I'm Waiting For The Man

I’m Waiting For The Man – Velvet Underground

Yesterday I went snowboarding, for the first time in my life. At Hunter Mountain, a place ‘dedicated to creating mountain memories, one smile at a time’ – that’s right. These past weeks, the Winter Olympics have been presenting the world with smiling professionals, the white of their teeth only outshone by the whites of their eyes as they effortlessly fly down the Vancouver mountainsides in pursuit of the gold.
Sure, the Olympics have also presented us with spectacular crashes, making for great sports TV, but so far, the athletes that somersaulted when they should have slalomed jump back up from their wipeouts disappointed but unscathed, tousled thumbs up. Winter sports are loads of easy-going fun! Snow is a welcoming, happy place to fall into! The fastest competitors beam at the cameras as their challengers at the top of the slope are lining up for their share of the joy, determined to avoid the snow angel traces left on the run.

Since yesterday I have learned two things.
First, that snowboarding is ruthless. I took a beating on the baby slope. It wasn’t pretty. I mean, I’m not the world’s most physical girl. I’m as clumsy as they come, but I had never imagined to be bested by a three degree incline. For every one time I got up, I was knocked down twice.

The thing is: a snowboard has the disposition of a very, very disgruntled bull. Riding it is like being roped onto the back of an angry, accident-prone rhinoceros in an uncharacteristically cold climate. Every time you think you might be on the verge of gaining any control, it tries to throw you off, either catapulting you into the trees or driving you into the snow – meaning, a tightly packed wall of white. ‘Don’t fight the board’, my sweetheart – a former semi-professional boarder, so he knows these things – advises. ‘You have to feel the board. Only by letting the board take you for a ride can you learn how to ride it.’ That’s all very Zen, but what it means is this: I either struggle with the board, and fall on my face; or I surrender to the board, and fall on my ass. I’m screwed either way.

I have also learned that when it comes to falling, snow is not a happy place to plummet into; once, maybe, but certainly not twenty-seven times in a row. It is not soft and fluffy, like bunnies; it is unyielding and impregnable, like the Berlin Wall. At some point, your tail bone feels like it stuck its head inside a church tower bell right when three full grown monks started pulling the ropes to chime it. It actually rings. After a while, your tail bone just feels like it has liquefied. It turns the texture of Jell-O. You won’t know whether it is sweating, or crying, or bleeding, or all of the above. And you won’t want to know.

Today, as I am being tenderly introduced to a string of muscles that I didn’t even know were allowed in a healthy body, I realize that snowboarding is not unlike trying to change your visa status. The more you try to gain some level of control on the process, the more you get slapped around.

I went to the downtown Department of Homeland Security last October, for information and advice on how to change my status from a B2 (tourist) to a J2 (dependent status, meaning you are married to a J1 visa holder – that would be my sweetheart). I made an appointment; I surfed the web for forms, and printed them all; I made copies of all the things I thought would be important to include – my marriage certificate, my passport. All I needed was the answer to my main question: is this application complete and if not, what else do I need make it so?

The short and corpulent lady behind the desk doesn’t get it. ‘How can I help you?’ she starts. I say, ‘I want to apply for a status change from B2 to J2, and I was wondering exactly what forms I need to fill out to do that.’
- ‘What do you mean?’
- ‘I mean, I am a B2 visa holder now, but I got married to a J1 visa holder, and that means I am eligible for a J2 dependent status. I want to change my status. How do I do that?’

The quadrangle lady looks at my visa. ‘But your visa has not expired yet!’
- ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I do not want to extend my current visa; I want to change my status. The sooner I change my status, the sooner I can start applying for a social security number and find a job.’
- ‘But it is only October now,’ the lady replies. ‘Your visa will not expire until January 2010.’
- ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I do not want to extend my current visa; I want to change my status.’
- ‘To what?’ the lady says.
- ‘A J2.’
- ‘Why would you want a J2? Your B2 hasn’t even expired yet!’ the lady says.

This could take a while. Unfortunately, the lady does not have a while. With ninety-nine more schmucks standing in line behind me, and a coffee break coming up, she decides she really doesn’t need this shit right now. ‘What forms did you bring?’ she sighs. I show her the forms I found online: I printed everything that said anything about changing statuses. ‘Fill out this one. If you have any further questions: everything you need to know is in the form.’ Her chubby fingers snatch up one of the forms spread out before me. She squeezes the pages so violently I can almost hear them sigh. When she lets go, I see dimples where her knuckles should be. ‘And make sure you pay the fee, if you want your application to be processed.’ She draws a clumsy circle around an amount on one of the crippled pages.

- ‘Are you sure this is the right form?’ I try again. ‘I just plucked it off the internet because it mentions J1 visa applications. It doesn’t mention J2 anywhere. Is this is the form I need?’
- ‘Read the form, everything is in there. I am glad I have answered all your questions. Have a nice day. Next!’ she wraps it up. And before I know it, I’m back on the street with no clue what to do.

So I fill out the form the lady pointed out, add all the documents the form tells me to include, write an accompanying letter, pay the $ 300 fee and send it all to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) somewhere in Vermont.

October turns to November; December comes and goes. With January, a blue letter arrives. It is a notice from the USCIS somewhere in Vermont, stating that the evidence submitted with my form is insufficient. Apparently, I have neglected to enclose a rather essential form, the Certificate that states that I am actually eligible for the so coveted Exchange Visitor Status, to be filled out by the J1 visa holder. Why is this the first time I hear of the existence of such a form?

Today it’s February 22 2010, the day after my first snowboarding experience. I smell like a giant breath mint from the royal coat of tiger balm I rubbed on every sore spot. It’s been well over a month and a half since I mailed USCIS the missing certificate of eligibility, and well over three and a half months since I first put my application in motion. I have been given the runaround by visa managers on the perpetual verge of a nervous breakdown; I have been put on endless hold; whenever I was put through to a government official I couldn’t water board them into sharing any information – USCIS won’t even tell me if my application is complete. ‘It has not been 60 days since we have received you certificate, ma’am. Your application is being processed in Vermont,’ they keep repeating until I thank them for their time, and hang up. I give up. I surrender. I am learning. I’ll wait.

They make it look so easy on TV: in Coming To America, Eddy Murphy is legally working before his royal penis even has a chance to get dirty again. You never hear anybody on The Godfather complain about being put on hold by Immigration Services. I bet the Corleones never had to teeth-clench their way through fifteen minutes of canned symphonic rock. Maybe Marlon Brando made Immigrations an offer they couldn’t refuse. Maybe Al Pacino convinced them never to take sides against the family again – ever. Either way, it’s welcome to America – make yourselves at home.

Ah, good old pre-9/11 USA. Where underprivileged Czechoslovakian girls could grow up to be Secretary of State, and an Austrian Oak could morph into a Californian Governator. I don’t think Arnold Schwarzenegger or Madeleine Albright had to grind their way through the same sluggish procedure as I do. Somehow I doubt if they ever spent days turning into weeks turning into months of waiting around. I’m pretty sure Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin, or Ang Lee, or Martina Navratilova, for that matter, were never taken for a ride by Immigration Services. I guess it helps when you can demonstrate an actual talent of sorts. For certain, they never had to deal with any xenophobic discouragement policy of Homeland Security – that institute is very post-9/11.

Maybe living in America was simpler back then; maybe people were just smarter than I am. Maybe they were naturals, who intuitively knew how to fly down the slopes of the Grand Slalom of Immigration Services. As in snowboarding, learning how to be in control of the system is probably a skill that can be acquired. Maybe everybody gets smacked around the first couple of tries. Maybe you forget about all the beatings the second you’ve made it all the way down the mountainside. I don’t know. All I know is that, until I master any skill, I had better get used to being taken for a ride.