Randy and I went to the Jacksonville, FL Dept. of Homeland Security office today to be fingerprinted. This is our last “to do” before receiving the coveted I-171H form that gives us permission from our government to bring a foreign child into the US.
I assumed we’d be going into a regular office, have some nice lady fingerprint us, and then we’d be on our way. I assumed wrong. We arrive and there are armed security officers at the door. They tell us we must take all cell phones, electronic devices, drinks, food, sharp objects, etc. etc. back to our cars. If we forget to remove something from our “person”, they will confiscate and we will NOT get it back. So, Randy takes our dangerous items back to the car. We get back in line and go through airport-level security. After my purse goes through the conveyor and is x-rayed, the official begins to rummage through my purse. I mean, she’s checking every pocket, taking out suspicious looking items (I had a carpenter’s pencil in there that a Home Depot employee gave my son…I figured we would be arrested on the spot). She takes out a 1/2 pack of gum and lays it on the conveyor belt and tells me we’ll have to take the gum back to the car. Gum? Not GUN (that, I would understand), but GUM? We ask if we can just throw it away and she says yes.
After thinking this through, I decide they must view gum as food (and food is NOT allowed). I guess they couldn’t trust me not to chew it on the premises.
So, after joking about our lethal gum while waiting for our turn, we were successfully fingerprinted and (hopefully!) done with the USCIS dept. for good. I’ll be watching the mail for that form in the next week! In case anyone is keeping score from my previous post, I’m ahead of my timeline guess by 3 days!
