Farewell

This should be my last entry.

From the UK.


My P.O.E. is Las Vegas - Foofer is waiting...


see you on the flip side
(as the young people say)

^V^

Busy busy busy

I now have an interesting list of things to do, both before and after I travel.

I shall leave the stuff I have to do once I'm in the US to another post, now I'll deal with the journey ahead, the journey to my POE (Vegas Baby!).

• My flight is a fully flexible one that I shall move to the end of August.
• I have to sell my car.
• I have to sell my house .
  
• I have an endowment policy on the house that needs cashing in.
• I have to end all my financial affairs (close (or, at least, put in hibernation) bank account(s), kill credit cards, freeze pension).
• I have to arrange for my things to be put into storage, then shipped to the US (once I've passed though the POE) and then put into storage again.
• I have to sell, give away or dump any of my stuff that I'm not taking.
• I have to finish work.
• I'd like to find a job in the US.
• I have to get to Gatwick - I've pretty much decided on option two from this post.

This list is more for my reference than for yours but I will add to it if I suddenly remember/discover any "gotchas" so it may help you prospective/potential immigrants too.

And yes, I've taken my time with this (Both Foof and I are incredible procrastinators - it's amazing how far we've come in this time considering) - expect a mad panic shortly.

Two Pinball Machines = One Premium Economy Ticket

So today I managed to sell my two pinball tables for roughly three times what I paid for them (I'm sure they were worth lots more than that but one wasn't working properly (and they're very big and heavy) so I was glad that someone came and dismantled & collected them). I used the money to pay for a fully flexible one-way (premium economy) ticket to Las Vegas. I know I haven't even had the interview date yet but I wanted to get this detail out of the way.

I'll be flying with Virgin Atlantic, non-stop from Gatwick. As I live a couple of hundred miles away from Gatwick I'll have to work out how to get there - I have a number of options:
1. Drive there on the morning of the flight. As I have to be there for about 8.30am, diving (a hire car) that morning would mean I had to leave my (UK) home at about 3.30am.
2. Drive there (or part way) the day before. If I drive (my hire car) down the day before, I have to work out where I want to spend the night (though I'd probably be able to talk to Foofer early the following morning).

3. Take a train the day before and stop in a hotel near the airport. The bad side of this is that, especially if I take lots of luggage, I have to struggle through London's Underground system. Also, hotels near to airports are not the best/cheapest and the travelling between station/hotel/airport would be time-consuming, costly, painful or any combination of the three. Being able to chat to Foofer on the morning of the flight helps somewhat though.
4. Fly there on the morning. There's a flight that gets me into Gatwick, from Manchester, at 8.10 - just in time. The questions I have with this are "How do I get to Manchester for 5am?" and "What happens if the plane is delayed/cancelled?".
5. Fly there the evening before...well, maybe, but I'd need some convincing.

So far the first two options are my favourites as I'll probably already have a hire car once I've handed my company car back to work.

(and yes, this means that Sin City will be my POE)

Update (the times they are a changin')

Okay, here's a quick update of where we are. We're still waiting for the I-130 to be processed by the CSC. Fortunately visajourney.com has good news here, over on the right, under the line "I-130 for IR1/CR1 & K-3 visas" is the date of the I-130s that the CSC are currently processing (go see, I'll wait). This date is currently quite a way into the past (i.e. there is a backlog) but is skipping forward at an impressive rate. If you take the number of days between that date and today you have the current waiting time. Add that onto your NOA1 date and you have a pretty good idea of when your I-130 will be processed.

Or you would if the CSC weren't clearing the backlog so fast :-)

So I'm keeping myself busy, watching that figure change daily, getting closer and closer...

As for my choice of POE, as I've stated before I have two candidates: Las Vegas or Dublin.

• Las Vegas because that's where I'm heading, it's where Foofer is and it's where I'll apply to have my green card extended and, eventually, where I'll apply for citizenship. If I give them my paperwork there, not only will my paperwork already be in the right place but I can also step straight out of immigration/customs into my wife's arms and not worry about making a connecting flight.
• Dublin because the immigration part is done in Dublin (customs is still done in the US) so I can get everything sorted before the flight takes off. This makes catching a connection in Chicago or New York a lot easier too.
  

I've got plenty of time to make my decision but happily, looking at visajourney, it's not as much time as I thought I had...

The best border?

This cool picture of the US border doesn't really have anything to do with this post. I was just looking at POE reviews on visajourney, trying to decide where to enter the US on my "one-way" flight to the US (yes, yes I'm still getting ahead of myself). They don't have any reviews for Vegas so I checked out the others.

POE stands for Port of Entry and it's where you officially enter the United States. My POE will be an airport and not a dusty road in California, Arizona or Texas. It's tricky to find the best POE as the reviews are mixed, though I do like the idea of entering via Dublin and having the immigration done at Dublin (yes, US immigration happens at Dublin - isn't that excellent?)

As to when I'll be entering the US, there's good news: The CSC are processing I-130s at an incredible rate - racing through the backlog. They seem to be processing a week's worth of I-130s in three working days. This is encouraging.

Counting my Chickens

This is a disgustingly self indulgent exercise but, please, humour me.

I've been considering my "one way" flight to the US, many many months from now.

Manchester (my airport of choice) will stop doing direct flights to Las Vegas (my airport of Foof) at the end of April. BMI have decided that their flights (which rarely have an empty seat on them) are not profitable enough.

This leaves me with a slight conundrum: How do I get to Las Vegas on that fantastic final flight?

I'll be carrying my visa plus other assorted documents (I hear an A3 sized x-ray of my chest may be part of the package) to hand to the lucky people at immigration. So, as I'll have to fly via somewhere, which airport do I choose to enter "The land of the free"?

I've been warned against Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia*, so I was considering New York (as it used to be the tradition to arrive there a century ago). The only thing concerning me was the connection time. The US is notorious for immigration delays for Visa Waiver folk so what would happen to a proper immigrant? Would a three-hour stopover be enough?

So I decided that I might want to travel to a UK airport that flies directly to Las Vegas. I found that Virgin Atlantic flies from London Gatwick every day. Yay!

Knowing my interview date well in advance could work to my advantage. As I'd be travelling a week or two after my interview, booking a train ticket early enough and I could get to Gatwick for £10. A hotel would cost me £50. Depending on the time of year I could get a good deal on the actual ticket too.

Of course, this is all far far in the future, but it's nice to think about it.


*Note - These are probably very lovely POE (Ports Of Entry) but bad experiences from friends and acquaintances have given then a nightmarish quality in my imagination. Sorry guys.