Essays - Citizenship

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After 6 years of immigration ordeals, weird visas, emergency paroles for travel, heaps of money for lawyers, making only 35 percent of whatever concerts I played, and five 10 - hour days in line down at One Federal Plaza, I received my green card, unceremoniously, in the mail, in 1998. Mine was an ‘extraordinary ability’ green card - meaning that I had to prove I must be me to do what I do.

(It sounds better than it is - and if I had to do it again, I’d just marry a friend - which is way easier, I’ve heard).

A green card is basically just as good as being a citizen, so I was quite pleased with my newfound travel and work ease, until, in 2003, an immigration official pointed out that I had been over 5 months out of the US and if I were gone more than 6 months within 12 they would have the right to take my card away. After 5 years of green cardage, one is allowed to apply for citizenship, so I figured I’d better hop along that path.

Should it have been required to give up my Canadian citizenship, I would never have given it a second thought, for the record.

Happily, you can keep both, so I applied, all went swimmingly, and in the summer of 2005 after a test-like interview for which I had studiously memorized 43 presidents (even Coolidge), finally convinced myself that Ben Franklin never was one, and read a few history books, I passed with flying colours and received my 9 AM swearing-in notice. (It turns out they only ask you who the first president was as though you might be eight, or equivalent, dagnabbit).

So I dressed all nicely in a skirt and short-sleeved blouse, and went skipping along down to Pearl Street. For an hour or so, about 400 of us stood around in a hallway, which was sort of normal temperature, probably because there were 400 people in a small space. Then we were all herded into a huge, high ceilinged walnut-paneled courtroom with loads of eagles clutching arrows everywhere, which was quite impressive, except that for some reason there appears to be a law that courtrooms must kept at about 54% Farenheit (12 Celsius) like a sort of meat locker. Which, I suppose, they are.

After about an hour of shivering, the Dutch lady to my right and the Somalian lady to my left decided to get inventive. It turns out, if you huddle up next to each other, and cover yourselves in newspaper, you can actually stay quite warm. This is probably listed somewhere in The New York Judicial System / Inuit Survival Guide, but none of us had read that. We were given 5 minutes each hour to go to the washroom, which of course, for 200-odd ladies in a freezing room, is not enough. We were told that if we left the courtroom, and our name was called, we would be penalized, so everyone started to make friends, to stand up for the other just in case, so we could rush outside when there was no line.

We had all learned the anthem, and were looking forward to singing it in some sort of blaze of New World glory (and had even planned some operatic vibrato on FREEEEE) and cheering afterwards like at an all-American ball game, when four hours later the judge remembered to show up. He muttered some gibberish, we repeated after him (kind of), with our hands up, and then he pounded his gavel and took off. No song. 400 names were read alphabetically (aha! enough time for me to dash out for a quickie!) and we got a piece of paper and that was it.

Now, personally, I didn’t much mind, because I am Canadian and was doing this for convenience; but there were folks there with Stars and Stripes ties, flags, hats, even shoelaces; some older, some obviously finally achieving their American Dream at last with their families waiting outside with confetti and balloons (I kid you not - it was very sweet) and I really thought the INS could, and certainly should have managed a more considerate realization of the pinnacle of some folks’ life ambition.

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