Degree Debacle

About 3 years ago, when I first took my job at my current school. I had a small debacle with my degree.

Like I had before when I was working at a university I sent my degree out. This time it wasn't to the direct place of employment, but rather to some recruiter.

My degree is pretty large so I stuffed it in a large plastic folder and shipped it in a package with a small book that housed my TESOL certificates.

About a month later when I finally got all my papers back, some idiot had taken my degree out of the original large folder, folded it, and stuffed it into the small TESOL book.

I was pretty pissed to get my degree back with a giant crease down the middle and I complained about it. I got an apology, but I didn't know who did it.

Three years later, I got back to my home town for the second time. I went back to my university and ordered a new diploma. It was only about $35 or something like that.

Just yesterday the new diploma came.

Now this makes me think. Why the fudge do does Korean immigration need to see the actual diploma? They already ask for the sealed transcript, that should be proof enough. In my case my diploma was only important enough to the somebody so that that they could take a quick look and then deface the damn thing.

I wanted to get a new one because the next idiot would probably take a look at the original and think the thing fake, because it was folded. But once again though, the only thing that I did to replace the original was fill out a form and pay a fee, the University said that they don't even print the degrees, they ship them out to a third party - probably something like the Herf Jones company - and the third party prints them. So really, why is showing the diploma so important here?