Open Writing

Ask anyone who has been through the mangle – Oops, I mean the experience – and they will tell you that Audie Murphy’s cinematic-biography, "To Hell and Back," was nothing compared with putting yourself into the hands of the United States of America’s Immigration and Naturalisation Services.

No sir! Not a goshdarned thing.

When I applied to go and live with my American wife, Gay, in her homeland, after my retirement, I was lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent ease with which my visa application went. The mounting cost of it was alarming, but the process seemed far too easy after all the horror stories I had heard.

One of our friends went to the US on holiday, ostensibly to visit the man of her dreams, married him, applied for a spousal visa, and stayed on. It took her about ten years to get her affairs sorted out with the INS, who are known to take a dim view of those who do not play strictly by their strict rules. They do make some sort of exception to illegal immigrants from Mexico, but for the rest of the world, the rules and regulations are written in stone.

However, after calling the US Embassy in London several times and receiving several conflicting pieces of advice, we sent for the sponsor papers. Ploughing through the frightening amount of forms we got back, we found that we faced a nightmare of documentary requirements.

Remembering the birthdays of my children almost brought on a bout of nervous exhaustion, but with Gay’s gift for organisation we survived that, and found every other bit of information they demanded. What my great-grandfather’s hat size had anything to do with anything I will never know!

We burned the midnight oil and the candle at both ends until we got everything in order, then sent the bundle back to Grosvenor Square, and waited with anguished breath. We ought not to have worried. I received an appointment after less than three months.

They wanted to see me at the embassy the day after my 65th birthday. So, I worked the day before my birthday, doing the right thing by taking in the cream cakes for my colleagues, and the next day headed south on a National Coach to London, ready for the next day’s interview.

The bed and breakfast place is a story all its own, but after eating a plastic egg, we took ourselves to the embassy, guarded by a kind looking policemen with a nasty looking big iron on his hip. He smiled as we climbed the steps, but didn’t draw his gun. I was grateful for small mercies.

We didn’t have to wait long before a lady came to the window and looked at our documents. She approved them in short order and then gave me a medical form with instructions on how to get to their doctor. It took us about twenty minutes to get there by foot.

We entered a Victorian house in a Victorian terrace, with a Victorian interior, where I was examined by a Victorian doctor, using Victorian equipment, and then x-rayed on a near-Victorian steam-powered radiological apparatus that had been adapted from coal fired to natural gas.

I was treated to a series of injections for diseases I had only heard of in adventure stories when the hero was hob-nailing his merry way through swamp-infested jungles. Did we go to the right embassy? I ruminated.

Being an obedient Englishman, I did not question the many prods, pokes, and injectorial indignities, but suffered them silently as a lamb in the hands of the slaughterer.

Finally, a sheaf of papers and a large envelope containing my chest in negative were thrust in my hand in exchange for my credit card, and I was on my way. The embassy lady had given me an appointment for the afternoon, so we headed up Oxford Street to shop and take lunch, before making our way back to the embassy.

We were on time, and the lady made me raise my hand and swear not to be a Republican – or something like that –took my credit card to make it legal, then pointed me to the ‘Issuing Window,’ to pick up my entry visa. (Perhaps that should be "Entry Visa Ta-da!")

At that window, I got even more suspicious that Jesse James and his gang was running the embassy. Yup! I handed over my credit card again! Another month’s wages was deducted, but I was handed an entry visa to Fortress America and given six months to use it.

Five months and three weeks later, I boarded an aeroplane at Manchester, and at Newark, New Jersey, I was admitted as an alien on a conditional visa. My thumb print and my photograph were taken. If I had known my portrait would be taken, I would have dressed formally. I was the only émigré presenting himself at that hour of the day and so I was ushered in and out of the magic booth in less than five minutes. I was in, and had my photograph taken by a diminutive Statue of Lady Liberty to prove it!

I had to report to the INS at Phoenix, and that took a disarming twenty minutes. A few weeks later, my green card came. Other people had told me of the seeming intransigence of the INS, but I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It could not have been more straightforward.

Two years later, I had to apply for the conditions of my visa to be removed. Our marriage had survived beyond the enchanted milestone, and that meant that even if our marriage went the way of sixty-percent of US marriages, I could remain in the country to continue making my contribution to their pool of beauty and talent. However, I had to apply for a new green card, and that was further complicated by a change of address when we moved from Arizona to Montana.

Much has been said about American internal departments not communicating with each other, and we found this to be absolutely true when we applied for my permanent resident card. We were bounced from one place to another, given conflicting information and thought seriously about entering Canada as illegals and settling down there.

I did get a letter stating that unconditional residence had been granted, and my card expiry date extended for a further year. That took me up to June 2004.

The letter also said that if I had not received my card in eleven months, I should contact them. It hadn’t, and I tried. I called the INS office in Helena, but the man that answered the telephone said he couldn’t put me through to the proper office. The INS was now part of the Homeland Security Service and they could not be talking on the telephone.

The next week when we called the number, it had been disconnected!

We called the INS National Customer Service Centre, and they said we should call the Helena office. We explained why we couldn’t and they said we could write a letter or go into the office. We had written a letter a month before but got no reply.

Helena was a five and a half hour drive if petrol prices didn’t reach three dollars a gallon and the creek didn’t rise. "That’s all I can tell you." Said the disembodied voice on the telephone. I asked a rhetorical question about where the ‘service’ in ‘Customer Service’ was, but got neither satisfaction nor sympathy.

We sat and made plans to travel to Helena. Five and a half hours drive each way, with two needy dogs, and no clue as to whether we would even be seen once we presented ourselves at the top secret installation. We planned, planned, and better planned, but it seemed hopeless. Eventually, we decided that if we went to Helena, we could then drive down to Lovell, Wyoming, where my eldest daughter lived, breaking our journey at Bozeman for a night’s lodging.

Then the lightning struck. We had booked the motel at Bozeman, and my three granddaughters, one grandson, one great-grandson, and two great-granddaughters would be there. It all seemed so perfect, and we would not be pressed to drive back home the same day, plus the bonus of seeing the girls after a long time. However, the lightning struck!

I had been feeling a little unfocused from time to time over the course of a few months. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I experienced two episodes of blanking out, when my mind went vacant and I could neither think or respond.
I was referred to a neurologist and had echograms of my heart, and carotid arteries, and a brain MRI. Nothing to worry about there, so I had an EEG. The tell-tale abnormal brainwave spikes showed that I had a form of epilepsy. Mild, but disabling when it hit hard.

I was given anticonvulsive medication and banned from driving until I could be shown seizure free for six months. That put paid to the Helena and Lovell trips, because it is far too far for my chaufesse to drive the round trip of thirteen hundred miles.

I still needed to go to Helena and Back to get my green card certifying that I was a legal resident of the USA, so that if I needed to leave the country – and with an eighty-nine year old mother in Huddersfield, that was always a possibility – I would not be prevented from re-entering. Goshdarn!

Our niece, Jeanie, said she would drive us there and back, but we didn’t feel like we should encroach on the time of a busy mother of three-year old triplets who held down a demanding job, so we held off taking her up on her kind offer.

As it was, we curtailed our activities so that Gay, no spring chicken, and not enjoying the rudest of health would not be too hard pressed, and we made a decision of indecision. We put it on our disappointment shelf with some other of our dearest dreams, and sat and held hands, sure of our love.

Time passed, and we still could not resolve our concern about my card. Then, yesterday it came in the post. Although we are sad about the missed trip to Lovell, and that means that it is not very likely that I will ever see my first born in this life, the problem of going to Helena and back has been resolved, and for that we are grateful.

This card expires in 2014, but, if I survive until then, I will be a dual citizen of the UK and the USA, so the matter will never arise again.

Of course, what else, the INS administers applications and ceremonies for citizenship, so I will have to gather forms, documents, keep my credit card rust free, and go to Hell and back again.

God bless the USA!

Copyright © 2004
Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED