I talked to him briefly today as well. I'm proud of him for resisting the temptation of short term help in favor or doing things the right way and investing in the long term. Takes a lot of courage in my opinion.
I talked to him briefly today as well. I'm proud of him for resisting the temptation of short term help in favor or doing things the right way and investing in the long term. Takes a lot of courage in my opinion.
hey vince your mailbox is full...can you pm me the address plz? Thnx.
Cleaned out my inbox and PMed you.
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
Fucking shit, Killgore is cool as fuck.
Killgor/majette/dub/denial coming through as always!
Like i have told you before Adam I get the best "love for rollerblading" attitude from you dudes.
I understand he want to invest in doing the right things for the long term but wont it advance his long term perspective more if he could go out and work for these dudes for the time being?
Sean's pretty scared to make a decision about anything right now.Originally Posted by FSTF Roller
He's gotten so used to his situation, that even when he's presented with a way out, he's still hesitating pretty badly.
I've talked with him a lot about immigration law, as related to me by an immigration lawyer, and what he needs to do to re-apply for a passport. Not reporting it stolen in the first place is a really big issue. Once he gets past that, he can apply for a new passport.
He's scared that he's going to get picked up when he calls the consulate, even though I've tried very hard to assure him that the British consulate is 100% on his side.
There has been exactly $280 in donations from 6 people that all saw this thread. I don't know how many people are sending out packages. A lot of people said they would send something in this thread, but only a few have asked me for an address to send packages to.
I think that people are not willing to donate any more because after Kilgore made his offer, everyone on here thought that Sean would be set and that he should/would/could take the offer.
I told him what Kilgore had offered, said that he had enough for a Greyhound ticket and some cash leftover to eat on for a few days. I told him to call me back when he had mulled it over for a while, not to make a hasty decision. He called me two days later and said that he wanted to focus on getting his passport and not go to Philly.
But, last night, he wanted some of the donations to use for getting a motel room for the night. I had to explain that the fees and shipping/handling for his passport would be exactly $244, it takes 3-4 days to transfer from a PayPal account to a bank account, that I would then need to get the money to Robert in Ventura to give to Sean because Western Union requires ID that Sean doesn't have.
Sean asked me to cover the room and that I could take some of the donations to cover it, but I just can't be financially responsible for a motel room with 4-6 homeless people staying the night in, some 2,100 miles away.
I fear that Sean is going to lose focus on his long term needs and set his sights on his short term needs and ask for his money in one lump sum, and then blow it all on a motel room for a few nights. It's his money and if he asks for it, I won't hesitate to give it to him.
I'll find out more on Wednesday, Robert is supposed to meet up with Sean again.
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
that fucking sucks!
i skated with him when he rolled through el paso on his way to cali to start the whole skateshop deal with his dad. cool kid...hope things look up for him.
damn, i dont even know what to say to that. you are pretty much forced to live day to day on the streets which is why he keeps changing his mind. a place with 4 walls and a shower/bed is fuckin clutch, even for a night. night time on the streets are some of the most depressing times ever because youre surrounded by people who can go home when theyre done eating out or drinking whatev.
you get to a point where youre homeless for so long and its true you get used to it. youre free, walking around society and actually watching what people are doing. the pace of life and how your city works. all you see is commercially driven material capitalism where the only buildings around are places you HAVE to spend money at. there is no other point to any building around a city except to exchange money. nothing really productive anyway, people are just frantically runnin around with ultimately no direction. you just really get an idea of how pointless things are. its hard to re-integrate to a society when youve become convinced its not worth it.
i wouldnt take killgores offer either honestly. mainly because itll relocate him which sucks when youre homeless. re-learning an entire city when you dont even have a secure place to stay. especially leaving friends. thats really all that keeps you sane.
obviously gettin some kind of ID is the most important thing. its just hard to see what youll do after you can legally start work. because youre still on the fuckin streets and wouldnt get paid at whatever job for like 2 or 3 weeks. dealing with street life and still trying to be presentable and have your shit together at work is hard man.
this is gonna be a way asshole thing to do but dont give him money yet for anything but a passport. he needs to do that.
by the way, a bike with a lock would be killer. walking seriously limits your job radius. makes it almost impossible.
Plus, if he decides to just stay illegal and becomes homeless again, he won't have the mild southern California winters to look forward to, he'd have cold winters with long stretches of freezing and below and a few snow storms.
If he gets a passport, all he can legally do is get a plane ticket back to his home country. He cannot get legal employment in this country with his immigration status the way it is.
I've already given him the choice to take it all or have me hold onto it for his passport. He wanted me to hold onto it for the passport.
Last night was the first time in a week of him knowing that there was money donated, that he asked for some of it. Like I said, I'll find out more on Wednesday when Robert meets with him, he's going to really try to urge Sean to commit to a course of action and show some follow-through.
But without someone being out there with Sean, doing what his dad should be doing and motivating him, it's really tough to get him to give anything beyond a verbal acknowledgement over the phone that certain things need to be done. I've left myself available to Sean for assistance with filing out his passport paperwork, but I can only do so much from so far away.
Stefan Brandow should have sent him skates by now, they are probably in transit.
I'm sending a really durable, water resistant, 45 liter capacity hiking rucksack to replace his suitcase and shopping cart. I was going to get a bigger one, but was advised by a guy that runs an army surplus store that bigger is not always better when it comes to being homeless. Sean knows that he will have to get rid of stuff as new clothes trickle in.
Last edited by fast eddie; 12.03.2012 at 23:24.
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
oh, so basically if he ever wants an apartment/job in the US he needs to get his immigration shit worked out? which means a trip over the pond.
why couldnt he get his immigration shit worked out in this country? or just let immigration foot the bill of the plane ticket since they would kick him out?
seems like he only has onr option? get a passport and go live with his sister over the water for a bit?
When a person's visa expires and they remain in the US, they have an illegal immigration status. Illegal is illegal, can't fix that outside of your home country.
If that person exits the US before 12 months has passed since their visa expired, they can still return to the US if they come back with a valid student, fiance or work visa. It's a little tougher to get one since they had an illegal status in the US at one time, but certainly not impossible.
If they exceed the 12 month limit, then leave the US, they are barred from returning legally for 10 years.
he needs to return to the UK, chill for at least a few months, then apply for a proper visa so he can come back. If he stays past the 12 month anniversary of his visa expiring, the possibility of him getting picked up by the police and transferred to Customs and Immigration, then deported is much greater. He doesn't want a 10 year bar, he wants to come back as soon as he can manage it.
But since he has no ID and has no criminal record, cops let him go when they do question him. If he said he was an illegal, then they'd check a bit harder and I'm sure he'd get shipped back to teh UK, but I can't imagine what he'd go through in that fucked up system.
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
Hey guys,
Yeah, as was mentioned, I'm planning on meeting with Sean on Wednesday. I am going to sit him down for a significant amount of time and stress to him the importance of what's going on. I recognize that he is having a classic approach-avoidance conflict. Just like it's so hard to take the leap off of the burning building unto the firefighter's net down below, he is using "options" as a way to delay taking action. I will let him know that a lot of people are invested in him and it's time to choose a path and stick to it. I will whip out a notebook and make an informal contract/plan of action with him if that's what it takes.
I hope no one takes any of this to mean that he is ungrateful in any sense. It's quite the opposite. He is overwhelmed by the overwhelming generosity you all have shown. Don't give up faith in him, we can make this work. He's just going to take some gentle, but firm nudging and guidance.
Feel free to hit me up about anything you have concerns about or want to relay to him either in this thread or at [email protected]
-Robert
word. whens the 12 month time period end?
so than the money everyone is donating would be best used for a plane ticket (mad $$$ im assuming)?
also, theres a ton of places here that hire foreigners and post them up in employee housing and shit. id say go overseas, get a visa and then come back and work. easy enough. he just has to do it.
i dunno.
Sometime in July, whenever Sean's birthday is. His visa expired the day he turned 21.
Passport first, then ticket. Can't board an international flight with no ID, no passport.
Plane tickets are about $1,200+ from LAX to the UK. One step at a time
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
duh international flight
edit: ill pm you later lol
okay so Sean now has enough money for a new passport .?? Now all we need to do is get his plane ticket money going. Am i right? .... I will be donating as soon as i have the funds to do so. How are the minutes on his phone looking?
Yes, he has enough money for a passport. Plane ticket is going to be tough. We might have a lead on that, Shadows might be able to get a discount through a family member that could be up to 50% off the normal price. Nothing is guaranteed.
Minutes on his phone, I have no idea. A few people have emailed me said that they wanted to send him some minutes, but I don't know if anyone sent anything, I just gave out the mailing address to send stuff to. I think it's safe to assume that Sean can never have too many minutes, he's going to be using his phone a lot in the foreseeable future tracking down documents he'll need so he can file various paperwork for the British consulate/UK passport. Well, I hope that's what he'll be doing, at least.
I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and imagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.
Eddie, there are one way tickets LAX to London-Heathrow for 411 on virgin Atlantic. I think if more people donated, a ticket could be bought. Search tickets on www.kayak.com, that's were I found one.
damn really? 411 one way? thats crazy.
will see what my family/friend benefits come out to. may not have an answer till the end of this month though.
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