I thought I was used to getting strange letters from Centrelink, but occasionally they still surprise me. It seems there's no end to their bafflement. These two though really take the cake. They're only form letters so I don't see anything wrong with posting the text of them.
When the pension card arrived, two other Centrelink letters came as well on the same day. I knew the card one as I could feel it inside so opened that first, "very good it's here, bla...." The next one I opened was this:
WTF? I didn't have a clue what they were on about. My wife was an Australian, born and breed, and had never left the country, hardly left NSW even. I meet her here in eastern Sydney. We lived in Eastern Sydney for the 17 years we were together. She was never able to work here because of illness, let alone work in America. If anyone should know this it should be Centrelink, as she spent many years of her life on the Disability Support Pension (a part payment in accordance with how much I earned). Yes, they knew she'd died, but how the fuck did they get the wacko notion that she was an American who'd actually worked over there?
The only thing I could think was that they'd taken the small bit of info I put on the disability application form, and made no effort at all to check into it further. But even then I never said we'd been in America together or anything like that. These assumptions have all come from Centrelink. Quite apart from the fact that they're way out on left field with this, it's pretty bad getting mail (for no reason) about your partner who's passed away. I wonder if that helped to trigger my being upset that night about her after I signed the back of my pension card?
So, before I rang them at the number on the bottom, I opened the other letter:
Fuck! They were talking about many years ago ('80-'83) when I was a student over there. Long story, I was brainwashed by the Pentecostals when I was young and stupid (I was ripe for the picking as I'd already tried suicide once by the time I was 18) and had gone to their college in St Paul, MN for 3 years to get even more brainwashed. I was there on a student visa and was able to work part time on campus to get by; um, slave labour in their kitchen to be precise. After I graduated I went back to New Zealand and for a short time became a licensed minister in the United Pentecostal Church there, before finally growing up and realising I was in some sort of weirded out cult, and left. Was pretty intense, they had all the phrases and programming, that I was "backsliding" and the like. Was no support for anything like that back then.
If you're interested, the college is still there. I've heard they've had some kind of a major schism though (typical) and there's nothing like the number of students there that there used to be. Apostolic Bible Institute:
That's just a picture from the site. The men's dorms are over to the right, the women's on the left (no sex allowed!). For a while I was a cleaner there too, used to clean that great big church, all for fuck all money. Typical religion taking advantage of it's members like that. Funny looking back at that now, fuck I was naive then.
So anyway, somehow when working there on campus I ended up with a US social security card. Didn't think anything of it. Not long after getting back to New Zealand the US tax office sent me mail wanting me to do a tax return (even though I earned fuck all) and I had to fill out a form saying I was there legally as a foreign student and didn't need to do a tax return, or something like that. Never heard from them again. That was about 30 years ago FFS.
The Centrelink Disability application form had a question on it where I had to say all the countries I'd lived in since birth, and for how long. So I had to put America down for three years all that time ago. I had no idea that it would be taken up like this by Centrelink.
As noted in the second letter, I'm required by law to do this. I don't want to, it seems a complete and utter waste of time. Haven't been over there since I left the college. Was only there as a student. I wouldn't want any American social security money anyway, wouldn't feel right. There's a lot more people over there a lot worse off than me who need that money much more. But anyway I've filled out the Centrelink form attached to the letter, as required by them, and will send it off too shut them up. Can't imagine anything at all coming from it.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment