AMERICAN Immigration is the Major Irritant of the Week.

On Thursday of last week we came home to Bermuda for my brother-in-law's wedding.

On Wednesday, my husband decided that maybe we needed our I20 forms signed by the international student office. The I20 allows foreign students to study in the United States.

Let me just say that outside, it was cold, pouring with rain and winds were up to 38 mph. There was no way I was going anywhere unless it was darn well necessary.

I said: "At orientation, the people at Emerson College specifically warned us not to wait until the last minute to get your I20 forms signed. They also said you don't need to get the form signed every time you leave the country."

Steven telephoned Boston University (BU). "Oh, no," the person who answered the phone said, "you must have your form signed every time you leave the country." BU would not allow him to talk to the actual international student adviser. "She's busy," they said. "You'll have to come down here and sort it out."

So I telephoned the international office at Emerson College. "You only need it signed every six months," the people at Emerson said. "The next time you'll need it signed will be January."

So naturally, an argument ensued between us about whose college was more dependable. Frantic calls went out to various offices in Bermuda, the consulate, immigration, my father-in-law. Nobody was around to answer our question.

"It's raining and miserable and there's no way we'll get it signed at this late date," I said finally. "There's no way I'm going out there." So we took a gamble. We wouldn't know who was right until we went through American Immigration in Bermuda on the way back to Boston.

But this was not the end of our Immigration woes. The next day we arrived at Logan Airport fairly early. We walked up to the counter and handed the agent all of our documents. Our I20s come with a little card with a number on it. Our cards were stapled to our passports. The ticket agent began to take the cards, laboriously picking out the staples that held them in place.

"The last time we came through Immigration, the officer said to not let the ticket agent remove that card," I said, watching her nearly rip the passport in half. She cut her eyes at me. "I'll let you do your job if you'll let me do mine," she said.

She took our cards and stapled them onto our boarding passes. What could we do? If we made a fuss they'd take us aside and accuse us of being terrorists.

AT the gate, Steven told the two agents there our story about the cards. One agent thought we were right, but the other, the one in charge, did not. We had the same response as before. Who were we to tell them how to do their job?

So we sat down to wait for our plane. Again, we asked ourselves what we could do. In this case, the customer was never right.

Eventually, the nasty ticket agent at the gate left. A few minutes later the nice one came over to us. "I'm so sorry," she gushed. "I just called Immigration. You're absolutely right. If someone is leaving the country for less than 30 days and their destination is Mexico, Canada or adjacent islands we are not supposed to take the card. Bermuda is an adjacent island."

She handed us a stapler and left us to repair the mess.

So we managed to return home to Bermuda with the special card back in our passports.

But that still left us wondering about the I20 signature issue.

We tried asking various people at home. Mostly we got answers like: "You need to have that signed. September 11 and all. They'll never let you back in."

So naturally, on the day that we had to return to Boston we were once again stressed. Did we need the form signed or not?

We made various plans in case Immigration wouldn't let us through. My father-in-law was to keep his cell phone primed. We had a couple of quarters if the cell phone plan failed.

After days of hearing conflicting bits of information we were almost shaking when we got to the American Immigration counter. I watched nervously as the immigration officer scanned the back of our form (where the signatures were supposed to be).

"Do we need to have that signed?" I asked.

She looked at me in surprise. "You only need to have it signed once a year."

"So I'll need it signed in January?" I asked, thinking of Emerson's advice. "Not January, June. Good luck with your studies."

I just wish that the various parties, ticket agents, and international student advisers and customs officers could get together and come to some kind of consensus. It would save a lot of irritation for the rest of us (and maybe a few marriages).