Inky Fingers

We have had yet another issue crop up that has impeded our ability to get our work visas. Getting our work visas has been quite a stressful process because there always seems to be something preventing the paperwork from continuing its course. After having been here for 6 weeks all of the required documentation for all 4 of us was finally gathered together and sent off to the government, or so we thought. It turns out that as of July 2017, so last month, Taiwan put into place a new regulation that requires all incoming foreign teachers to have a full F.B.I. background check. This process takes weeks to go through. Normally we would've taken care of this before we ever left the States, but we weren't aware of this prior to our departure and neither was out employer.

This F.B.I background check is a required document and without it they won't continue processing our paperwork for our work visas. The big problem with this is that we can only be in the country of Taiwan for 90 days with our visiting visa before we are technically "deported". (Were we deported we would have to go to Hong Kong or another neighboring country and get yet another visiting visa which would be very costly and take a lot of time.) So to avoid deportation we need our work visas which means we need this F.B.I background check....like now.

We found about all of this during out Tuesday evening classes at about 5:30 p.m., so way too late to do anything about it that day. We spent that night after class doing research on what we could do and how we could expedite the process. We figured out a game plan and put it into place the next day.

Yesterday, Wednesday, was absolutely insane. Part of the required paperwork for this background check is getting fingerprinted. Now getting your fingerprints done in the U.S. is usually done electronically so if there are imperfections in the prints a computer can fix it up and "fill in the gaps" so to speak. Here it is all old fashioned, but i'll get to that in a minute.

Our afternoon prison

The building we had to go to was the National Immigration Agency, which was actually conveniently located between our home and the school so it wasn't difficult to get to at all. We pass it on our daily commute each day.

We weren't sure how long the process of fingerprinting would take and if there would be a wait. Our friends April and Karen offered to call the building and find out for us (they're the best). They said the wait would only be 10-15 minutes and that the fingerprinting shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes, according to the technician on the phone. (Spoiler alert: it did NOT only take 20 minutes) So we thought, "Perfect! We can all just stagger our timing and do it during our lunch break."

Megan got there first, and I must say that she got the sweet end of the deal. She arrived before the rest of us and because they thought she was the only American, she received individualized attention. This resulted in her being led to a back room where a woman took care of her and assisted her through the whole process. I mean it still took some time but she was in and out of there within a reasonable amount of time.

I showed up while Megan was being assisted. The back room door was left open so I could lean in my chair and see Megan back there being helped. They would only do one person at a time so once Megan was finished it would be my turn. Fair enough. I was sitting there waiting for a while since I got there only a little bit after Megan finally started the fingerprinting process.

You can see Megan hunched over in the back of the picture through the open room. That's her private room she got.

So they finish up Megan's fingerprinting and she goes to wash her hands of the ink in the restroom and they begin prepping it all so that I can be next and that's when Josh and Kim show up. As soon as Kim and Josh walk in the door I swear everyone in the office stops what they're doing for a moment and just stare at the newcomers. I guess helping two Americans separately was a lot for them to handle but it was still manageable, but having three to take care of now (since Megan was finished she didn't count anymore) that was just overwhelming. Three was the tipping point because what I suspect to be one of the managers did an exasperated huff, quickly walked over to a few people behind the counter, spoke quickly in Chinese, and then ran off somewhere in the back to go get someone else. Kim and Josh didn't have to play musical chairs like I did in the waiting room. Since it was clear that they were with me they got to sit in the area that I was already in which was the area that people go to when they're the next up to get helped.

Instead of taking us back individually, like they should have, they decided to do the most inefficient and humiliating thing possible. They set up a table in the middle of the waiting area for the three of us to fingerprint ourselves. Granted we had a really nice young man who spoke excellent English come over and explain it all to us. We found out later that his name was Jonathan. Jonathan gives us the ink pad, a bunch of spare sheets of paper, and many extra copies of our forms for us to use. He helps show us how to roll our fingers on the paper and then leaves us to it.

Of course we do it all completely wrong because we don't know what we're doing. We think they look right, but they're not. So a bit later the manager guy (no English) walks buy, takes a look at our progress, shakes his head while mumbling Chinese a whole lot, and then throws all of our forms in the trash. Translation: you're doing it wrong.

The manager guy stuck around to try and help us with out fingerprints from that point forward. By "help" I mean shake his head every time we messed up and throw our forms away for us. He latched onto me especially though. I don't know if it's because I was especially verbally expressive whenever I messed up but he came over and grabbed my fingers and started trying to guide my fingers across the page for me. The best part is that even with him guiding my fingers they still were getting messed up. He was completely behind the wheel at this point but then each time they came out wrong he would look at me like I was the one who messed it up and I would look at him like, "what do you want from me, man? You're the one doing it, not me."

Now, I don't know what I did to garner the attention of everyone in the office but I got it. At one point I had 3 people "helping" me. I had the manager guy guiding my fingers across the page, I had Jonathan holding the page still on the table, and I had another worker holding my shoulder so the rest of my body didn't move. At that point I was puzzling over if I could breathe or not. I had to wonder if I was getting fingerprinted or fitted for some exotic dress with how many people were around me and telling me not to move. While Josh and Kim on the other hand were at the same table but were left to their own devices. I would've much rather been left alone like they were. Having so many people around me telling me what to do and not do and then have it all come out wrong anyway was incredibly anxiety inducing. That whole dance went on for way too long and eventually they got tired of it all getting messed up too because one by one they all left to go do their own jobs, thank goodness, and I was finally left alone once again.

I feel the need to explain why this process was so difficult. You needed to print each of your ten fingers once in succession, then at the bottom of the form you had to do your 4 connected fingers all together and your thumbs separate again for each hand. That description didn't make much sense so I will include a picture of one of my completed forms as a visual reference.

I stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back

The catch? If you mess up a single print on this page the entire form is null and they throw it in the trash and you must begin again. So you could have nine perfect fingers at the top and mess up your last pinky finger and have to start all over and let me tell you: it is incredibly easy to ruin a print. If you roll your finger too slowly you leave behind too much ink and it runs together. If you roll too quickly not enough is left behind. If you press too hard as you roll the ink bleeds together and you can't distinguish the lines of the print. If you don't get enough surface area of your fingerprint on the page it's not a "full" print.....you get the idea. After my 11th ruined form was thrown in the trash I stopped keeping count of how many I messed up. It was too discouraging.

Our "workstation" literally next to the front door. We were the laughing stock of the whole building.

Josh was the first of us three to finish and he went on his way. He was able to make "perfect fingerprints" (Jonathan's word, not ours) with greater success than Kim and myself. Kim and I finished roughly at the same time though it was after Josh was already gone.

We're free! Oh gosh, we're free!

Remember way back at the beginning of this gratuitously long blog post when I said that they told us that it wouldn't take more than 20 minutes? Well, it didn't take 20 minutes. From the time I arrived until the time Kim and I were unlocking our bikes to leave it took 2 and and a half HOURS. That's 2.5 hours people. Not only did it use up all of our lunch break but it also cut into our teaching times. Thankfully both Megan and Josh were at the school to hold the fort together. They were able to throw Kim's Basic Reading class in with the SPE rotation for a while and they improvised great until we were able to make it back.

Needless to say yesterday was far more stressful than any of us anticipated but we took care of a very necessary chore as soon as we possibly could have and because we did, our paperwork is all off on its way today to the F.B.I.

All I know is that if I ever have to be fingerprinted again in the future for any reason I am going to have a pretty good idea of how to do it. I'm at least a level 3 in fingerprinting now. At least.