iTunes download:
Gimme Shelter - the Rolling Stones (live, if you can find it)
Obscure film:
"God Grew Tired of Us" (dir. by Christopher Dillon Quinn, co dir. by Tommy Walker)
Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/polls/2004/immigration/
Monday, March 5, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
the Immigrants, pt. 3 (the Interview)
Amir is my brother-in-law. He is a Tunisian, and one of my favourite people on earth. He was asked to leave the US in 2004, a month after my other sister's wedding. He has been trying ever since then to come back, and despite some genuinely horrible encounters with the biggest bitch at the INS, having the validity of his marriage come into question, being sujected to the ignorance of people who would assume the worst of him because of his language and his looks, and the constant red tape of the world's biggest buearacracy, his biggest dream is still to be able to come home to America. I asked him why the other day, in the form of the following questions:
What do you think the American Dream is, generally speaking? Do you think it is a valid concept?
"The American Dream is all about opportunity. I think this concept is true because you can achieve your dreams."
What would you say your version of the American Dream is?
"The specific version to me is, if you have the will and if you are a hardworker and you love what your doing, you will succeed in the States. What I like about it too is out of nothing you can become something."
Why is America your first choice for a place to live?
"Because I feel it's like my second home. There is freedom of speech, a lot of outdoor activities (and indoor) and you just live with a peace of mind. Plus there are a lot of opportunities and it's a land of immigrants."
List the top five flaws and benefits of living in America/being an American citizen.
Benefits
1. Freedom
2. Success
3. Fun
4. Opportunities
5. Respect
Flaws
1. Bills
2. Being far away from my family
3. Racist confrontations
4. Too much negative media (example: Dr Phil, Oprah, the news)
5. No nationwide health insurance
Amir's visa was finally approved last fall. My sister came to visit with her daughter Nadia this Christmas, as we celebrated joyfully that she would soon be able to come home. My family has been going through this alongside my sister for three years, and it has been hanging like a subconscious cloud over our heads, broken through only by rays of sunlight in the form of my faithful optimism of our mother.
In January, my sister called me crying at three in the morning to tell me that the embassy had gotten a cable from the State Dept., putting a permanent halt on their authority to issue visas. Before the halt, their counselor estimated their wait time for the visa itself at about two weeks. After the cable, she had no estimate at all. Concurrently, I put a halt on both my acknowledgement of God and the American government until the halt was lifted.
A week or so later, the State Department amended their preious statement to say that the visas who had already been approved would still be valid. It's going to take months longer, but Amir should still eventually get his visa. I've let up on my God embargo, but America is still on shaky ground in my book. It just seems like an awful lot to go through for the privilege of living in America. But it seems to be worth it, at least to Amir. And on that note, it's worth it to me as well, because if there were a million more like Amir in America, I think I would be happier with it as a whole. To me, he is as much and more of an American than all past season American Idol winners. I hope his dream comes true, not just because he deserves it, but because it would do a lot for mine as well.
What do you think the American Dream is, generally speaking? Do you think it is a valid concept?
"The American Dream is all about opportunity. I think this concept is true because you can achieve your dreams."
What would you say your version of the American Dream is?
"The specific version to me is, if you have the will and if you are a hardworker and you love what your doing, you will succeed in the States. What I like about it too is out of nothing you can become something."
Why is America your first choice for a place to live?
"Because I feel it's like my second home. There is freedom of speech, a lot of outdoor activities (and indoor) and you just live with a peace of mind. Plus there are a lot of opportunities and it's a land of immigrants."
List the top five flaws and benefits of living in America/being an American citizen.
Benefits
1. Freedom
2. Success
3. Fun
4. Opportunities
5. Respect
Flaws
1. Bills
2. Being far away from my family
3. Racist confrontations
4. Too much negative media (example: Dr Phil, Oprah, the news)
5. No nationwide health insurance
Amir's visa was finally approved last fall. My sister came to visit with her daughter Nadia this Christmas, as we celebrated joyfully that she would soon be able to come home. My family has been going through this alongside my sister for three years, and it has been hanging like a subconscious cloud over our heads, broken through only by rays of sunlight in the form of my faithful optimism of our mother.
In January, my sister called me crying at three in the morning to tell me that the embassy had gotten a cable from the State Dept., putting a permanent halt on their authority to issue visas. Before the halt, their counselor estimated their wait time for the visa itself at about two weeks. After the cable, she had no estimate at all. Concurrently, I put a halt on both my acknowledgement of God and the American government until the halt was lifted.
A week or so later, the State Department amended their preious statement to say that the visas who had already been approved would still be valid. It's going to take months longer, but Amir should still eventually get his visa. I've let up on my God embargo, but America is still on shaky ground in my book. It just seems like an awful lot to go through for the privilege of living in America. But it seems to be worth it, at least to Amir. And on that note, it's worth it to me as well, because if there were a million more like Amir in America, I think I would be happier with it as a whole. To me, he is as much and more of an American than all past season American Idol winners. I hope his dream comes true, not just because he deserves it, but because it would do a lot for mine as well.
The Immigrants, pt. 2
If you want to see the American dream, go to the consular section of an embassy and wait outside. The asphalt is paved with it, and it can be seen in every one of the faces of the people standing on it.
In one such embassy, there was an old Russian woman who was moving to America to be with her daughter and grandson. She had won the visa lottery - literally. Every year there was a lottery in this country, and the lucky winners got, instead of money, pre-approval on an immigrant visa to America. Were they able to provide all the necessary documentation, and to pass all the necessary tests, physical checkups, and background checks, they would get a free ride to America.
We called the woman a week before her last appointment at the embassy and congratulated her. She had passed all the preliminary requirements for acquiring her visa to the United States. She was to come to the embassy on Friday and take her picture, sign the visa, after which we would print it up and put in her passport, stamp it with our approval, and she would move to America.
The woman was ecstatic. She left her apartment, sold her furniture, bought her plane ticket, and began packing her things. On the day she came to the embassy, the raw delicacy of hope that has tentatively come true was written all over her face, and it made her look adorable, and it made what we had to tell her about a hundred times harder.
We had made a mistake, you see. In the interval between our phone call to the woman and her appointment the next week, we discovered that we were not in possession of one of the aforementioned necessary documents - a Russian police certificate. It was our fault. Had we notified her of its missing status earlier, she would have had time to acquire it from the Russian embassy. As it was, however, the certificate to took a minimum of three months and a maximum of six to process, after which time the lottery would have expired. We called the Russian embassy, and confirmed that she had no criminal record. The document at this point was a formality, but one that we were not permitted to forego, for reasons I have never been clear on. On the day the woman came to collect her visa and her dream in her hands, it was snatched from her.
As if that weren't enough, she was also denied a non-immigrant visa on every count. If you are ever denied an immigrant visa to the US, it stays on your file, and in most cases will prevent you from obtaining any other kind of visa, because of the logical assumption that you will use it to remain in the country illegally instead of waiting another ten years to reapply for an immigrant visa.
Because yes, one must wait ten years after applying for their denied immigrant visa to apply for another one. And in the meantime, it's not at all likely you will be able to visit the States under any other pretense. That was five years ago. The woman has another five years to go before she can even start the process of being able to be with her only remaining family members. She was seventy-two when I met her.
My friend Katia (also Russian) and I took it harder than anyone else because of our youth and because we were the two most closely involved with the project. For the next two weeks, we asked every higher-up for their intervention in this matter. I used every connection available to me, even the borderline unethical ones. No one did anything. This woman fell through the cracks. I didn't speak much for those two weeks, losing myself in the music of the revolution, enjoying the irony of listening to Dylan and Zeppelin on the way to my government job ("the Immigrant Song" struck me as particularly apt). I lived five minutes from the beach and found myself there often after work for those two weeks, standing in the water and thinking about the debilitating hopelessness that hit me like a mack truck sometimes, living where I did. I was ashamed of my luck, that I could leave it whenever I wanted for the greener and highly secured pastures of America. Mostly, I hated that I was the one behind the glass. There was just a thin sheet of glass separating me from that woman, that and fifty years, and I was the one who had to tell her that her dream was dead in the water.
I left my job at the embassy shortly thereafter, and I have had a hard time believing in the American dream ever since. Sometimes the people who are most skeptical of their product are the ones peddling it.
In one such embassy, there was an old Russian woman who was moving to America to be with her daughter and grandson. She had won the visa lottery - literally. Every year there was a lottery in this country, and the lucky winners got, instead of money, pre-approval on an immigrant visa to America. Were they able to provide all the necessary documentation, and to pass all the necessary tests, physical checkups, and background checks, they would get a free ride to America.
We called the woman a week before her last appointment at the embassy and congratulated her. She had passed all the preliminary requirements for acquiring her visa to the United States. She was to come to the embassy on Friday and take her picture, sign the visa, after which we would print it up and put in her passport, stamp it with our approval, and she would move to America.
The woman was ecstatic. She left her apartment, sold her furniture, bought her plane ticket, and began packing her things. On the day she came to the embassy, the raw delicacy of hope that has tentatively come true was written all over her face, and it made her look adorable, and it made what we had to tell her about a hundred times harder.
We had made a mistake, you see. In the interval between our phone call to the woman and her appointment the next week, we discovered that we were not in possession of one of the aforementioned necessary documents - a Russian police certificate. It was our fault. Had we notified her of its missing status earlier, she would have had time to acquire it from the Russian embassy. As it was, however, the certificate to took a minimum of three months and a maximum of six to process, after which time the lottery would have expired. We called the Russian embassy, and confirmed that she had no criminal record. The document at this point was a formality, but one that we were not permitted to forego, for reasons I have never been clear on. On the day the woman came to collect her visa and her dream in her hands, it was snatched from her.
As if that weren't enough, she was also denied a non-immigrant visa on every count. If you are ever denied an immigrant visa to the US, it stays on your file, and in most cases will prevent you from obtaining any other kind of visa, because of the logical assumption that you will use it to remain in the country illegally instead of waiting another ten years to reapply for an immigrant visa.
Because yes, one must wait ten years after applying for their denied immigrant visa to apply for another one. And in the meantime, it's not at all likely you will be able to visit the States under any other pretense. That was five years ago. The woman has another five years to go before she can even start the process of being able to be with her only remaining family members. She was seventy-two when I met her.
My friend Katia (also Russian) and I took it harder than anyone else because of our youth and because we were the two most closely involved with the project. For the next two weeks, we asked every higher-up for their intervention in this matter. I used every connection available to me, even the borderline unethical ones. No one did anything. This woman fell through the cracks. I didn't speak much for those two weeks, losing myself in the music of the revolution, enjoying the irony of listening to Dylan and Zeppelin on the way to my government job ("the Immigrant Song" struck me as particularly apt). I lived five minutes from the beach and found myself there often after work for those two weeks, standing in the water and thinking about the debilitating hopelessness that hit me like a mack truck sometimes, living where I did. I was ashamed of my luck, that I could leave it whenever I wanted for the greener and highly secured pastures of America. Mostly, I hated that I was the one behind the glass. There was just a thin sheet of glass separating me from that woman, that and fifty years, and I was the one who had to tell her that her dream was dead in the water.
I left my job at the embassy shortly thereafter, and I have had a hard time believing in the American dream ever since. Sometimes the people who are most skeptical of their product are the ones peddling it.
The Immigrants, pt. 1
Two Philippino women, one named Beatrice and one named Tillie, met in Tel Aviv Israel. Odd as it seems, it's a pretty common practice for Phillippinos to immigrate to Israel and surrounding areas, especially after the US military base in the Phillippines closed, thus cutting off a significant amount of employment opportunities for its citizens.
Beatrice was a dentist in the Phillippines, but because of the harsh state of the economy's effect on her ability to provide for she and her husband's three kids, she moved to Israel to become an embassy-provided maid. She managed to get home to see her kids usually once a year. Her dream was to get one of the embassy families she worked for to sponsor her so she could immigrate to the States. For people in Beatrice's position to immigrate, it was necessary for a family to cover their expenses and provide proof that the person in question would have a job working for them. The problem with this plan was that most families who had maids had them simply because they were provided by the embassy. Had it been at their own expense, they probably would not have been in the position to afford it. Therefore, the only maids who usually got sponsored were those who worked for people in highly paid positions, such as ambassadors, and then only when those ambassadors actually returned to the States. Eventually, when she became pregnant with her third child, Beatrice gave up for the moment on moving her family to the States, and contended herself just with moving back to be with them.
Tillie, on the other hand, finally found a family to sponsor her and her husband back to the States. They were awaiting the approval of their visa through the embassy, when an unexpected cable came from the State Department in early January, instituting a new immigration policy - immigration visas, from then on, would no longer be allowed to be issued through embassies. People whose visas had already been approved, they amended a few days later, would still be able to immigrate, but those who hadn't been approved yet, like Tillie, would just have to wait for another opportunity.
Both Tillie and Beatrice wanted to move to the United States because of the opportunity afforded them - because Beatrice didn't have to be a maid to make a living, and could get paid a full salary for her dentistry skills. Tillie could afford to start a family. Neither of them have achieved that particular dream yet, not because of lack of determination, not because of disillusionment, and not because of dumb luck, but because they have been prevented from doing so by the ever-stricter immigration laws imposed by the US government.
Beatrice was a dentist in the Phillippines, but because of the harsh state of the economy's effect on her ability to provide for she and her husband's three kids, she moved to Israel to become an embassy-provided maid. She managed to get home to see her kids usually once a year. Her dream was to get one of the embassy families she worked for to sponsor her so she could immigrate to the States. For people in Beatrice's position to immigrate, it was necessary for a family to cover their expenses and provide proof that the person in question would have a job working for them. The problem with this plan was that most families who had maids had them simply because they were provided by the embassy. Had it been at their own expense, they probably would not have been in the position to afford it. Therefore, the only maids who usually got sponsored were those who worked for people in highly paid positions, such as ambassadors, and then only when those ambassadors actually returned to the States. Eventually, when she became pregnant with her third child, Beatrice gave up for the moment on moving her family to the States, and contended herself just with moving back to be with them.
Tillie, on the other hand, finally found a family to sponsor her and her husband back to the States. They were awaiting the approval of their visa through the embassy, when an unexpected cable came from the State Department in early January, instituting a new immigration policy - immigration visas, from then on, would no longer be allowed to be issued through embassies. People whose visas had already been approved, they amended a few days later, would still be able to immigrate, but those who hadn't been approved yet, like Tillie, would just have to wait for another opportunity.
Both Tillie and Beatrice wanted to move to the United States because of the opportunity afforded them - because Beatrice didn't have to be a maid to make a living, and could get paid a full salary for her dentistry skills. Tillie could afford to start a family. Neither of them have achieved that particular dream yet, not because of lack of determination, not because of disillusionment, and not because of dumb luck, but because they have been prevented from doing so by the ever-stricter immigration laws imposed by the US government.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Mass Media of the Day
iTunes download:
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan
Not-So-Much-Obscure-As-It-Is-Badly-Reviewed Film:
"Bobby" (dir. Emilio Estevez)
Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002173.html
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan
Not-So-Much-Obscure-As-It-Is-Badly-Reviewed Film:
"Bobby" (dir. Emilio Estevez)
Relevant Internet Reading:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002173.html
The Disillusions, pt. 2 - a random sampling
"I always thought of the American dream as disillusionment, but nevertheless an inevitable pursuit by both citizens and immigrants of America." -a college student
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -a novelist
"Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts." -a comedian
"I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." -an activist
"...and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio..." -a poet
"When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." -a journalist
"The dream is over." -a musician
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." -a novelist
"Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're stuck with the jobs and haircuts." -a comedian
"I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare." -an activist
"...and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio..." -a poet
"When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." -a journalist
"The dream is over." -a musician
The Disillusions, pt. 1 - Dylan and Nelson
There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
And the bankers are takin' my home and my land from me
There's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be
There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
There's a well with water so bitter nobody can drink
Ain't no way to get high and my mouth is so dry that I can't speak
Don't they know that I'm dyin', Why nobody cryin' for me?
My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.
My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.
(from "Heartland")
And the bankers are takin' my home and my land from me
There's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be
There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
There's a well with water so bitter nobody can drink
Ain't no way to get high and my mouth is so dry that I can't speak
Don't they know that I'm dyin', Why nobody cryin' for me?
My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.
My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.
(from "Heartland")
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