Big Day

[Kip]

Turns out, Dominican surge protectors don't work. We had a swift and terrible cycle of very low and very high voltage about an hour ago, followed by a surge that sent all the light bulbs into turbo mode. The place was lit up like Ft. Knox for a minute. And, no power since. The lights went dim, fans slowed to a crawl, etc. before we could run around the house unplugging everything. There was acrid electrical smoke everywhere. But, there's a very delineated line between "smoke" and "no smoke". The protectors we brought from the states seem fine. Every single Dominican protector was blown with smoking devices plugged into it before I got to them. Now, we wait til the power comes back to survey the damage.

Friggin' dirty power.

Sent from cigar country via smoke signal...

[kurtdesign1]

At least you've got your avocados.

[Kip]

At least you've got your avocados.

Yes. They're analog.


Get it? anaLOG....LOG...tree? Har dee har har har....


Good grief. I feel like you now.

[kurtdesign1]

Don't feel like me. That joke was better than one of mine.

[Kip]

As a sidenote, the power was nuts like never before. You all may not believe this, but we had compact fluorescent bulbs that were flickering light....even though their switches were OFF. I was nervous about the likelihood of fire after all the smoke started appearing, so I just killed all the circuit breakers (Which, in turn, only kills about 2/3 of our house. Long story, but we have electricity coming into the house through some unknown, hidden source that is independent of both the breaker box and meter out front. Don't ask.) I just now brought everything back on line. So far, the only thing I see is completely fried is an old, cheapie Blu-Ray player. No big deal. Quite a few other things generated a good bit of burn ozone aroma, but seem to at least be functioning.

[kurtdesign1]

As a sidenote, the power was nuts like never before. You all may not believe this, but we had compact fluorescent bulbs that were flickering light....even though their switches were OFF. I was nervous about the likelihood of fire after all the smoke started appearing, so I just killed all the circuit breakers (Which, in turn, only kills about 2/3 of our house. Long story, but we have electricity coming into the house through some unknown, hidden source that is independent of both the breaker box and meter out front. Don't ask.) I just now brought everything back on line. So far, the only thing I see is completely fried is an old, cheapie Blu-Ray player. No big deal. Quite a few other things generated a good bit of burn ozone aroma, but seem to at least be functioning.

Wow. I'd say blessings are in order. That's an amazing bit of luck.

[Kip]

Ah, yes. February....



Sent from cigar country via smoke signal...

[kurtdesign1]

The direction of South doesn't exist in February?!?

[815DC]

The direction of South doesn't exist in February?!?

nice

[Kip]

I mentioned this in the latest Smoke of the Day thread, but things have gotten...interesting...the past week. Traditionally, the official word from Immigration here was to stay as long as you like; just pay the overstay fee when you leave. This is what Migration officials told us when we were initially trying to renew our visas (after charging us the fee even though we had a visa the first year) - and what the entire country has operated under for years. In fact, the fee is specified as a "fee" and not a "fine" or "penalty" in the law. It's been this way for decades to my knowledge. This last week, however, saw sweeping raids throughout parts of the country, especially the North Coast. They've decided to enforce the limits and deport folks rather than just collect the fees and allow people to stay at their own discretion. I have no beef with enforcing the existing law (in fact, I support the notion). BUT, it was handled stupidly for many reasons. It was not well publicized beforehand (outside general "Regularization" guidelines published in 2012) - yes, there was talk, but even recently Migracion officials were telling people to just stay and pay. Also, Migracion officers are patrolling streets basically stopping anyone with white skin and demanding papers. This kind of thing has never been seen here. There have even been short-term, legal tourists hauled in and detained, having to subsequently prove they were legal afterward because they weren't carrying their passport on them when they were stopped (passports were in their hotel safe, which is generally recommended). It won't take too many cases of that to hurt tourism on the North Coast (its only real industry outside of prostitution...which indirectly relies on aforesaid tourism). Word spreads.

So, we're newly motivated to get moving on obtaining legal residency. The process and requirements are *somewhat* straightforward on this side, but begin with approval from the Dominican Consulate in your home country - which means we'll have to fly back to the states to initiate the process. No big deal, except the requirements are broken in their entirety at the stateside Consulate. They are still listed on a webpage that was wrong in 2014-15 when we initially applied .... which was the struggle we had before. No one at the Consulates have usable rules. No one knows what is truly required. Every person we talk to has a different list. Last time, we compiled 6(!) different lists and ended up going to the Consulate with everything required by all lists. So, we will again begin the process of submission until we get the right combination that someone, somewhere signs off that we've met the right list of requirements. Once we get approval from the Consulate, we come back into this country with 60 days to complete the process here.

We're going to submit our fingerprints for FBI criminal report this week (the longest variable in the equation). Once we have those, Nick and I are going to try and fly back to Florida for a week and start the process for both our families. Hopefully, we won't *all* have to go back, but depending on who's in charge that day we might.


My speculation is that there are a couple factors at play in these changes. One, there's a good bit of anger over the US's handling of immigration issues. Besides the publicized changes in the national news, a couple of Dominicans have been harassed and one deported that were probably undeserved (one guy had been legally residing in the US for 30 years, and was deported for a minor theft infraction that occurred 20 years ago). These have not gone over well with the Dominican Republic in general. Secondly, the ongoing mass influx of Haitians has a lot of folks in an uproar. The international community has decried the deportation of Haitians, although no other countries are lining up to take them in. Now, Venezuelans are coming in by the thousands, fleeing their own country's collapsing economy. This has redoubled the ire toward them both. Because of the flak taken over the previous Haitian roundups, I imagine a statement is being made that "see...we do it to gringos also." We'll see what happens next. New policies rarely last beyond a week or two here, but either way we're getting this residency lined up ASAP, assuming anything at all goes as planned...