This post has been a decade in the making. It was ten years ago this past February that I flew in to JFK for what was intended to be a three month American adventure, traveling across the US by plane, train and automobile and trying to blag my way into luxury hotels. If you’ve read The Upgrade, you’ll know what happened next: I fell in love with the country and decided to make it my home.
Ten years ago.
Earlier this afternoon, in the San Francisco mailbox I share with my girlfriend, her two children and our three cats, I found an envelope from the United States Customs and Immigration Service. Inside that envelope was this…
…my green card!
“Welcome to United States”: With those four words it’s official, I am now a lawful permanent resident. I can live where I like, work where I like, travel away and back as I like, and enjoy almost all the same rights and privileges enjoyed by my friends who were lucky enough to be born here. (Almost: Voting is still off the table unless and until I become a naturalized citizen.)
It’s an interesting time to become a permanent resident. My friends certainly seem to think so. Over the past few months, as my final green card interview date neared, an alarming number of them on both sides of the Atlantic asked me the same question: Are you sure you still want to live in America?
I hardly need to spell out the subtext: Am I sure I want to live in a country in which the President routinely compares immigrants (at least those who don’t look and sound like me) to vermin? A country whose leader acts an awful lot like an FSB asset, determined to isolate it from allies and cozy up with dictators? A country which every day seems to creeps closer to a version of Margaret Atwood’s Gilead?
At a time when every liberal and their dog is threatening to move to Canada, can I possibly be as in love with America as I was ten years ago?
The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. This is absolutely still the same America I fell in love with a decade ago. The people are still the same people, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats mostly the same. What’s changed is the balance of power. (...)
None of which is the point of this post.
The point of this post is to share a little about my green card experience, and vent about something that has driven me mad for almost a decade: The absolute idiocy of the immigration “debate” in America.
In particular, I want to talk about “the line.”
You’ve heard about “the line”. You’ve heard about it every time Republicans, and a surprising number of Democrats, blithely insist that DACA recipients and those fleeing persecution in their home countries should get to the back of it. This line, so the rhetoric goes, is the only proper and orderly way for non-Americans to gain lawful residence. They should go to the American embassy in their home country, fill out a form and “join the back of the line.”
Simple.
Except for one problem: The line doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. A trick.
For most would-be immigrants who want to live and work in America – including countless thousands of young people who have spent their entire lives living here without documentation – there is virtually no way to lawfully gain a green card. For anyone without money and connections, especially non- native English speakers, the process is so unbelievably complex, so constantly in flux, that they might just as easily “join the line” to live on Mars.
I have started multiple companies, raised millions of dollars in venture capital, written more than a dozen published books and countless thousand newspaper and magazine articles. I’m fortunate enough to have access to expensive lawyers, and was able to get letters of recommendation from some of the powerful people on the planet: The kind of rich white men who feature on Fortune billionaire lists and in Time ‘most influential’ issues. And yet, despite all these insane advantages, it still took a decade to get my green card.
The idea that someone who was brought to America as a baby, without documentation, could somehow leave the country and join some imaginary line for permission to remain is so far beyond offensive it’s barely visible with the naked eye.
On undocumented childhood arrivals, American immigration law is clear: If you’re in the United States without legal status for half a year or more (if, say, your parents brought you here as a baby without a visa) and you try to leave to join ‘the line’, you will be automatically barred from re-entering the USA for anywhere between three and ten years. Automatically. This isn’t a Trump policy: The bars were created under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. So blame Bill Clinton for that one.
And even after that bar expires – after 3-10 years away from family and friends and in many cases children – there’s still no line to join.
(A quick note on the perennial ‘can’t you just find an American to marry you for a green card?’ question: True, it is marginally easier for someone legitimately married to an American to get approved to apply for a conditional green card, provided their spouse agrees to financially support them and they don’t get divorced. But even if approved, they still have to go through the entire painful process I describe below, with the addition of a so-called Stokes interview — a fun game show where the possible prizes includes jail and deportation.
Even for people like me who have always played by American immigration rules, the path to permanent residency is more like a mine field. According to a 2013 study by the Migration Policy Institute, the backlog to process the applications of those who have already been found eligible for a US visa is 19 years.
Reader, I beat the odds! Early last year, after eight years navigating various visas (including several so-called ‘extraordinary ability’ visas), I was finally deemed eligible – by dint of a decade of professional achievements – to apply for my green card. My approval notice for that first stage arrived when Sarah and I were on a plane back from New York. “Welcome home!” wrote my lawyer.
The feeling of joy and relief was incredible, and lasted for perhaps ten minutes before it sunk in what came next.
by Paul Bradley Carr | Read more:
Image: Paul Bradley Carr
[ed. On the subject of 'Bureaucracy', see also: My Mother and Her Scammer]
Ten years ago.
Earlier this afternoon, in the San Francisco mailbox I share with my girlfriend, her two children and our three cats, I found an envelope from the United States Customs and Immigration Service. Inside that envelope was this…
…my green card!
“Welcome to United States”: With those four words it’s official, I am now a lawful permanent resident. I can live where I like, work where I like, travel away and back as I like, and enjoy almost all the same rights and privileges enjoyed by my friends who were lucky enough to be born here. (Almost: Voting is still off the table unless and until I become a naturalized citizen.)It’s an interesting time to become a permanent resident. My friends certainly seem to think so. Over the past few months, as my final green card interview date neared, an alarming number of them on both sides of the Atlantic asked me the same question: Are you sure you still want to live in America?
I hardly need to spell out the subtext: Am I sure I want to live in a country in which the President routinely compares immigrants (at least those who don’t look and sound like me) to vermin? A country whose leader acts an awful lot like an FSB asset, determined to isolate it from allies and cozy up with dictators? A country which every day seems to creeps closer to a version of Margaret Atwood’s Gilead?
At a time when every liberal and their dog is threatening to move to Canada, can I possibly be as in love with America as I was ten years ago?
The answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. This is absolutely still the same America I fell in love with a decade ago. The people are still the same people, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats mostly the same. What’s changed is the balance of power. (...)
None of which is the point of this post.
The point of this post is to share a little about my green card experience, and vent about something that has driven me mad for almost a decade: The absolute idiocy of the immigration “debate” in America.
In particular, I want to talk about “the line.”
You’ve heard about “the line”. You’ve heard about it every time Republicans, and a surprising number of Democrats, blithely insist that DACA recipients and those fleeing persecution in their home countries should get to the back of it. This line, so the rhetoric goes, is the only proper and orderly way for non-Americans to gain lawful residence. They should go to the American embassy in their home country, fill out a form and “join the back of the line.”
Simple.
Except for one problem: The line doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. A trick.
For most would-be immigrants who want to live and work in America – including countless thousands of young people who have spent their entire lives living here without documentation – there is virtually no way to lawfully gain a green card. For anyone without money and connections, especially non- native English speakers, the process is so unbelievably complex, so constantly in flux, that they might just as easily “join the line” to live on Mars.
I have started multiple companies, raised millions of dollars in venture capital, written more than a dozen published books and countless thousand newspaper and magazine articles. I’m fortunate enough to have access to expensive lawyers, and was able to get letters of recommendation from some of the powerful people on the planet: The kind of rich white men who feature on Fortune billionaire lists and in Time ‘most influential’ issues. And yet, despite all these insane advantages, it still took a decade to get my green card.
The idea that someone who was brought to America as a baby, without documentation, could somehow leave the country and join some imaginary line for permission to remain is so far beyond offensive it’s barely visible with the naked eye.
On undocumented childhood arrivals, American immigration law is clear: If you’re in the United States without legal status for half a year or more (if, say, your parents brought you here as a baby without a visa) and you try to leave to join ‘the line’, you will be automatically barred from re-entering the USA for anywhere between three and ten years. Automatically. This isn’t a Trump policy: The bars were created under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. So blame Bill Clinton for that one.
And even after that bar expires – after 3-10 years away from family and friends and in many cases children – there’s still no line to join.
(A quick note on the perennial ‘can’t you just find an American to marry you for a green card?’ question: True, it is marginally easier for someone legitimately married to an American to get approved to apply for a conditional green card, provided their spouse agrees to financially support them and they don’t get divorced. But even if approved, they still have to go through the entire painful process I describe below, with the addition of a so-called Stokes interview — a fun game show where the possible prizes includes jail and deportation.
Even for people like me who have always played by American immigration rules, the path to permanent residency is more like a mine field. According to a 2013 study by the Migration Policy Institute, the backlog to process the applications of those who have already been found eligible for a US visa is 19 years.
Reader, I beat the odds! Early last year, after eight years navigating various visas (including several so-called ‘extraordinary ability’ visas), I was finally deemed eligible – by dint of a decade of professional achievements – to apply for my green card. My approval notice for that first stage arrived when Sarah and I were on a plane back from New York. “Welcome home!” wrote my lawyer.
The feeling of joy and relief was incredible, and lasted for perhaps ten minutes before it sunk in what came next.
by Paul Bradley Carr | Read more:
Image: Paul Bradley Carr
[ed. On the subject of 'Bureaucracy', see also: My Mother and Her Scammer]
