The friendly alien

I am an alien. Officially. According to the Department of State, United States of America. It doesn't matter if I'm a non-resident alien or a resident alien. Alien is alien. It has that negative connotation that says, at the very least, that I'm different. In my mind, even foreigner has a friendly tone to it. But alien, it takes xenophobia to a whole different level. Hollywood thinks aliens look ghoulish, have extraordinary powers, have devices that display James-Bond-like properties, fly around, kill. Well, look at me. A poor, helpless, powerless organism. Nonetheless, alien I am.

To add insult to injury, I'm a non-resident alien, on a visa with intent to immigrate to the US. Not as serious as intent to commit a crime, but pretty close. No small matter that I've been living in the United States, legally, paying taxes, abiding by the law, making a living, you know, making my .0002c contribution to the economy. As a consequence of being alien, I'm one of those unfortunate beings that got caught in the 2000-2005 backlog of immigrant visa petitions.

For no apparent fault of mine. It just turned out that Uncle Sam was super busy with something else (handling kindred beings from south of the border) and decided to put my trans-species-migration application in the cupboard, where it remained till the DoS took notice in March 2005. And what did they do? They sent it to a Backlog Elimination Center, which seems to be on the way to elimination itself without eliminating any of the backlog.

And so the alien invasion continues. Me. Myself. Alien.