ne pourrait pas partir dans avis court. Aussi, ça me coûterait à peu près 300$ pour y conduire, et je n’ai pas le argent. Je ne sais pas quoi faire.

Je ne peux pas écrire en français.

Je suis un peu impatient ce matin. Peut-être c’est parce que Jess sera ici bientôt. Ou peut-être c’est parce que de le projet je suis faire au travail. Ou peut-être c’est de tous les deux. Sans se soucier, je suis impatient. J’essaye enlever toute la confusion et inquiétude dans ma vie. Il n’y a rien que je peux faire secourir Jess voyage à travers la frontière. Il n’y a rien que je peux faire pour faire le projet aller plus rapidement. Je ne peux pa faire plus que je peux faire. C’est la vie.

J’ai fairé tout je peux. Je dois me souvenir cela.

Traduction en anglais:

I am a little anxious this morning. Maybe it is because Jess will be here soon. Or maybe it is because of the project I am doing at work. Or maybe it’s a little bit of both. Regardless, I am anxious. I try to remove all confusion and anxiety from my life. There is nothing more I can do to help Jess across the border. There is nothing I can do to make my project at work go faster. I can’t do more than I can do. That’s life.

I have done everything I can. I must remember that.

Against my better judgement, I am using gpg to decrypt a symmectric encrypted message with the IDEA algorithm. I need gpg to be as quiet as possible, and therefore have specified the --no-verbose, the --quiet and the --no-tty options. However, gpg insists on informing me that it is “assuming IDEA encrypted data”. I attempted to issue the --cipher-algo IDEA option, hoping that telling it what to do would shut it up, however, then it tells me that my key is invalid. Just for fun I even tried the not-well-known --shut-the-fuck-up-i-know-you-are-using-idea option, but it merely complained that that option was invalid.

Does anyone know how to make gpg shut up?

Je vais écrire en Français de temps en temps pour m’aider à apprendre. Ceci prend beaucoup de temps si l’écriture sera courte. Si vous parlez Français, corrigez mes erreurs, s’il vous plait. Actuellement, J’ai un vocabulaire très simple. Je dois rechercher la plupart des mots que J’emploie. Pour m’aider à apprendre à parler meilleur, Je parle les mots me comme Je les écris, et les lis encore une fois quand Je suis fait. En plus, Je fais la traduction à l’anglais moi-même, parce que il m’aide à comprendre plus.

La traduction en anglais:

I will be writing in French from time to time to help myself learn. It takes a while, so the writing will be short. If you speak French, please correct my mistakes. Currently, I have a very simple vocabulary. I must look up most of the words I use. In order to help me learn to speak better, I speak the words to myself as I write them and read it all again when I am finished. Additionally, I do the translation to English myself, because that helps me learn even more.

The company I work for receives documents and order from other competing companies that provide the same services we do. This cooperation is mandated by our government. Currently, these documents are recieved via a buggy process involving 1200 baud modems. Yes, that’s right, 1200 baud. At any rate, I decided that it was high time that this be changed and looked for another method of delivery. E-mail seemed to be the most agreed upon choice.

After working with the other companies developers I found out that they already have a process in place to distribute these documents via email. Since we don’t want to change the way our users see the documents on our end, the receipt of this email needs to be automated.

Concerns are immediately raised by me regarding the security of the data crossing the public network. It is determined by our legal department that the data found in these orders does classify as “sensitive” and therefore needs to be encrypted. The developers of the other company state that they are also prepared to do this using the IDEA encryption scheme and PGP.

Wow. I was shocked. I was amazed. I was excited.

As I began working on the project, however, my excitement died down as I became more and more aware of the truth. Yes the documents are encrypted. Yes they are encrypted with PGP. However, a Public/Private key pair is never used. Instead, they are one-way encrypted with a passphrase. That’s a lot less secure, but still good enough, I think. Then I find out that the passphrase will never change, at it takes editing every rule for every location that we wish to receive these orders for, and that that is just too much work. That’s even more less secure, but still, it’ll pass.

I continue preparing my end and am finally ready for a test document. Of course, in order to test, I’ll need the passphrase. I call and ask them for it and almost spit out my morning coffee when I hear their response. The passphrase is simply my company’s name. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that they are using such insecure “security”, or the fact that I don’t even care enough to complain.

Our situation is looking up, slightly. My mom in New York has a friend that works Customs at the border. I spoke with him for a while regarding policies and procedures. He didn’t know everything, as he doesn’t work for INS, but he did assure me that, as long as she doesn’t have a criminal record (which she doesn’t) they won’t put her in jail, or ban her from the United States. He strongly advised us not to lie about our situation and to be very upfront with the INS officer.

I contacted the Buffalo border again and spoke with a very nice, seemingly knowledgable INS officer. He told me that there was no way that INS would put her in jail, or ban her from the US. He said that, based on the information I gave him, our case is right on the border of being belivable. This means that the actual INS agent that Jess ends up encountering could go either way and it all depends on how well she presents her case.

I think, with this information, we’re going to go ahead and try again. We still have a couple more things to plan out, and a couple more documents to obtain, but all in all, I think it’ll work out okay. I’m still going to look for a free lawyer consultation tomorrow, just for the added comfort that that might bring.

I got my passport in the mail today. That’s pretty exciting. I also got some paperwork from my Congresswoman that I need to fill out before they can take any action. I’ll probably hand deliver that on Monday.

I cleaned up the apartment quite a bit. There’s still a lot of work to do, but it is much more livable. Now I’m heading out to Fort Worth to hang out with an old friend.

On September 5th, 2002, my girlfriend (a Canadian citizen) flew to see me (a United States citizen) in Dallas, TX on a one way ticket. She was admitted without any problems as a visitor. She returned to Canada in December and I went to visit her for Christmas. On December 31st we attempted to travel back to the United States via the Toronto Pearson airport. She was denied. Their very breif reasoning was that she could not prove that she had ties to Canada or, in other words, they didn’t think she had any reason to come back. Therefore they assumed that she was attempting to immigrate and denied her.

I don’t know what to do and I don’t know where to go for help. I have a call into my Congresswoman. They are trying to get information for me. I’ve called INS, but they aren’t any help. I’ve contacted the border patrol, but they are worse than useless. The US consulate in Canada does nothing but give other numbers to call that lead nowhere.

If you have any information, have ever been in this situation, know someone who does, are friends or related to an immigration laywer, or know anyone who knows the law in this matter, I would be very grateful for anything you would be willing to do for us. Comment here, email me (jim @ revjim.net), or IM me (MSN: therev@hotmail.com) with any information you might have.

If you can’t help in this way, I would be very grateful if you would link to this page in the hopes that someone who reads your site might have the information I am looking for.

Most imporantly, I’m looking for a few answers. What are the consequences of trying to cross again? What are her chances of making it across? What kind of proof are they looking for that she will indeed return to Canada in April?

I didn’t really even think that she could be denied — we were doing everything legally and not trying to trick anyone in anyway. We should have been much more cautious. Honestly, I didn’t even consider that it might be a problem. Like they say: hindsight is always 20/20.

We approached the INS counter together. That was my first mistake. When they asked if she was my girlfriend, I said “yes”. That was my second mistake. From there on it was all downhill.

They stated that she need to prove ties to Canada in order to be allowed to enter the United States. She is enrolled in correspondence classes (classes via the Internet and via mail) in Canada and studies while visiting me in the US. However, we didn’t have any proof of that with us. We didn’t have a round trip ticket (though she intends to return at the beginning of April to take her tests). She doesn’t currently have a job in Canada (how can she hold a job if she’s going to be with me for three months), and we had no proof of her financial status (though she has enough money to support herself and is the daughter of parents with enough money to support her).

The INS officer that interviewed my girlfriend treated her very rudely. Additionally, regardless of how nice I was to the INS supervisor, he refused to listen to me, and refused to give me straight answers to any of my questions.

Since that time, my girlfriend has obtained the following.

• A notarized document from her school stating that she is enrolled in classes and that tests are in the beginning of April.
• A notarized document from her bank displaying the contents of her accounts.
• A signed document from her father stating his willingness to support her financially.
• A Canadian passport.
• A letter from an Ontario MP stating that she and her family are upstanding citizens of Canada. This document is notarized and has a photocopy of her passport on the front of it.
• A letter from her previous employer that states that, upon her return to Canada she will be offered the ability to return to work with them.
• A letter from a local retail shop stating that, upon her return to Canada she will be offered a job with them if she desires.
• A letter from an OOP cheif stating that she and her family are upstanding citizens of Canada.

We were hoping she could attempt to cross again with this newly obtained information. We had planned on having her takw a greyhound bus into Dallas sometime next week. Getting a plane ticket was just too expensive and we’d rather not go through the SAME INS office again, if we don’t have to. Unfortunately, after speaking to someone to whom this same situation occurred, I’m starting to think that maybe attempting to cross again is a bad idea.

We just want to be together. We’re open to all suggestions.

We are planning on getting married. However, we’d like to wait until this summer, if not later, do to so. Not because we don’t love eachother or aren’t ready to be married, but because we’d rather not spend 3 – 6 months apart waiting for approval to be married right now, and she’d like to finish this semester of school before being confined to the United States for up to two years after the marriage takes place.

If you can help, even with just a link to this page, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

As a constituent of the 30th Congressional District, I contacted my Congresswoman’s, Eddie Bernice Johnson, office this morning to see if they can help me in getting some ansers from INS. Her office informed me that they wiil be putting some paperwork in the mail today for me to fill out and send back. I hope this helps.

I’ve never contacted a member of Congress before. Let’s hope they are as willing to help as they are supposed to be.

Jess’ Passport is in.