We have a new United States citizen. This guy did it right despite some government stupidity:<\/p>\n
When I met Miss D. in 2009, she encouraged me to pursue the matter, and after we married, I did so – only to run into a bureaucratic roadblock.\u00a0 You see, the USCIS<\/a>\u00a0(which handles citizenship applications) wanted five years worth of tax returns, to prove I was paying my fair share towards our nation.\u00a0 However, because my income had been workers-compensation-related for several years (and thus not taxable), I hadn’t met the minimum taxable income threshold that requires one to submit a tax return.\u00a0 This did not satisfy USCIS, unfortunately – no tax returns, no citizenship!<\/p>\n
I therefore approached the IRS and asked to file amended tax returns for the appropriate period, only to be told that this would be a waste of that agency’s time and resources (because I still wouldn’t owe any tax, after all), and therefore I should not do so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See? Government idiocy. He waited five more years, filing the appropriate tax returns.<\/p>\n
Becoming a US citizen will be a very solemn, moving moment for me.\u00a0 I take the oath of allegiance very seriously.\u00a0 I’ve already sworn part of it when taking the oath of federal law enforcement office<\/a> as a prison chaplain, well over a decade ago.\u00a0 The citizenship ceremony will add to that an abjuration of any and all previous loyalties.\u00a0 In that sense, it’ll be a final, formal, legal and official severing of my ties to South Africa, where I’d spent almost two-thirds of my life so far.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
An immigrant who did it right. A successful author whose books look interesting and are now on my ‘to buy and read’ list. Welcome, Peter Grant!<\/p>\n
Source: A new and deeply meaningful rite of passage<\/a><\/p>\n
<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have a new United States citizen. This guy did it right despite some government stupidity: When I met Miss D. in 2009, she encouraged me to pursue the matter, and after we married, I did so – only to run into a bureaucratic roadblock.\u00a0 You see, the USCIS\u00a0(which handles citizenship applications) wanted five years … Continue reading A new and deeply meaningful rite of passage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-citizens","category-normal-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darknessovertheland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}