January 18th 2010 : permalink : Comments
green cards and viet lesbians
After almost $30,000 and almost 10 stressful years, last week my parents and I finally became permanent residents.
A permanent resident is someone who has been granted authorization to live and work in the United States on a permanent basis.
(via http://www.uscis.gov/greencard)
We immigrated to America (technically United States, but that is often implied by “America”) in March 2000. I was ten years old at the time and didn’t know any English whatsoever. In a little over a month, March 2010 will arrive and my life will be officially divided in half between Russia and United States. From that moment on, my life will be more than half spent in US.
Unfortunately, we haven’t visited Russia since we left. This means my parents have not seen their parents (and I my grandparents) in almost 10 years. That’s crazy. My mother couldn’t even go there when her father died. That’s crazy.
Okay, enough with the past. My future is pretty clear now, at least in this area. In five years, I’ll be eligible for naturalization (aka “becoming a citizen”) according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Three years if I’m married to a US Citizen, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. Funny story about that, actually. You see, there was a time when there was a very real possibility of me getting married to a Vietnamese lesbian.
Our lawyer made a couple of tiny mistakes with the paperwork which resulted in a rather painful chain of communications between my parents and the government. For which the climactic conclusion was the fairly good chance of our applications getting denied. By this time, our Visas had expired and our immigration status can be best described as purgatorial or Schrodingerly. We were allowed to work and had Social Security Numbers, but no actual Visas. We were “pending status change,” I believe.
In case of rejection, my parents and I would have to return to Russia. Which, for them, would be uncomfortable in terms of finding a job and etc. but for me, that would mean getting drafted as I was already 18 years old without an excuse. Considering there is a war going on there, you could see clearly why I wouldn’t be too keen on going back and being dragged into the army.
I began to scheme:
- I could, potentially, illegally run away to Canada in hopes of my mathematical skills, physical strength, or my artistic talents providing me with some sort of survival. That’s one of those “should the s hit the f” scenarios, really.
- I could, of course, try to remain in US and continue to live, albeit illegally, in Orange County.
- What I settled on was the least bat-shit crazy and the most practical: marry my friend if my boat hits the iceberg (haha, a metaphor AND an immigration joke!).
I talked with her and we agreed to do it if I got denied. Because at the end of the day, marrying your friend beats getting blow’d up in Chechnya. Some months passed and due to some letters from the government, we were pretty sure we were going to get denied. So with this info in hand, I decided to do the only thing I could do: pull a prank with her on our friends.
We announced that I got rejected and that we would be getting married. This spread very fast and very deeply within our circles of friends. It was insane. After a week of congratulatory messages and “holy shits,” we pulled the plug and announced that it was a prank. Even our best friends believed it (we had to talk to them individually to make them believe). What followed was a thick stream of “fuck yous” from everyone. It was awesome.
So here I am: typing out this post with my permanent resident card by my driver’s license. In five years, I’ll take the oath of allegiance to United States, get my dual citizenship (yes, it’s possible to be a citizen of both Russia and US), and be able to vote and not make a difference just like everyone else.
Peace out.
tags: immigrationlifemeditationfamily