As you may have spotted, I’m college-educated, and English-speaking. I’m also currently in the midst of converting my position here in the US to the status of permanent resident. There’s no real hurry – I’m on a journalist visa at the moment which is valid for five years and is renewable; it’s just that now I’m having my child in this country, I’d like to make my stay here as secure as possible.
When I say, “in the midst of”, let me tell you what that involves. I’m on my third attempt to have the documentation even processed. Twice it’s been sent back because of a filing error on my part. This is not surprising: the documentation needed to even apply for permanent residency is so vast, and so often changed, that even with the best explanations in the world, there are dozens of ambiguities. And the explanations are not the best in the world. INS requirements differ from office to office: official Website explanations contradict one another. This is hard. Here’s the first step in my application process:
Included in that wodge are a couple of detailed notarised documents from friends, tax returns, about eight photographs (in several differing but precise sizes, not shown), and a partridge in a pear tree. And remember, there are interviews and cross-checks with the CIA, FBI and the American consulate before this finally gets through to the point where I can have an interview. And after the interview, I will have to notify the government every time I move house – or any time my friends move house, or I’m in violation.
I can honestly say it’s been the most inpenetrably complex bureacratic procedure I have been involved with in my life. If my livelihood and my residency in this country depended on it, I’d be terrified.
As I say, I’m lucky. For me, it’s just a way of securing my status. My immigration attorney says my case is “relatively straightforward”. I’m on a long-term visa here already. I can speak English. They’ve recently changed the rules in San Jose to allow me to file by post, so I no longer have to pitch a tent outside the INS offices here and wait in a queue from 1 in the morning until they open at 8.00 (think I’m joking? Go check the temporary encampment that emerges every night. There’s a video clip of it here.
But most of all, right now, I’m lucky because I’m not from an Arab country. Because the simple form-filling errors that I’ve made in the past – me, English-speaking, college-educated, was-studying-to-be-a-lawyer-at-school – would have got me handcuffed, arrested and thrown in jail this week.
Estimates by immigration lawyers suggest that a quarter of the people in LA who traipsed off to the INS to take part in yet another bureacratic hoop-jump were taken away to prison Tuesday. I wonder what the other three-quarters think? If you come from Iran, or you come from Syria, Iraq or the Sudan you know what to do in this situation. Don’t ever come forward when the government calls your name again. Hide. Because in those countries, such sudden, unexpected, disproportionate and ethnic-group specific roundups (of just the men, by the way, not the women) by government are usually a prelude to something very nasty. Of course, as they say, that couldn’t possibly happen here. But they don’t know that, do they? They’re not English-speaking, college-educated, white, and safe in their homes like me, are they?
Anyway, I’m buying myself a Christmas present. I’m joining the ACLU. It only costs $20, which is certainly less than the $600 or so my immigration application costs. There’s only one form to fill in – and I can do it online. And nobody is going to round me up and throw me in jail because I decided to come forward and hand in this paperwork. Or at least, that’s the general idea.