Today we have reached a milestone in our aliyah planning – the file for ds17 with the Jewish Agency has offically been recognized as complete! I was informed that they will now send the file to Israel to the Ministry of Absorption for him to be recognized as a returning minor.
It’s amazing to me how long this has taken – well, beauracracy is what it is wherever you go, so I’m not shocked. Just bemused. I’m not a person who waits until the last minute to get things done, and I got started on this months ago, thinking to get it out of the way early. In spite of giving in every piece of required documentation by mid April, I was told a month later that we still hadn’t proved parental (us) proof of living in the US from 2010 – 2011. I was surprised, since I gave her one paper in her hand for 2000 until 2009, and emailed her the form for 2010 that evening. But I sent it again.
A month later, we got another email telling us we need to send proof of parental residency in the US for 2010 – 2011. Hmm. I checked our sent email files and there were two copies of sent emails to her with the requested file attached, one from two months earlier and one from a month earlier. We sent this yet again. Do you think we received a confirmation email regarding this? 🙂 Nope.
When almost weeks after that I was told yet again that I was holding things up by not sending them the necessary information and given a fax number to send it to, I asked her to check her recent emails to see if she had the attachment sent. She didn’t bother responding. I decided to just fax the paperwork to a different office, where we confirmed receipt by a phone call to that office.
I was glad to have this finally out of the way – to me, ten weeks to get two pieces of paper officially received is way too long! But my relief was premature, because a couple of days later we were told that we never submitted any proof of living in the US for any other years. There was no reason to mention that I gave her the copy of the paperwork in person, clarified (twice) that she had it and that there the only missing piece of documentation was the one above. Sometimes Hashem makes it obvious that your help isn’t coming from the sources you expect it to come from. We sent every original document by fax to the other office, and finally today we were told the file is officially finished!
Every time I’ve asked a question regarding the status of dd16 (we’ve been trying to clarify that she can receive benefits as a returning minor while in Israel once she turns 17, since she won’t have been there longer than the allowed amount of time – logically and legally it seems she can, but I don’t like to depend on logic or legality since that doesn’t always seem to matter), I’ve been told that because our file isn’t complete, they can’t answer my questions. Now that the file was completed I was told that we have to wait until she’s 17 and file an appeals while in Israel. This was so amazingly unhelpful I can’t even say – this has been a huge issue we’ve been trying to get an answer on for four months, even before we made the decision to move.
Ah, well, I’m getting my share of reminders to let go of thinking that it’s my efforts that are making the difference and to turn it over to Hashem to take care of for me. This might be one of the best preparations we can make for living in Israel. 🙂
Avivah
