Brad Ideas - Announcements - Comments

registering irish citizenship

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:54:02 -0800

All applications end up in the Bank of Ireland!!!! It is a Scam!!

San Francisco must have a

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:04:41 -0800

San Francisco must have a larger staff?The lady`s I spoke too in Ottawa were very nice but will not let you know one way or another when your certificate is to be issued, If at all. They have changed from 6-8 months to up to 18 months, now it has been changed to 24 months minimum waiting time!,And yes this also applies
to people that have applied 36 months ago on a up to 18 month application.Very misleading!!.I wonder if all applications end up in Dublin for approval??

When I did it

brad — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:46:33 -0800

The wait in Ottawa was supposedly shorter than the one in San Francisco, but they said you had to apply where you were currently living. SF took about 20 months as I recall, though you get no status updates, no way to query. Just one day it shows up by courier. To my annoyance, mine showed up on St. Patrick’s Day but the paperwork said it had been done in November, and I would have been able to use it on a trip and saved some bucks if it had come when it was done.

Ireland is broke, of course, so don’t expect much improvement!

irish foreign birth registry in canada

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:19:51 -0800

This is a reply concerning Irish FBR in Canada.When I applied ,I was told the application was to take up to 18 months to process!! That was 30 months ago!!
I contacted the embassy on several occasions & was told in a couple of months on 4 different occasions & was also told that my application was up to date & my certificate was to be sent to me ,It has never arrived ..I contacted the embassy one more time & was told the same winded story about the passport office having to many applications,My Grandparent was born in Ireland so if they dont want to respect the irish immigration law ,they should change it!! This is to forewarn
Irish Canadians from applying for Foreign Birth registration from the Irish Embassy in ottawa Canada!!! It seems to be a form of identity theft that you have
to pay for!!

Not too likely

brad — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:56:32 -0700

Governments are big on paper trails. And DNA ancestry is not good enough to do this yet, and indeed will never be good enough to tell if you parent or grandparent was born in a country, your DNA is decided only by your parents, not the particular location of your birth, or your grandparent’s birth.

It’s pretty much impossible to come up with a good rigid definition of DNA patterns for a country, or even an ethnic group. There’s too much interbreeding. Yes, it seems you can tell things like how Jewish you are, but never accurately enough to use it as a citizenship test.

Can I Use My Certified Paternal And maternal Irish DNA History?

George RL371 Jones — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:49:29 -0700

Can I Use My Certified Paternal And Maternal Irish DNA History to get into the Irish Birth Registry and obtain an Irish Passport / Irish Citizenship?

Irish law declares that anybody born to somebody born in Ireland is automatically Irish.

Submitting paperwork versus DNA seems so 1950ish.

Brad says:

You have to submit a lot of documents:

The grandparent’s birth certificate
The marriage certificate of your grandparents
The grandparent’s death certificate or ID — yes, even for somebody born in 1889, man or woman, though no man has ever lived that long.
Your parent’s long form birth certificate (naming the grandparents)
Your parents marriage certificate
Your parent’s death certificate or ID
Your long form birth certificate
Your ID and various other things to prove your address

Hi there! Love your

David — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:54:31 -0700

Hi there! Love your brother's comics work, which is how (via his blog about the Landau movie and so on) I wound up here. I'm a Christian myself, albeit more of the C.S. Lewis kind rather than the Billy Graham kind, much less the scary-weird-ass-museum kind (good grief!), and I wanted to add my own "we're not all like that, really we're not" comment here. (And on ceasing to consider oneself a Christian, I agree with Lewis here: "When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realises that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going--provided he does it for honesty's sake and not just to annoy his parents--the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before." Or an old man, for that matter. I've also encountered non-Christians who are vastly more Christlike than many Christians, and some Christians whose approach to their faith terrifies me. I'm sure Jesus knows who is really His in the end.)

PS: Blakely? You overdid

Baylink — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:34:43 -0700

PS: Blakely? You overdid the rhetoric: I'm another person. I'm in the world. And I'm interested in these details. So, bugger off, would you please?

how can you reject god?

1912 — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:40:23 -0700

a have just listened to the story of G-D, Abraham and Issac at the Easter Vigil Mass, live from Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. i have listened to the Pope's homily. i like the Pope. i like his homily, it is comforting. still, i cannot forget Abraham. i do not reject G-D. i just don't like him. in this story G-D is an insecure bully and a liar. his request to Abraham is lie. G-D does not want Abraham to actually abort Issac's life.
in hindsight, i can see that Abraham is a terrible father--a coward. i picture myself in Abraham's situation. i too, would have been a coward and murdered my son. this knowledge intensifies my dislike of G-D. I have never asked or ordered a parent to kill is own child; so i have a strong opinion of who is guilty of the greater sin here. after all, would you or any parent - in Abraham's situation - have the courage to direct these words of Jesus [to Saint Peter} toward G-D, "Get behind me Satin! You are a hindrance to me; For you are not on the side of God, but of men."

Too Bad

Saville — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 10:27:38 -0700

I am an African-American male living in Los Angeles, Ca. I was 30 yrs old in 1983 when I met a wonderful gorgeous Australian (White) woman at a club. We hit it off and dated for about a year. She was always around my friends, who were mostly Afr-Amer, and she loved them and they loved her.

One day she was telling me how many Aussie women would be chasing me if we were in Australia and about how few Black men were there. I said that I thought that there were plenty of Aboriginal men there, who of course are Black. She laughed hysterically, telling me that they were not Black, and that they were not even people. This woman was otherwise intelligent and rational but could not be moved on this point.

I think I could have married that girl; but the relationship was never the same after that conversation.

That is a good point

brad — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:13:22 -0700

I have talked to people who have had problems even doing what you are supposed to do with multiple passports, because of computerized checking. For example, the law says I must not use my Irish passport to enter Canada, and I presume also that I must not use my Canadian one to enter Ireland as I think this is the norm. (Also I had better use my Canadian passport when entering the US as it has my visa in it.)

I’ve heard of trouble when people fly overseas because you show a passport at the exit airport both to leave and to assure the airline you will be able to enter the destination country. But you probably want, as you say, to show the passport you used to enter the country when you leave it (in the USA the airline employee removes the I94 from it) but you may want to use the other passport to enter the destination country.

In some cases, being a tourist (ie. with a foreign passport with a recent stamp) gets you certain benefits like not paying some taxes, or in other cases the reverse. So yes, if you show a passport without the stamp they might wonder. Though I certainly hope I don’t find myself wanting to show my non-EU passport on visits to the EU.

Not all countries demand a passport for exit of course, particularly at land borders. Fortunately the Canadian passport is one of the world’s best, in that it has low visa requirements compared to many countries. On the other hand, on my recent trip to French Polynesia the EU passport would have meant no visa concern at all.

As the number of multi-passport people grows, I expect the systems to become more used to this. Not long ago many nations denied dual citizenship entirely. Today it is fairly low risk, though in a few places it can put you at risk of conscription if you visit such a nation as a citizen, and some crazy countries like the USA tax their citizens no matter where they live in the world. One other catch — if you have two passports, treaty forbids one country from giving you diplomatic aid in the other. If I go to jail in Ireland, the Canadian embassy will give me no help. I can handle that.

And this is of interest to no one..

Blakeley — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:52:44 -0700

You seem to think that there is another human being in the world who cares about these details. Tone down the narcissism, Brad.

Narcissism is probably the main reason you are taking credit for the work of others in self-driving cars (which others have told you to stop doing, btw).

Two Passports

David — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:06:26 -0700

You make it sound as if it's easy to switch between two passports. If you're abroad this can cause problems with officials who see you with a passport that doesn't show you've legally entered the country. I've had several problems with this myself and know of plenty of others from people in similar situations.
I'm not suggesting two passports isn't a good idea. Of course it is. But stick with one unless it's absolutely necessary.

Not dying

brad — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:00:00 -0800

Note that I am still going to post on robocars, but at lower volume, and avoiding areas of technology that might disclose confidential information or reflect a conflict of interest. Indeed, I cover so many topics here that you won’t be able to guess what Google is working on or not by what I do or don’t blog about.