Weeping And Screaming And Shaking Their Fists
"Hey, you are me, not so pretty. All the world I've seen before me passing by. Silent, my voice. I've got no choice. All the world I've seen before me passing by."
Even the longest and most dramatic of stories can end with a whimper rather than a bang. For two years, the main thread of this particular story has been a strange and romantic quest to cross the world and get the girl without being dragged away by swarthy men in uniforms.
But then, just after eleven this morning, the girl in question and I emerged blinking into the strange, bright silence of Civic Center Plaza. We'd accidentally deviated from the prescribed route, and this had somehow led us to a square of semi-developed land that was empty save for a few lost-looking strangers and a woman with a hot dog cart. We were hemmed in on all sides by faceless buildings with no identifying names or numbers. Finding the federal building looked to be a tall order.
Fortunately, we stumbled upon a helpful sign with a key that showed us where we were and which building was which. Not so fortunately, the next helpful sign we came to after five minutes of walking told us that we were in the exact same place. Clearly, this had been some fiendish sign-maker's idea of a joke.
Or maybe not. It occured to me a short while later, when the girl in question and I were sat in yet another of the clean and brightly-lit rooms full of chairs that have dogged my life for the last two years, that these waiting areas had, over that period of time, been getting smaller and smaller. As recently as last November, I'd been sat in a room at the American Embassy in London that might have better been described as a hall. As is always the case with these things, many were called but few were chosen. Since last winter, the people from the Embassy have been pared down and scattered, denied their dreams or simply sent to other cities in other states. Still others, I'm sure, have been defeated by the steep financial requirements, or become lost in the reams of complex paperwork, much of which has to be submitted three, four, even five times. The same forms, over and over.
And maybe, when all was said and done, some of the immigrants that had leapt every hurdle, hit every curve ball, and ducked every sucker punch...maybe some of those immigrants found themselves wandering around what appeared to be a half-finished industrial estate on the hottest day in the history of everything, trying to find an umarked building amongst a sea of same. And maybe one or two of those immigrants, upon realising that the sign they were reading was lying to them, well, maybe they just lost it. Maybe they are, even now, staggering around in downtown Santa Ana, weeping and screaming and shaking their fists at passers-by.
We were taken from the clean and brightly-lit room to a small office, where the USCIS woman engaged us in what appeared, on the surface, to be a pleasant conversation. But I am a veteran of their schemes now, and I understood exactly what was going on when she began asking when Jenn and I had met, what my parents names were, when and where we got married, what my date of birth was...she was checking we were telling the truth.
A year-and-a-half of these forms, remember, many of them in double triplicate. A year-and-a-half of interviews and inoculations, medicals and official documents. A year-and-a-half of the most comprehensive and infuriating background check you could possibly carry out on a person...and they needed another interview. You know, just to be sure.
Of course, everything was ship-shape and squared away and whatever other stupid fucking terms you might care to apply to paperwork we could now almost certainly organise in our sleep, and at the end of the interview I was essentially granted my Green Card. I say 'essentially' because, well...I'm being investigated by the FBI.
Sadly, that's nowhere near as cool as it sounds. It's a check they run on your name and your fingerprints, and according to the USCIS, the check on my name hasn't come back yet. Which is silly. I've seen CSI, and I know these background checks are comprised only of several seconds of speed-typing followed by some bleeps. Then again, with the USCIS involved, it'll probably be several years before we hear anything.
So that's it. I mean, I don't have the Green Card yet, but as soon as the name check comes back it'll be in the mail. I'm done. I'm a resident. It's all over bar the shouting.
But you know what? I don't believe it. Not for a second. Until I have possession of that card, until I'm actually holding the little sucker in my hand, I'm going to be sitting here waiting. You see, the way the immigration system works, and the way it's treated us these last eighteen months, I figure there's about a 50/50 chance of the other shoe dropping in the form of sixteen heavily-armed federal agents kicking down the apartment door and dragging me off to Guantanamo Bay for crimes unknown.
Even the longest and most dramatic of stories can end with a whimper rather than a bang. For two years, the main thread of this particular story has been a strange and romantic quest to cross the world and get the girl without being dragged away by swarthy men in uniforms.
But then, just after eleven this morning, the girl in question and I emerged blinking into the strange, bright silence of Civic Center Plaza. We'd accidentally deviated from the prescribed route, and this had somehow led us to a square of semi-developed land that was empty save for a few lost-looking strangers and a woman with a hot dog cart. We were hemmed in on all sides by faceless buildings with no identifying names or numbers. Finding the federal building looked to be a tall order.
Fortunately, we stumbled upon a helpful sign with a key that showed us where we were and which building was which. Not so fortunately, the next helpful sign we came to after five minutes of walking told us that we were in the exact same place. Clearly, this had been some fiendish sign-maker's idea of a joke.
Or maybe not. It occured to me a short while later, when the girl in question and I were sat in yet another of the clean and brightly-lit rooms full of chairs that have dogged my life for the last two years, that these waiting areas had, over that period of time, been getting smaller and smaller. As recently as last November, I'd been sat in a room at the American Embassy in London that might have better been described as a hall. As is always the case with these things, many were called but few were chosen. Since last winter, the people from the Embassy have been pared down and scattered, denied their dreams or simply sent to other cities in other states. Still others, I'm sure, have been defeated by the steep financial requirements, or become lost in the reams of complex paperwork, much of which has to be submitted three, four, even five times. The same forms, over and over.
And maybe, when all was said and done, some of the immigrants that had leapt every hurdle, hit every curve ball, and ducked every sucker punch...maybe some of those immigrants found themselves wandering around what appeared to be a half-finished industrial estate on the hottest day in the history of everything, trying to find an umarked building amongst a sea of same. And maybe one or two of those immigrants, upon realising that the sign they were reading was lying to them, well, maybe they just lost it. Maybe they are, even now, staggering around in downtown Santa Ana, weeping and screaming and shaking their fists at passers-by.
We were taken from the clean and brightly-lit room to a small office, where the USCIS woman engaged us in what appeared, on the surface, to be a pleasant conversation. But I am a veteran of their schemes now, and I understood exactly what was going on when she began asking when Jenn and I had met, what my parents names were, when and where we got married, what my date of birth was...she was checking we were telling the truth.
A year-and-a-half of these forms, remember, many of them in double triplicate. A year-and-a-half of interviews and inoculations, medicals and official documents. A year-and-a-half of the most comprehensive and infuriating background check you could possibly carry out on a person...and they needed another interview. You know, just to be sure.
Of course, everything was ship-shape and squared away and whatever other stupid fucking terms you might care to apply to paperwork we could now almost certainly organise in our sleep, and at the end of the interview I was essentially granted my Green Card. I say 'essentially' because, well...I'm being investigated by the FBI.
Sadly, that's nowhere near as cool as it sounds. It's a check they run on your name and your fingerprints, and according to the USCIS, the check on my name hasn't come back yet. Which is silly. I've seen CSI, and I know these background checks are comprised only of several seconds of speed-typing followed by some bleeps. Then again, with the USCIS involved, it'll probably be several years before we hear anything.
So that's it. I mean, I don't have the Green Card yet, but as soon as the name check comes back it'll be in the mail. I'm done. I'm a resident. It's all over bar the shouting.
But you know what? I don't believe it. Not for a second. Until I have possession of that card, until I'm actually holding the little sucker in my hand, I'm going to be sitting here waiting. You see, the way the immigration system works, and the way it's treated us these last eighteen months, I figure there's about a 50/50 chance of the other shoe dropping in the form of sixteen heavily-armed federal agents kicking down the apartment door and dragging me off to Guantanamo Bay for crimes unknown.
posted by Michael at 5:38 PM
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