Blame it on Mommy

DS came home from school today and tore his bed apart. Not literally - one of his classmates told him that the leprechauns left gold coins under his pillow last night, so DS figured he must have some too. DH explained to him that the leprechauns don't visit our house "Because Mommy's English." Why blame it on me? It's not like DH is Irish either! (Some of his ancestors did come to the US from Ireland - but they were French Huguenots who stopped off in Ireland for just a couple of generations in the late 17th century on their way to America.) Still, they do say "Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day!" Except Mommy apparently :-)

Britain's not what it used to be

The show All Things Considered on National Public Radio started a 5 part series today, 'Revisiting the Road to Canterbury', on Britain's struggles with its identity. From what I heard today I think the series is going to be well worth listening to.

The whole concept of what it means to be British has come into question in recent years, as immigration has increased and as the pillars of the old identity that united the kingdom — empire, monarchy, the Church of England — have been eroded.

I found it fascinating to hear a former Islamist extremist say that he thinks Britain has tried too hard to accommodate immigrants and Britain needs to become more like the United States if it wants to avoid immigrant groups becoming alienated and radicalized. He says,

In America, there is more of an understanding that citizenship is based on allegiance and not on ethnicity … and it's allegiance to a set of principles, a set of values, what it means to be American.

I am not sure that I entirely agree with his opinion - but of course I didn't grow up feeling that the society I was living in did not reflect my culture or values. (Nor have I lived for any extensive period of time in the UK in the last 20 years, so what do I know about Britain any more anyway?!) I suspect many Arab Americans who have had their identity and allegiance questioned in the years since 9/11 would disagree with him too.

The United States has certainly been dealing with the issue of immigrants for far longer than Britain has. But for all its experience with the issue, it is still one that the country struggles with.

A visa by any other name

From The Independent newspaper, January 10, 2009:

For more than 20 years, the vast majority of British visitors to America have entered the US under the Visa Waiver Program. This involves filling in a green form, code name I-94W, while on board the flight to America. But from Monday 12 January, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is introducing a new set of rules.

Even though you might be eligible to visit the US under the visa waiver program, you will now have to apply online at least 3 days in advance of your planned trip to the US to ask for permission. Even if you are simply going to be changing planes in the US and continuing on to another destination, you will need to ask permission. (In the past, transit-only passengers did not need a visa as far as I know, so long as they were not planning on leaving the airport.) Customs and Border Protection has a page here explaining what you need to know. If you've ever been to the US and filled out the I-94 W on the plane before landing, the new ESTA program asks for exactly the same information - only before you travel to the US rather than as you arrive.

It sounds as though for many people it could be a tiny improvement - one less thing to deal with on the plane - except that, for now at least, you still have to fill in the form on the plane too! And of course, if you're someone (yes, there are some) who never goes online, filling out the online-only form could prove problematic. I forsee a market for travel agents charging to do this! The US government currently does not charge people to submit an ESTA application, but they reserve the right to do so in the future.

When I downloaded one of the PDF files that explained more about the program, it said I could find out more about the program at http://www.cpb.gov/esta. Hmm - that address gave me a page load error: "Firefox can't find the server at www.cpb.gov". So I thought I'd take a look at the site where you can actually fill out the information in advance of your visit to the US - https://esta.cpb.dhs.gov - and guess what? That server couldn't be found either!

Why am I not surprised? (Addendum - anonymous pointed out that I had mistyped the address. The sad thing is that I did it not once but multiple times, each time checking the address against the addresses listed in the PDF file. I guess I was tireder than I thought, or just getting old, as dyslexia is not something I usually have a problem with!)

The correct address is significantly longer than https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov. (Spot the difference in the address?) If you actually need it, and want to avoid the typing mistakes I made, it is (currently) linked to from near the top of this Customs and Border Protection page. And if I were you, if the response you get from the system is that you ARE authorized to travel to the US, I'd make sure you print that screen out and tuck the printout in with your passport and tickets! (Actually, the instructions do tell you to keep a record of your application number and have it with you as you enter the US.)

Why would you emigrate?

Would you emigrate (would you have emigrated) if you knew the reality of the country you were moving to? I think for those of us who moved from the UK to the US or vice versa, we had a fairly good sense of what we were letting ourselves in for. There are always little things that surprise you though. Despite the similarities in the language, the differences can be disconcerting. Despite knowing about the US from TV shows and books, dealing with it on a day to day basis still resulted in some culture shock. I'm not sure if the shock is worse for those who come from a very different cultural and language background - surely you must expect the US to seem strange if you have moved here from Afghanistan or Somalia, whereas I was truly surprised to find the US seemed 'foreign'.

From http://booj.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-hell-would-you.html

" I like the idea developed in the Netherlands that if a foreigner wishes to immigrate there, then they have, apart from learning the language, to watch a film showing the life of the country, warts and all, drunks and nudes, hookers, hookahs, pornography, taxes, frost and floods and all. It gives a message to those who would enthusiastically tumble into Europe that it ain't necessarily quite the wonderful place you might think it to be. We have unemployment, we allow people to drink and become drunk, we allow people to express opinions, though we may not necessarily agree, we allow gays to express themselves. The clear message is "Don't like it? Don't come." "If you can't stand it, having come, go.""

Accidental expats

In response to a question from Stinking Billy, I posted a question on this blog a couple of weeks ago:

For British expats in the US: Stinking Billy wants to know - when you first came here, did you plan on putting the UK firmly behind you and never returning to live there again?

It would seem to make sense that if you're going to move several thousand miles that it would be with a plan. People like Sarah, for example, emigrated quite intentionally, knowing that they were committing themselves to their new country. The long-term plan wasn't that clear for some of us though. My original plan was to stay in the US for as long as it took to get a Master's degree and then return to the UK. Other people also emigrate on a temporary basis - moving because a job posting has forced them to, but not really intending to stay in the country they've moved to any longer than the job lasts.

Admittedly my sample was small, with 20 people responding, but 75% of us said that when we first left the UK we either had no intention of leaving the UK for good, or we weren't sure that we were leaving for good.

I did actually try to return to the UK, back in 1989. I spent several months over there fruitlessly looking for work, only got one interview, and got not one but two job offers back in the US. It was a no-brainer - continue to be unemployed in the UK or accept a job with a former employer who really wanted me back and was even prepared to pay half my moving costs back to the US. Even when I moved back to the US at that point I still wasn't sure that I would be staying for good, although obviously the odds increased.

Right now it would be really hard to make the reverse trip. I have no doubt that both DH and I would have a hard time finding employment in the UK, even though work visas are not an issue. The sheer logistics and expense of moving would be overwhelming. I am sure people do it and survive, but we would really have to need to do it. A move back to the UK for us would be very deliberate, almost certainly permanent (for DH and I at least, if not the kids) and not at all accidental!

The poll results:
When you first came here, did you plan on putting the UK firmly behind you and never returning to live there again?
5 said Yes (25%)
12 said No (60%)
3 said Wasn't sure (15%)

Becoming American part 3

Born to Indian parents in London and raised in Rhode Island, author Jhumpa Lahiri spoke in her interview on NPR about becoming American of a "sort of a half-way feeling [of being American]."

Like me, she is a US citizen who does not always feel American. She seems to have struggled with this over her 40 years in the US, particularly with the idea that her parents stood out as not American despite the fact they did have American passports. They never socialized easily with her friends' parents.

"I think this was a two-way street. It wasn't just that they were afraid or unwilling — there was a fear, an unwillingness on both sides."

As a white immigrant, with an English accent rather than a foreign language accent, I have had less difficulty fitting in than many immigrants to the US. Some people seem to put me in a different category than the more obviously foreign newcomers to the US. One person, mid-rant about how all immigrants should be sent home, paused to say, "Not you of course, you're different." The irony was her grandparents immigrated from Poland! It is important to remember that assimilation IS a two-way street. I fit in partly because it is assumed I will. I listen to comments made about some of the immigrants I come into contact with through my work, and am amazed that people see them as so different just because they don't speak English well - and then they wonder why these immigrants don't assimilate better?! 'Black' president or not, we have along way to go in learning tolerance!

Becoming American

During this week of Thanksgiving — the most American of holidays — National Public Radio is spending time thinking about what it means to become an American in a 3 part series of interviews with noted authors who've written about newcomers to the United States.The first is Junot Diaz who immigrated from the Dominican Republic at age 6.

"Feeling like an outsider at a young age made Diaz become a "fanatic" for his home country.

"I don't think that I ever would have thought so fondly of Santo Domingo had I stayed there my whole life," he says."

You can hear the interview here.

Learn to speak English, why doncha?

As evidenced by my blogroll, I love to read about other people's ex-pat experiences. I have a lot of ex-pat Brits listed here, but that's mostly only because I followed links from one to the next, to the next . . . However, most of the ex-pats I encounter in my 'real' life are not Brits. In fact, most of them do not speak English as their first language. Some speak almost no English at all. I remember being in that situation when I was in Asia - the foreigner who doesn't speak the language. The grownup who is treated as a child. The college-educated adult who is treated like an idiot. It's frustrating, and it's not a situation you can remedy quickly. It takes time (and a lot of effort) to learn a language, and some languages are harder to learn than others. Even when I lived in France and spoke the language well, I was always an outsider.

When I think of what new immigrants with children have to deal with in terms of language - specifically communications from their kids' schools - it makes me really angry when I hear people complaining "Why don't they learn English?" "Why should we have to provide interpreters and translations?" "They should just go home if they don't want to learn English!" These are all legal immigrants, and the United States government did not require a language test of them. They are hard-working members of society and the reality is that many of the parents are so busy working in menial jobs that people born here won't do that they have no time now to take English classes.

I met a teacher last year who has been in the US as long as I have - over 20 years. Originally from Germany, her English is excellent. (In fact, she teaches English to new immigrants.) Yet even she - a fluent English speaker, familiar with the public school system - said she felt discombobulated trying to navigate the system trying to get support for her special needs child. The people who are complaining that parents in our school system should make more effort to learn English clearly have no experience themselves of having to navigate real daily life (not just tourist life) in a second language and culture. I'd love to drop some of those complainers off somewhere like China or Russia for a year and see how they fare! Sadly, the experience would probably do nothing for them except to 'prove' to their blinkered satisfaction that the United States is the best place in the world to live.

Understanding the UK

The new Rough Guide to the UK says:

"The only certainty for visitors is that however long you spend in England and however much you see, it still won't be enough to understand the place."

Does an immigrant to the UK who has spent as long there as I have in the US (23 years so far), feel as English as I feel American? Although much of one's integration into either culture depends on mastery of the language and the personal effort one is prepared to expend, I wonder if it is easier for an immigrant to feel at home in the US than in the UK? Never having been an immigrant in the UK, I don't know. I do know that when I think about the fact that I have spent most (almost all) of my adult life in the USA, it does feel like home and I do feel as though I belong. I know I would go through significant reverse culture shock if I were to return to the UK for good. My grandmother left the UK for close to 20 years and I am not sure that she ever completely lost the feeling that the country she returned to was a different one to the one she left.

People certainly have had plenty to say about the new Rough Guide at the BBC Have Your Say forum. (Discussion there is now closed.) Although I haven't read either of them, it sounds as though Toni Summers Hargis' book Rules, Britannia would in many ways be a more helpful guide to the befuddled visitor to the UK than the Rough Guide.

More immigration confusion

My parents recently paid us a visit from the UK. The immigration official at the airport told my father that he had a 'problem' because his fingerprint did not match the fingerprint they took when he entered the US last September. After sending him to another official, they decided that they had simply 'confused' my father's fingerprint with my mother's. He was actually expecting to have more of a problem with the fact that they never took his departure card when he left last year, so technically there is no record of him ever having left the country before returning last month . . . They didn't mention that.

And I was SO hoping that the INS' record-keeping had improved since I last had to deal with them :-(

Immigration

After spending many thousands of dollars to get a work visa and then a Green Card in order to stay in the United States, it was amazingly simple to become a United States citizen when I finally became eligible.



When I applied for United States citizenship eight years ago I did not need a lawyer to help me, didn't need to take any classes, or study from any books. I think things have become a little tougher since 9/11, but there are lots of free resources such as public library websites or community based organizations. Even the US government provides information along with the application forms. There are plenty of people out there willing to take money to help you become a naturalized citizen, but as far as I know if you've got as far as getting a Green Card, the last step is easy and you really shouldn't need to pay for any help if your English is good enough to read and understand the application form.

I filled out the forms, wrote a check, and posted it all to the relevant address. Shortly afterwards I received a letter from the regional Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Office requesting that I report to my 'local' (2 hour drive away) INS Office. The reason: I had been granted permission to remain in the United States as a resident alien 5 years earlier but I had 'never been issued' with a Green Card and so I had 10 days to report to the INS office to rectify the situation. I was rather confused because I could have sworn I HAD a Green Card.

Not only did I have a plastic card with my photo on it that looked just like a Green Card was supposed to (no, it's not green!), but I knew it was a Green Card. How did I know this? Well, firstly, it had been mailed to me in an envelope that had a return address at the INS. Secondly, I had used the card to get in and out of the USA several times with no problems over the previous 5 years. Thirdly, I had gone on a 'backstage tour' at my local INS office just days after receiving my Green Card and one of the officials on the tour had (with my permission) entered my card number into her computer to pull up the INS computer file on me to show other people on the tour what kind of information they had. So I photocopied the back and front of my Green Card and wrote a letter to the regional INS office asking them what this piece of plastic was that had gotten me in and out of the country if it was not a Green Card and could they please reassure me, since I had just applied for citizenship, that my paperwork was in fact in order. I never heard back from them until I got a letter inviting me to the local INS office for my citizenship interview.

It was actually the tour of the immigration office that had made me decide that I would file my application for citizenship the first day I could. As well as pulling up my records on the computer, we asked if they could pull up the records of the 'designated officials' at a local university - people authorized to sign visa paperwork for international students. An international student accepted at an American university needs official paperwork showing that they have been accepted and have proven to the school that they have enough money to survive their course of study. Only a handful of people at any given institution are authorized to sign this paperwork, and their names are on record with the INS as Designated School Officials (DSOs.) So if an immigration official has doubts about the authenticity of an arriving student's paperwork one of the first things they can do is check that the person who signed the forms was in fact authorized to do so. So imagine the university officials' horror when they found that the official INS list of people at their university authorized to sign was TWO years out of date! As far as they knew, they had done everything they needed to to become a DSO, but if an official had questioned paperwork they had signed, a student who was legitimately accepted at their university could be denied entry to the country. Not good!

I also saw people filing paper records at the INS office and remember being told that when those records were needed again it would be impossible to find them unless someone knew the last date on which they had been accessed because that was how they were filed.

Having seen these examples of the INS inefficiency, I was not exactly excited about having to continue to deal with them for any longer than I had to. It is no wonder they have not been able to keep track of potential terrorists. My impression was that the INS were underfunded and understaffed and handicapped by a useless computer system. It was amazing things worked as well as they did. It would be nice to think that things have improved over the intervening years, especially with all the recent discussion about immigration and security, but sadly I doubt it has changed much. There are advantages to being a US citizen rather than a resident alien, but for me one of the biggest advantages is not having to deal with the INS any more.