Memory Resident

Welcome, domiciled reader, as this week we try to answer once and for all the question of whether we're resident here in the US or not.

Residency is a complex concept, and one which is not consistently interpreted across all of one's interactions with government departments. From the perspective of the US Customs and Immigration Service, we're visitors: we're here on an L1 visa which is tied to my employment and allows us to visit the US for up to 3 years at a time. My visa expired, well, yesterday, which means it needs renewing; that can be done for a further 2 year period, then for another 2 years, at which point we definitely have to leave.

Visa renewals are taking up to 6 months at the moment. However, there's something called the 240 day rule, which means that as long as your renewal has been submitted for processing, you're allowed to stay in the US for an additional 240 days, beyond the expiry of the visa. Well, I say expiry of the visa - technically, you're allowed to stay an additional 240 days beyond the date written on your latest form I-94, which is issued to you every time you enter the US. This is not necessarily the same as your visa expiry date; whether it does or not seems to depend on the whims of the agent that admits you to the country.

For the purposes of driving, the California DMV thinks I'm resident simply because I live at an address in California. This means I need a California driving licence. Those are also typically issued for a limited period, and indeed mine expires on the 18th of this month. To renew it, I need paperwork which shows I'm allowed to stay here for at least a further 60 days, so this week I happily trundled off to my local DMV to renew my licence, with the receipt for my visa renewal in hand.

Sadly, the DMV either haven't heard of the 240 day rule, or choose not to observe it, because they wouldn't renew my licence on that basis. I guess that's because I'm not really resident. Oh, but I can't just drive here on my EU driving licence, because I'm really resident. Reader, somewhere this makes sense. The good news is: this is categorical proof that the universe isn't just some solipsistic construct of my own making, because I'd really like to think I'd design it all slightly better than this.

Just to add to the frustration, when I relayed this tale of woe to my employer's immigration lawyers, they let slip that they could expedite the application and get me an answer in 15 days. I can't tell you what I said when they told me this, but it was a variant of "why didn't you just do that in the first place?".

Obviously for the purposes of taxation I'm most definitely resident. In fact, in 2023, according to the various governments, I suspect I'm going to be resident in the US and the UK at the same time. That's something to look forward to.

For a while this week it felt like the world might just end, or at least there was some kind of fin de siecle motion ongoing. On Monday we went to a 4th of July parade in Redwood City, while on the other side of the country a tragedy was unfolding at a similar event. On the 5th of July, TV news covered the events of the 4th in Oakland, the city on the other side of the Bay: lots and lots of illegal fireworks being let off (a relatively big deal here because of the heightened fire risk), and 4 people injured by bullet fragments at the Oakland Coliseum as a result of the infamous 'celebratory gunfire'. Yes, it turns out that if you fire a bullet into the air, at some point even it has to succumb to the surly bonds of earth, aka gravity. John Lennon said that "Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself," and you have to wonder if this is roughly what the end of the Roman Empire looked like, although probably with more togas and better mozzarella.

Remind me which holiday this is again?

At the same time, the UK government was imploding around the latest set of lies from Boris. Americans, you may see this man as the British Trump, but even the spineless cretins of the UK Conservative Party managed to show a shred of integrity and get rid of the guy, which is more than I can say for the Republicans here.

Helen reminded us all this week that Boris was born in New York City, and was a US citizen until 2016, so it wouldn't be that hard for him to move Stateside and reboot his political career. In fact, here are some words to make your blood run cold: Trump-Johnson '24. For some, I'm sure it's a dream ticket, and given that the whole "no taxation without representation" thing appears to have been a fad that only applied here when it suited, there's literally nothing I can do to stop it.