The interview: part two

[This is part two of a (likely) three-part series. Part one is here.]

“Hello, I’m Officer G____.” And into the hallways we go, into what should have felt epic and labyrinthine but which was instead sorta…sterile and office-y.

I take an instant liking to him, but don’t really know how to make small talk. Are we together in this? Do I assume he’s having a bad day because they’re obviously running behind? Or is running late par for the course, and would any suggestion that he must be having a bad day sound like I’m making a passive-aggressive comment about how much I think my time is worth?

We go into his office, and sit down across a desk from him. He plops our file in front of him, and this is the first time we’ve gotten a clear look at just how bad the pile looks.

“I know it looks like these have been sitting out in the rain for the past few weeks,” he offers by way of an apology. Actually, it looks like it was rained on and then dragged through the mud. It looks like the file was stepped on repeatedly before being buried in a mausoleum with a deceased emperor a few thousand years ago, and like it was only recently recovered by a team of intrepid National Geographic explorers. The yellowed corners are peeling upward, and we’re both a little disappointed that something we put so much into – making it look crisp and approval-worthy – has been negated by administrative indifference.

“No problem at all,” we reassure him, almost simultaneously. “No worries whatsoever,” I add, and I realize that our cadence – the fact that both Ms. AC and I say almost the same thing, with almost the same beat, should already be a dead giveaway that we have been together for a long time.

“First things first, then. Can you tell me her name and place of birth?”
“Ms. Abstract Citizen, born in Randomtown, New York, on xx/xx/xx.”
“Great. And his?”
“Mr. Abstract Citizen, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on xx/xx/xx.”
Except that her xx/xx is off by a day. I want to lead her, but I’m afraid of looking like I’m coaching her. He raises an eyebrow. We sit in silence for a second.
“XX/XX! I mean XX/XX! I always get it wrong.”
Whew. No harm, no, foul.

Turning to me, he says, “Ok, let’s start with your arrival. When did you arrive here?”

I purse my lips at an angle. “Which, um, time? On which visa?”
He turns back to my thick stack of correspondence from USCIS. I’ve arranged it chronologically, starting with H1B visa in February 2000. I’m sure most of the cases he sees are much simpler than mine, but I’m used to that feeling by now. “On the J-2. When did you arrive on a J-2?”

I dig around for my old passport, the one with a picture of a 12-year old me, back when I was a little brown boy wearing a shirt commemorating the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “Early 1990s. 1992, I want to say. But note that I have a waiver on the two-year home residency requirement for J visas – a copy of the letter is in the correspondence in that pile.”

Relieved, he looks through his stack and finds the letter letting my mom off the hook for her two-year residency in Brazil following the Fulbright.
“I see that – she got a waiver. But did you get one?” he asks, somewhat nervously. He’s not good at being bad cop.

“Well, I was her dependent when I came in, right? So the waiver should apply to me as well?”

We go back and forth, and he ultimately determines that this is not a big deal. That being disposed of, I’m sure we’re about to move to, you know, this decade, when he says, instead, “Ok, then, let’s jump to 1996. You became an F? Did you bring your college diploma, by any chance?”

Sigh. This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of. I want to say, “No, goddamnit, I don’t have my college diploma. Why is that relevant to the fact that I’m married to a U.S. citizen? I would think my international certificate of vaccination – necessary to re-enter the U.S. after travel to certain African countries – would be more germane to the question of whether I ought to remain here than my major in college.” But I just shake my head. I tell him I saw it just that morning – which is true – but didn’t think to grab it.

He doesn’t push it, and so we move on. I’m relieved until I realize that he’s moving on to…something else for which I have no documentation. As he begins to ask me about my first year after college – the crucial transition from F to H visa status – I get that familiar awful feeling, the kind you have in those dreams where you show up for class only to find it’s exam day. (Amusingly, my version of that dream – about not being prepared for something – always takes place at an airport. I am showing up for a flight with no ticket, passport, luggage, and no idea of my destination.)

He is asking me about 1999, the year when I had an optional practical training (OPT) visa that you apply for to work in the field you’ve studied. In my case, part of the reason I applied for my job was because it was the only one in the mega-employment issue of the Washington Post in January of 1999 that said “English or journalism major preferred.” The thinking is that you will work in your field of study, and if your employer likes you enough, they will sponsor you for a work visa – the H1 visa – which you can have for up to 7 years. The move to the H was not simple for me, partly due to the aforementioned Fulbright/2-year-residency rule. You also have to demonstrate that you have unique expertise (like, you wouldn’t be a pure administrative assistant and be able to get an H1 visa), and to go from there to an employer-sponsored permanent resident status can include the requirement that your job be advertised in newspapers and in your workplace.

I can tell you from experience that having your salary posted in the kitchen at work to demonstrate a “recruitment effort” is terrifying and oddly liberating. In any case, that first year – the transition from OPT to the H1 visa - was a pretty traumatic year, now that I think about it. And to think that I cannot remember getting any documentation from USCIS, nor did I have any in the correspondence I’d been saving for years. Ai ai ai.

As a quick sidenote, just imagine how daunting the steps outlined above are for a foreign national graduating from a US college today – into an economy with close to double-digit unemployment, where employers are feeling very pinched. Does anyone think a 21-year old stands a chance of convincing an employer in one year that they are worth an investment of time and money (slightly over $1000 before attorney’s fees) and getting on a track toward a work visa and, possibly, toward citizenship? It seems improbable, doesn’t it, especially as the number of unemployed Americans grows? I wonder whether this will have any measurable effect on the number of people who cobble a life together out of many different visa status classifications the way I did.

But still, I am eager to move on. Except that we don’t. “Well, I’m not seeing how you go from being an F to an H. We really need some of that OPT paperwork. I think,” he says. We are silent. “Maybe,” he goes on, “I should talk to someone. To figure out whether we need to go down this path or not. Because if we do, things will get a little complicated. So, tell you what. I’ll be right back, ok? Would you guys mind waiting for me here?”

He leaves, and I nervously tap the arm of my chair. I look over at Ms. AC. Eyebrows raised. I want to ask if I should freak out, or if she is, or if I’m the only one who thought the guy’s statement was incredibly ominous. But we say nothing, choosing instead to sit nervously for what must have been the most interminable five minutes of my life, and maybe of hers too.