How I got here (part2)
We applied for the K1 Visa (fiancé of a US Citizen) in October. It took them 3 months to get to ours, but the good news was that I got to spend Christmas with Jen and Emma. The only caveat being that I was not guaranteed entry, but then again they never do. As usual when going to the US under the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) you have to satisfy the Immigration Officer that you are not going to stay longer than the 90 days you are entitled to, and that you are not going be a drain on the USA’s resources, i.e. you have enough money to support your stay. A return plane ticket is not enough proof of the intent to return. So I had to get a note from my work to show that I was due back to work on 10 January.
Things went really well, both from a relationship point of view and from the visa process when I went there for Christmas. This was the first time that I had ever spent Christmas away from my parents, and it was really strange the way that other people “do” Christmas. Now I am not suggesting that my family have the traditional British Christmas, but we have always gone about things the same way and whilst it was not too different spending Christmas in California, there were some differences. For a start it was very warm on Christmas Eve, so warm in fact that I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt in an effort to keep cool. Jen’s family thought I was weird (nothing new there) but it was around 24 C degrees.
Anyway before I race ahead, I should talk about getting into the country. I was extremely nervous. I always am, ever since I was given a really hard time when trying to enter the US in Philadelphia. This is what happened. I had been to Sacramento in February and my work had allowed me to work from the Sacramento office, which meant that I didn’t have to take any time off work, which was great of them. So when I went to Philadelphia to meet Jen and spend two weeks there, heading down to see her family in Washington DC in March the immigration official decided that it was suspicious, and so I had to go to a separate room which was entitled “Secondary Enquiries”. When I entered I saw that there were 5 rows of seats, all of which were facing the front where there was a huge wooden counter, behind which stood 5 heavily armed guards. What makes me laugh isn’t just the fact that guards are armed with guns, as I can understand why, I may not agree with them having a gun, but I can see the logic behind it. However, most of them seem to have 2 guns, a truncheon, pepper spray, handcuffs (often 2 sets) a torch, a pocket knife and what appears to be a holder for their pen around their belts. What or who are they expecting? Maybe they are some of the huge percentage that don’t have passports and so have not been through airport security recently, and I know we shouldn’t get complacent, but if some terrorist was going to attack the USA, they have already shown that they won’t do it with guns, but with planes, bombs or spreading diseases like Anthrax, and you can have all the guns, handcuffs, truncheons and pocket knifes in the world, but if someone is a suicide bomber they won’t care if they get hurt or killed as long as they take as many people with them as possible.
I made my way to the front and handed over my form and passport to a tough looking skin head, who told me to take a seat. I chose a seat in the second row from the front. As I was sat there other passengers who had to be enquired about for a second time came in, handed their documents over to the other offices at the front and sat down in the other seats around me. The guy who was looking at my paperwork then spent the next ten minutes talking about his basket ball team to his co-workers. Every now and again he would flick through my passport and enter something on the computer in front of him. Finally after a further fifteen minutes of this he called out my name. Now ever since I was a kid I have only ever been called by full name if I am a) in trouble or b) at some official appointment, like at the doctors or the dentist. When someone calls me Nicholas now I instantly have a shiver of dread that goes up and down my spine. I think it’s a bit of a Pavlovian reaction, my brain decides I am either in trouble or about to be prodded by a medical professional.
I rose from my chair to go up to the counter when baldy did the international sign for “sit down”, and to reinforce this he said “no need to come up”. I assumed that he just wanted to make sure where I was, because after all he only had my passport so there is no way that he could work out from my photograph where I was in the room. Wrong. No apparently he was going to ask me some quite intimate questions from around 12 feet away. There were lots of questions about how I had met Jen, how often she had visited me, how often I had visited her, what I did for a living, what she did for a living, how I could afford to take so many holidays from my job. The questions went on, and on. Finally he went back to tapping on his keyboard. He did this for a few moments, and then he launched into a lecture about how if my relationship with Jen got serious I would need to apply for a visa. It turned out that my travel record indicated that I may be working and living in the US illegally. Obviously they have kept the records and they could see that the longest I had stayed had been 10 days but that still meant that they thought I was living there full time.
With this in mind I was nervous about entering the US when I had made an application for a full time visa. There is nothing untoward about going to America under the visa waiver programme when you are going through the formal visa process, but the concern is that the Inland Security Officer who meets you upon attempt to gain entry to the country will not believe that you are going to return, and this is the key to getting in. My advice is to be calm, you are in the right, answer any questions that have, honestly and don’t try any sarcasm or jokes. I have heard a lot of people say that the Americans don’t get sarcasm or irony, however, in my experience most do, but if you try it with an immigration officer you will find the stereotype is true. Maybe this is where it came from, I can imagine that when Oscar Wilde said his famous “I have nothing to declare….” statement, that it was met with a cold hard stare and the following “really? Can you just go through that door over there sir, take your clothes off and bend over, please?” Which thinking about it is probably something Wilde would have enjoyed.
I was waiting in line getting nervous, and I seem to have picked the queue with the people who could not fill out the visa waiver programme form properly. I am not exaggerating here, I was about tenth in line, and all 9 of the travellers in front of me had somehow managed to miss something off their form, or made a mistake. You may think that this would mean that I would get to the front quicker, but in reality what actually happened was that the first person would be sent back to tick the box that they had missed. They were told not to go to the back of the line, but to correct their error and then come back. Whilst moron 1 was ticking the box which said which sex they were, moron 2 would hand over their form only to have it returned to them when it was pointed out that the form had two sides and the back needed to be completed too. So moron 2 would go back to fill out the back, by which time moron 1 was back having filled in the form correctly. When they were done moron 2 was ready and so they would go up. Then moron 3 would discover that they too hadn’t filled out the form correctly, etc, etc.
All this messing about was increasing my nerves. I thought that if the woman checking the forms was annoyed she was more that likely to send me to secondary inquiries. I handed over my form. She asked me some routine questions, but instead of waiting for my answer, she proceeded to answer them for me. For example she would say “What are you here for?” and before I could answer she would say “holiday?” to which I would answer yes. “Who are you visiting?” and again before I could respond she would follow up her initial question with “friends?” “Yes” was again my response. I couldn’t help but think that this woman was so relieved to have someone that had managed to fill out the visa waiver form correctly that she decided not to trip me up with any difficult questions in order to at least get one person through her line that day.
We had an amazing Christmas together. We did the usual things that people do over Christmas, drink too much, eat too much and watch far too much telly. We celebrated Christmas in much the same way that most non-Christians celebrate; with a bastardised version. When I returned to work in the New Year many of my work colleagues wanted to know all the details of the big differences. As there were none I feel that I really let them down. The conversations with them would do something like this:
Them: So, Nick, did they celebrate Christmas differently out there?
Me: Um, no not really.
Them: Oh come on I bet you there were some differences?
Me: No, none that I can think of.
Them: Did you have turkey? I bet you didn’t have turkey did you?
Me: Yes we did actually.
Them (increasingly desperate): Roast potatoes?
Me: Yes, lovely fluffy ones.
Them: Stuffing?
Me: Yes.
Them: Queen’s Speech?
Me: No, actually we didn’t have the Queen’s speech.
Them (triumphantly): Aha! So there were some differences!
Me: No we never watch it at home either.
Things went really well, both from a relationship point of view and from the visa process when I went there for Christmas. This was the first time that I had ever spent Christmas away from my parents, and it was really strange the way that other people “do” Christmas. Now I am not suggesting that my family have the traditional British Christmas, but we have always gone about things the same way and whilst it was not too different spending Christmas in California, there were some differences. For a start it was very warm on Christmas Eve, so warm in fact that I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt in an effort to keep cool. Jen’s family thought I was weird (nothing new there) but it was around 24 C degrees.
Anyway before I race ahead, I should talk about getting into the country. I was extremely nervous. I always am, ever since I was given a really hard time when trying to enter the US in Philadelphia. This is what happened. I had been to Sacramento in February and my work had allowed me to work from the Sacramento office, which meant that I didn’t have to take any time off work, which was great of them. So when I went to Philadelphia to meet Jen and spend two weeks there, heading down to see her family in Washington DC in March the immigration official decided that it was suspicious, and so I had to go to a separate room which was entitled “Secondary Enquiries”. When I entered I saw that there were 5 rows of seats, all of which were facing the front where there was a huge wooden counter, behind which stood 5 heavily armed guards. What makes me laugh isn’t just the fact that guards are armed with guns, as I can understand why, I may not agree with them having a gun, but I can see the logic behind it. However, most of them seem to have 2 guns, a truncheon, pepper spray, handcuffs (often 2 sets) a torch, a pocket knife and what appears to be a holder for their pen around their belts. What or who are they expecting? Maybe they are some of the huge percentage that don’t have passports and so have not been through airport security recently, and I know we shouldn’t get complacent, but if some terrorist was going to attack the USA, they have already shown that they won’t do it with guns, but with planes, bombs or spreading diseases like Anthrax, and you can have all the guns, handcuffs, truncheons and pocket knifes in the world, but if someone is a suicide bomber they won’t care if they get hurt or killed as long as they take as many people with them as possible.
I made my way to the front and handed over my form and passport to a tough looking skin head, who told me to take a seat. I chose a seat in the second row from the front. As I was sat there other passengers who had to be enquired about for a second time came in, handed their documents over to the other offices at the front and sat down in the other seats around me. The guy who was looking at my paperwork then spent the next ten minutes talking about his basket ball team to his co-workers. Every now and again he would flick through my passport and enter something on the computer in front of him. Finally after a further fifteen minutes of this he called out my name. Now ever since I was a kid I have only ever been called by full name if I am a) in trouble or b) at some official appointment, like at the doctors or the dentist. When someone calls me Nicholas now I instantly have a shiver of dread that goes up and down my spine. I think it’s a bit of a Pavlovian reaction, my brain decides I am either in trouble or about to be prodded by a medical professional.
I rose from my chair to go up to the counter when baldy did the international sign for “sit down”, and to reinforce this he said “no need to come up”. I assumed that he just wanted to make sure where I was, because after all he only had my passport so there is no way that he could work out from my photograph where I was in the room. Wrong. No apparently he was going to ask me some quite intimate questions from around 12 feet away. There were lots of questions about how I had met Jen, how often she had visited me, how often I had visited her, what I did for a living, what she did for a living, how I could afford to take so many holidays from my job. The questions went on, and on. Finally he went back to tapping on his keyboard. He did this for a few moments, and then he launched into a lecture about how if my relationship with Jen got serious I would need to apply for a visa. It turned out that my travel record indicated that I may be working and living in the US illegally. Obviously they have kept the records and they could see that the longest I had stayed had been 10 days but that still meant that they thought I was living there full time.
With this in mind I was nervous about entering the US when I had made an application for a full time visa. There is nothing untoward about going to America under the visa waiver programme when you are going through the formal visa process, but the concern is that the Inland Security Officer who meets you upon attempt to gain entry to the country will not believe that you are going to return, and this is the key to getting in. My advice is to be calm, you are in the right, answer any questions that have, honestly and don’t try any sarcasm or jokes. I have heard a lot of people say that the Americans don’t get sarcasm or irony, however, in my experience most do, but if you try it with an immigration officer you will find the stereotype is true. Maybe this is where it came from, I can imagine that when Oscar Wilde said his famous “I have nothing to declare….” statement, that it was met with a cold hard stare and the following “really? Can you just go through that door over there sir, take your clothes off and bend over, please?” Which thinking about it is probably something Wilde would have enjoyed.
I was waiting in line getting nervous, and I seem to have picked the queue with the people who could not fill out the visa waiver programme form properly. I am not exaggerating here, I was about tenth in line, and all 9 of the travellers in front of me had somehow managed to miss something off their form, or made a mistake. You may think that this would mean that I would get to the front quicker, but in reality what actually happened was that the first person would be sent back to tick the box that they had missed. They were told not to go to the back of the line, but to correct their error and then come back. Whilst moron 1 was ticking the box which said which sex they were, moron 2 would hand over their form only to have it returned to them when it was pointed out that the form had two sides and the back needed to be completed too. So moron 2 would go back to fill out the back, by which time moron 1 was back having filled in the form correctly. When they were done moron 2 was ready and so they would go up. Then moron 3 would discover that they too hadn’t filled out the form correctly, etc, etc.
All this messing about was increasing my nerves. I thought that if the woman checking the forms was annoyed she was more that likely to send me to secondary inquiries. I handed over my form. She asked me some routine questions, but instead of waiting for my answer, she proceeded to answer them for me. For example she would say “What are you here for?” and before I could answer she would say “holiday?” to which I would answer yes. “Who are you visiting?” and again before I could respond she would follow up her initial question with “friends?” “Yes” was again my response. I couldn’t help but think that this woman was so relieved to have someone that had managed to fill out the visa waiver form correctly that she decided not to trip me up with any difficult questions in order to at least get one person through her line that day.
We had an amazing Christmas together. We did the usual things that people do over Christmas, drink too much, eat too much and watch far too much telly. We celebrated Christmas in much the same way that most non-Christians celebrate; with a bastardised version. When I returned to work in the New Year many of my work colleagues wanted to know all the details of the big differences. As there were none I feel that I really let them down. The conversations with them would do something like this:
Them: So, Nick, did they celebrate Christmas differently out there?
Me: Um, no not really.
Them: Oh come on I bet you there were some differences?
Me: No, none that I can think of.
Them: Did you have turkey? I bet you didn’t have turkey did you?
Me: Yes we did actually.
Them (increasingly desperate): Roast potatoes?
Me: Yes, lovely fluffy ones.
Them: Stuffing?
Me: Yes.
Them: Queen’s Speech?
Me: No, actually we didn’t have the Queen’s speech.
Them (triumphantly): Aha! So there were some differences!
Me: No we never watch it at home either.
posted by Nick at 9:52 AM
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