Today I went to the local USCIS office to have my fingerprints taken. All in all it was a pretty smooth process. I found a parking place, one of those unattended lots where you have to pay a machine and display your ticket. Of course, it wouldn’t take my money. No new bills. I tried five ones and a dollar coin, no luck. Finally had to use a credit card.

Passed through the security checkpoint with some trouble, seems I had some metal in my jacket that I couldn’t find. Anyway, they issued me a visitor pass and I looked around for room 1.208. Of course there’s no directory anywhere so you just sort of wander around until you find the right door.

Once inside 1.208 I went to the counter and received a form to complete. Submitted the form, my appointment notice and green card. After about ten minutes they called my name and ushered me into the fingerprint area. They take a flat print of both thumbs, then all four fingers of each had together, and then a rolling print of each finger. A total of 14 fingerprints.

I was done in 25 minutes. I was impressed by the efficiency and speed of the process.

They told me that my interview would be “in a few months”…

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute–where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote–where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference–and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish–where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source–where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials–and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end–where all men and all churches are treated as equal–where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice–where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind–and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe–a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

John F. Kennedy
September 12, 1960
Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Today I received in the mail a notice to have my fingerprints taken at the USCIS office in downtown St. Louis for December 18th at 10:00 AM. T.’s assistant actually e-mailed me in the morning with this information before I got the mail. I guess they are getting copies of all the notices as well.

Added the appointment to my calendar. I will need to take the notice and my green card as identification. We’re on a roll here!