Sara Pascoe's Blog: Just the Facts, Ma'am - Posts Tagged "travel"

We went to the American Embassy in London for my husband’s Green Card interview, the US visa for staying as long as you like. I’m American and he’s British. We’ve been living in the UK, but after Brexit, David was inspired to have more options. We’ve been married over ten years, have decent incomes and no children would follow us (we’d wear disguises). This all makes him a good candidate.

So we puzzled and sweated over the stages of the application, and the forms. No one does forms like the US government. Although come to think of it, I wonder what the Russian forms are like. Some of the ones we had to fill in had instructions twice as long than the form.

'Click here.' 'Follow this (broken) link.' 'Bring everything on this list', which is repeated on the next page, but with different items. 'Pay your money now.' Go on, try. Hah! You can’t, can you? Pay when you get there…but it’s a secret.

We spy an American flag on top of a large, now ugly-to-my-mind, 1970’s building although I have a feeling it is architecturally notable and I’m just unappreciative. It starts to drizzle, a fine consistent, cold mist that permeates all layers of clothing. There’s a marquee (tent) in front of the building on the pavement (sidewalk) with signs pointing visa applicants to it.

A young woman is perched behind a small, high desk. Her hair is dyed silver, a fashion that really cracks me up. I wish I could remember which friend used to say ‘grey is the one colour you can’t dye your hair’.

When we get to the head of the queue the unflappable young woman explains that I will need to wait outside - not allowed in. And yes, she does realise it says the sponsor (me) must attend the interview. And yes, she and her bosses of the company hired by the US embassy to do all sorts of jobs point out the myriad inconsistencies in the Embassy materials. A wave of frustration flits across her unlined face and her body language momentarily registers the cold before she recomposes herself.

A man forces himself between us and the outdoor reception desk.

‘My wife doesn’t have the money to pay, I have it and now she’s crying upstairs in your waiting room!’ He waves a mobile phone as proof of this debacle. The silver-haired worker reassures him she will untangle this problem as soon as she finishes with us. He huffs for the few seconds it takes. A beefy young security guard lets my husband into the building and I take a position under the marquee as instructed.

There are three men and a woman under there with me. The woman, nicely dressed and looking nervous is let into the building. The man with the Jamaican accent tells us he is waiting for his mother. The second man looks like a posh Brit, but has an American accent. The third man was young and simply wanted an answer to a question that he could not get otherwise. Not after nine emails. Not after letting the call stay on hold on speakerphone for three hours (that music must have got really annoying) as he beavered away at work. He’d been granted his Green Card through his job. His new position and apartment were waiting for him in California. But now his boss in the UK wanted him to finish up some work here. Was there a deadline by which he had to move to the US? That was what he needed to know, so he took a day off from work to find out. This eclipsed my frustrations with the bureaucracy.

While those of us invited under the marquee chatted or didn’t, a steady flow of applicants came up to the desk. Families, twosomes, people on their own, from far East Asia, the UK, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, the Indian sub-continent, and other places I couldn’t guess. I wondered about all the life-stories, problems, hopes and worries for a new life in a new place. I wondered how many were desperate to escape wars and economic nightmares in their home countries. It made me weary thinking of all the work ahead for so many, tens of millions if you consider the world. Most of us in the UK are at least momentarily lucky in a relatively safe country with plenty of everything if you have a bit of dosh, not traipsing around bereft of home and country trying to keep an infant warm without a blanket.

I was brought out of my world-concern reverie by the personal and trivial. I was getting cold. I'd been standing there getting mist-saturated for half an hour.

‘How long does the interview usually take?’ I asked the silver-haired young woman.

‘About five minutes.’

She continued when she saw the confusion on my face. ‘But it’s the wait. That can be up to about two hours.’

‘Two hours!’ My spoiled, western world indignation rose. At least it was warming, ‘Well, then I’ll just go have a cup of coffee!’ Hah! Take that you American Embassy, you!

Just as I was sizing up my cafe options, my husband appeared. He’d been fast-tracked through the process although he had no idea why. He was given the green light for his Green Card.

There had been 100-120 people in the waiting room, he told me. But embassy staff had rushed up to him and guided him to the front of all the queues.

‘I don’t know, Sara. I hope it wasn’t because I’m white. Everyone else waiting wasn’t. I hope it wasn’t racism.’

We trod along in silence, grateful for our own good luck of getting the Green Card, and sullen for the state of the world.

After a few short blocks in this tony part of London we turned onto Oxford Street, lined with fancy shops – Slefridges, Tesla, expensive jewellery stores, even Dyson has a showroom. Humans from all over, like a UN of shoppers, thronged amicably in their pursuit of stuff.

I headed into Primark. David paused and his face brightened. I hoped he didn’t think I might change my mind.

‘Age! Maybe that’s why they rushed me through. All the mess of a dead body at the Embassy, eh?’

Ah, that British wit.