The best example of horrible bureaucracy that I've ever encountered was when I was working to secure a work visa for a future employee of US citizenship (didn't matter that her husband has Canadian citizenship or that her son is a Canadian citizen). After we were officially approved to have a permit issued for her (weeks of paperwork) I went to the government site the approval letter directed me to - it said I needed to fill out a form, to write a letter on company letterhead explaining why we were hiring someone from outside Canada, and a to provide information on how we had sought out hiring for the position and why we were unable to find a Canadian for the job, to give it to our future employee and have her drive to the border with her US birth certificate. I put all this together, but the form I needed to fill out referred to other information that was required that the site itself didn't mention, so I put this all together too, but then I also called the border office where the future employee was going, and they told me she needed totally different information and a different form, and that the future employee needed to bring several additional articles of identification not mentioned on the site or form at all. So I put all this info together, and got her to get all her ID together, but the day before I sent her on the drive to the border I called the border again and talked to another agent, who told me I needed another type of letter written, containing specific information not mentioned by anyone previous or the website, along with one or two of the other pieces of information I'd already been told about, but that my future employee only needed her birth certificate, not the other articles, when I told this person that I had been told otherwise they said that person had been wrong. I was pretty doubtful that she would be successful in actually obtaining her work permit at the border since I had not made a single contact that didn't conflict with the previous information or a single contact where I hadn't been told I needed to provide yet another never-before-heard-of piece of information. On a lark, I sent her with the original letter of approval I'd received (everyone I had asked said she wouldn't need this letter, but it said right on it that it "must be presented" when the future employee went to pick up her work visa, along with every single form and letter anyone had ever told me she would need, and I basically told her to bring every piece of ID she had, and to call at the border herself before she went down to make sure she didn't need anything else. She called them right away and then called me laughing to tell me that they told her she needed yet another sort of letter from our company detailing different information none of the other contacts or the site had mentioned, plus personal ID info of her own no one ever mentioned to me. She called them one more time and they told her she needed different stuff, all of which was already included in the massive (but carefully filed and labelled) pile of papers one agent or another told us she needed - she got this agents name and their assurance that they would be working the next day when she would drive to the border to get this done. The next day she drove to the border, she brought every scrap of paper, and they did indeed need the original copy of the approval letter that everyone told me wasn't necessary, plus some of the paperwork I'd put together and some info of hers no one had told her or I she needed (her marriage license), but thankfully after the whole experience I had warned her to bring every piece of ID with her.
We were all sort of holding our breath for the next little while that it would be okay because the initial work visa is a temporary one, but and thankfully she got the full work visa and has since begun the process of gaining citizenship.
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Topic: Today I'm gonna... (Read 1348159 times)