Visa Rage

In April I am going to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles for a few weeks. I am much looking forward to it – as a sort of reward to myself for two years hard labour being Chair of my Faculty. I think I’ve mentioned before that my stint finished in January. Now I’m just plain busy, not on the sort of work schedule that makes you look with envy at the hours of junior hospital doctors.

Anyway, because I shall be getting living expenses from the Getty, I need a “J1” US visa (and the husband needs a “J2”). Let the bureaucracy commence.

In fact, that bureaucracy has sprung a variety of surprises -- from unexpected pockets of  painless efficiency to a style of “processing” designed to make the average middle-aged academic feel more like a known heroin-dealer seeking political asylum.

First off, I needed a new passport. Unwilling to wait weeks for it (as I had to have it to get the visa), I went for the pricey option. For £108 the alarmingly named “Identity and Passport Service” will renew a passport within a day. I turned up in their office behind Victoria Station at 10.00 a.m, waited for about 5 minutes before I could deposit my documents and pay up. I went back to collect the new passport at 4.00. Not a queue in sight. Hassle-free, if you can afford it (a big “if”).

The next thing was a marriage certificate. My husband and I have different surnames and there were hints in the American information that we might need documentary proof of marriage. Of course, we couldn’t find it. But the General Register Office now lets you order a copy online. If you don’t know the certificate’s “index number” (who on earth would?), but do know the date of the wedding, then £10 will get it posted to you within 15 days. For £26 you can have it posted the next day. Mine arrived just as promised within three days (though, predictably enough, I’d found the original almost as soon as I had pressed the "pay" button).

The American part of the process was rather different. Let me say here and now that everyone I dealt with was personally charming, helpful and, on occasion, witty. But the system they were operating seemed designed to get as much money out of you as they dared and to make you feel as disempowered as possible.

The Getty had provided all the documentation they could from their end and paid part of the fee. All I had to do was gather together my bits and pieces and make an appointment. In addition to the passport and marriage certificate, you need proof that you are likely to come back to the UK (mortgage statement, utility bill, letter for your employer etc), a load of completed forms downloaded from the web (including a list of all your previous visits to the US) and a couple of photographs strictly 2inches by 2 inches. (This isn’t a size that British photo booths will produce, and I gave up --  but, despite the fierce warnings about other sizes being rejected, they didn’t actually appear to mind.)

But that’s only the beginning. You used to be able to do everything by post. After 9/11 anyone wanting a J1 (the visa for academic exchange visitors and the like) must have an interview in either London or Belfast. Not too bad from Cambridge, but more than a day’s trip if you live in (say) Lampeter.

To get an appointment you have to phone up on a premium phone line (to a call centre in Scotland, to judge from the accents of the people you talk to), give some more personal details and pay $100 by credit card. The phone bill ticking up certainly encourages you to be brisk. Though I had to ring up three times, as the appointments for February had not been “released” when I first called.

We got an appointment for 12.00 on a Monday. You are not allowed to turn up at the embassy early. If you do, you will wait outside even if it is pissing with rain. The first document check takes place outside, in Grosvenor Square. Then you go in through an airport style security check in a side entrance to the embassy. You are made to deposit your mobile phones and, in my case, keys (they don’t like car-door remote controls). At this point there are notices telling you not to let your friends and relatives loiter in Grosvenor Square while you are inside. The attractions of Grosvenor Square are limited, but this made me want to reclaim my right to loiter wherever and whenever I liked.

You then walk along a narrow walkway across the front of the building (nice view of Grosvenor Square!)  to the other side entrance, are given a number and sent upstairs to a large waiting area. Our first appointment came within 20 minutes or so, with a friendly woman who checked all the documents. You then sit down and wait for your number to be called again for the “interview” proper.

We waited for 2 hours or so. It’s hard even to read during this time. The numbers don’t get called out in order, so you have to keep paying attention to the tannoy and screens. You quickly lapse into servile mode – just sitting, watching and waiting for the numbers. There’s nothing else to do. No newspapers or anything like that – just some rip-off sandwiches, an American travel brochure and posters on the walls of beaming Iraqis who have just exercised their right to vote.

The interview seems to last about 5 minutes maximum (unless you’re a problem case). The man was, again,  extremely nice. He asked us about our research and agreed that the Getty was a very lovely place to be going to. Documents approved, we then went and paid up once again to have the passports sent back by courier (the only approved method). They arrived within three days.

Ok, it’s churlish to complain (I don't after all live in Lampeter). But I couldn’t help wondering if all this wasn’t a bit out of proportion for a research trip to the US by two academics who had both had US visas before. And I couldn’t help wondering too what it would all be like (getting into the US or the UK – let’s not imagine that we are any friendlier when it comes to immigrant foreigners) if weren’t white, didn’t have middle-class jobs and very respectable passports.  More unpleasant and even more humiliating, I’m afraid.

Comments

[Tony Keen]

A few years ago, shortly after the stricter US immigration regulations came in, I was discussing them with someone, when I was struck by the revelation that this was Hadrian's Wall all over again. For all the practical functions of both, at least as important is to demonstrate to those crossing the border that they are now entering a more powerful state than that from which they have come.

I now use that when talking about Hadrian's Wall to students.

[JS]

For (future) information, the small photograph shop near the Lion Yard Centre in Cambridge does the relevant photographs for US visas. Somewhere on the relevant website is a link to companies providing that service, including the one in Cambridge. Much more galling is the 'requirement' on the form to use a paper size unavailable outside of North America! I found the J1 process (and obtaining a Social Security Number after arrival) generally fast and efficient and all of the US embassy staff were fast and efficient. However, the waiting system before and after entering the embassy is dehumanising. Now I have received a slew of California tax forms, and have absolutely no idea what to do with those...

[WA]

Mary, regard yourself lucky that your husband is of a different sex, and thus able to go along with you on a category 2 visa. My partner and I (both British) are both of the same sex, so imagine the hoops we had to jump through when he was offered a job in the US over five years ago. Samesex relationships simply are not acknowledged in the US immigration process. It would have been easier for my partner to bring a dog along with him.

I ended up going along as a student, while he obtained a work visa. It was all legitimate, and it turned out for the best; I was already finishing graduate school in the UK, and I continued to get another graduate degree in the US, and move into a new career in higher education. Because I am aptly qualified, after getting my degree I was offered work teaching at the college where I'd studied, so was able to stay on beyond the end of my studies as a visiting professor. During this time, I might add, many American students received the benefit of my wisdom as a teacher; I certainly feel proud of making a positive contribution to American life.

But at no time did our status in the US acknowledge my partner and I were a couple. It would, in the long term, become difficult for us to arrange things for us both to stay on an ongoing basis, so we made other plans. We are now living in Australia, which recognises same-sex de facto relationships. The process for us to become permanent residents in Australia was relaxed and much easier. It was also refreshing to be called a 'migrant' rather than a 'nonresident alien'.

And it was incredibly affirming to visit the UK to register our own civil partnership in 2006 (we have been together for fourteen years). It made me appreciate British values of tolerance, however much we might still grumble about some things.

As you say, dealing with the individuals in US immigration is fine: everyone I've ever dealt with has been friendly, charming in fact. And I am a great lover of America, and Americans, and their openness and friendliness, many other things, and it is a great privilege to visit the country, as someone points out.

We were lucky. We know that. We were admirably supported by my partner's company, and its human resources department. He has a very good job, though we expect no privileges from that; we'd just like to enjoy equal treatment in the system for ourselves and others in our circumstance. We have no desire to be part of a culture war. We simply want to live our lives.

Most of my friends are Americans, and they're ashamed of the injustice in the US immigration system. My partner's colleagues in what might be deemed a rather conservative profession in a rather conservative state seemed perplexed by the lack of fairness. So when will openness and friendliness extend to all aspects of public life in the US, and when will fearmongers and radical hate activists stop dictating policy?

[Oliver Nicholson]

Heaven knows Servius needs editing - have you ever read Fraenkel's review of the Harvard edition ?
OPN

[Morris Hart]

I'm sorry you didn't know that all you required to reach your destination was fly to Mexico walk across the US border from, say, Juarez to El Paso (multitudes of Mexicans and other non-US citizens enter the US in this manner daily),then catch a reasonably cheap Southwest flight on to your California destination. Very likely no one would look inside your passport on this route. Of course, you may find the return trip problematic, as the Mexican government may not choose to allow your unimpeded return to the UK. You should probably check on that.

[Susan]

I was intrigued to hear Tim Lacy report that he was required to obtain a passport to travel to Ottawa. I checked with Canada customs: in fact, you did not require a passport to enter Canada, you required a passport to re-enter the US. Canada requires a proof of identity but accepts several types of documents. Not long ago, an American student visiting Canada with his high-school marching band was not allowed to return to the US because he didn't have an American passport. It took some doing to get him home (of course this made national news here). No doubt American travellers are now advised that they will require a passport but this is to prevent such international incidents and not to satisfy Canadian regulations.
In response to other comments defending US self-protectionism: I suspect many Canadians feel as I do that, while Americans adjust to a new feeling of vulnerability, such inconveniences as bureaucratic wastefulness are understandable and forgivable. However, I await the day the American government embraces the new science of risk-management and begins to weigh properly the gains and losses brought about by their responses to possible threats.

[Q.H. FLACK]

SO WICKEDLY SUBVERSIVE
AND YOU COULD HAVE BEEN EDITING SERVIUS
BUT THAT MIGHT NEED WORK CUTIEPIE

[Xjy]

Great story about Amartya Sen.

Once, in the old GDR, there was a big gala do for Bertolt Brecht (who of course never won the Nobel Prize) in Berlin. The guest of honour turned up in his usual prole leather jacket and three-day stubble, and was turned away at the door (stands to reason; dress code - if skin colour isn't a factor - always takes precedence). Being an obliging bloke, like AS, he did as he was asked - and sloped off.

Performance Art.

[Mary]

mrs d-f is a lucky woman...what's her secret?

[Alex D-F]

A big moan, but first a technical comment: there are I recall 3 prices in UK: 108 for a one-day service, 72 for a seven-day service, and 42 for an indefinite service. AD-F paid 72 and was (like Prof. Beard) pleased with his treatment, he got his passport in the alloted time; he was only miffed when Mrs. D-F paid only 42 but got hers in fewer than 7 days.
But your assault on the US system is completely unjustified. It is based on 2 false premises. One, that going to the US is some kind of a human right; Two, that they should somehow privilege bourgeois humans. Your professed sympathy for those less fortunate than yourself is based on a British assumption of racism. But it's precisely the virtue of the US system that they treat professors and politicians as shittily as everybody else. Theirs is not a system in which Nancy Mitford = Staatswissenschaft. That is a British speciality.
Amartya Sen, Identity & Violence (2006) is instructive here. This nobel-prize-winning economist had on his passport the address 'Master's Lodge, trinity college cambridge', but on his skin the colour brown. Arriving at Heathrow, the official asks him whether perchance the master of trinity is a friend of his. Being of a philosophical turn of mind (bad move - never let them know you're clever), Prof. Sen pauses to consider the implications of his possibly being a friend to himself. The pause is long enough to instil doubt in the official's mind & off he is whisked and only after considerable (& for a customs officer, difficult) research is the identity of the master of trinity and the man with brown skin confirmed.
Surely your interviewer's technique is more honest. Why be indignant? He's doing research just like you.

[Boris]

So what? That's just the way it is. And it's one hundred times worse trying to obtain visas and registration for travel to (or within) former Soviet Union. Whose fault is it if you cannot locate proper documents or proof of legal marriage? Don't blame the government or Bush or Blair for that. Blame yourself.

[Monica]

Let me put it this way: when I sent my passport up to NY for my visa (fortunately, my passport was still good), the lovely folks at the British embassy thought it would be fun to mail my passport back to SOMEBODY ELSE in a completely different state.

Mind you, I didn't then receive a call/mailing from them saying, "oops! We messed up!" No, I received a call from a very nice girl in Maine who said to me, "I seem to have your passport and other important proofs of identity. I'm sure you're freaking out. Where can I mail this to you?"

Next time (if there is a next time), it might be worth the five hour drive and insane cost of staying in NYC to get it done in person.

[Gerard Mulholland]

I wonder if Mrs Blair had to submit to this rigmarole for her US Visas entitling her to lecture there for a fee?
Does anyone remember seeing her in the waiting lounge?

Today I went to collect my son's new UK Passport from the Passport Office in the Consular Office of the British Embassy here in Paris.
I was rather surprised to hear the accent of the British Passport Officer who gave me the Passport. I asked her where she was from and she replied "I'm from the States".

I wonder how many British citizens hand out American Passports in the US Embassy here in Paris.

The world is mad and getting madder.

[Xjy]

When I had exams my supervisor used to urge me not to use my imagination.

When I face security, id, border, customs, authorization checks of any kind I take his advice one step further, and do my damndest NOT TO THINK.

Empty head, empty eyes, wooden face... with a bit of luck the zombie robot might pass their inspection. The slightest spark of thought, humour, irony or wicked subversiveness, the faintest hint of life, and I'd be cooked.

Airports are probably the most unpleasant places I have to endure on a regular basis. Passport offices etc only roll round every five years or so.

Just to stir the pot a bit - do you know anybody with a second-class British passport? The kind that ex-colonials but non-patrials have? I do. They know exactly what it's like to flit about on the banks of the Styx rejected by Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.

[Chuck Martel]

If people would just stop trying to blow up our embassies, we wouldn't have this problem.

[Tim Lacy]

Mary,

U.S. citizen here. I'm sorry about your passport troubles. I recently traveled to Canada (Ottawa), and was somewhat surprised to learn that I had to renew my passport to travel there. I also had problems with my photo size. Who do Canadians think we are?! :) Just kidding Susan (with regard to the post above). Ottawa was ~lovely~ except for the rain.

I don't know how much first-hand experience you have in the U.S., but you'll have an ~okay~ time in LA. It's not a great place to sample what the U.S. is really all about - although the automobile traffic can be similar. Otherwise, you and your husband will mostly be exposed to the Paris Hilton side of the country once outside the Getty: blonde, tan, desperate for attention, pretentious, money hungry, etc. Those vices exist in other U.S. cities, but it's undeniable that they concentrate in L.A.

Come to Chicago when you can! - TL

[Zareen P. Bharucha]

"I couldn’t help wondering too what it would all be like (getting into the US or the UK – let’s not imagine that we are any friendlier when it comes to immigrant foreigners) if weren’t white, didn’t have middle-class jobs and very respectable passports. More unpleasant and even more humiliating, I’m afraid."
--------------------------------
While the rest of this entry made me sympathize with you and your husband, marvel at the amount of money you had to spend and laugh at what is plainly a very stupid set of policy makers, this last bit made me sit up and took the smile off my face.

Again, my own personal experience -
I am Indian, here for my studies - and now, for research. My 'case' is made almost entirely problem free by the fact that: 1. My parents are (still, alas) supporting me.
2. One of them is a world-class surgeon with an impeccable reputation. The other is loved by everyone she meets (including visa officials, who don't seem to have much love to spare).
3. They are both rich, and there is no way that their support whilst I am here will waver.

Great.
Still - the two times I have applied for a student's visa, the following things irked, irritated and then enraged me.
a.) I had to submit loads of personal financial and medical documents IN ORIGINAL to the embassy.
b.) In the event that they were unhappy, I was 'warned' that I would have to travel to Mumbai for an interview. Here, if I wanted to be able to sit down and have a coffee whilst I waited, I would have to pay a not-inconsiderable fee to gain entry into the embassy's 'lounge'. Please. Give me a break. The security gaurds outside the nuclear medicine labs where some of my dad's colleagues work are more hospitable to complete strangers.
c.) The woman who gave my forms the once-over demanded I submit them in her own specified order (which made no logical sense to me) rather than the file I had, where: documents were grouped by category, colour coded, listed and backed up with photocopies, which were notarized by an advocate, testifying to their originality.
Like you said, it's churlish to complain, but the PRINCIPLE of the thing got to me: I am a thinking, rational adult, backed up no less by pots of my parents money, going to England to do a PhD. (In case anyone decides to attack that sentence: I have a 5 year pay-back plan and am not as spoilt as I sound, so don't even go there.) I have all my forms. I have taken the trouble to present them brilliantly well. I have paid all the monies due, in ADVANCE of my visit.
And still, this INDIAN woman is telling me what is acceptable to - I kid you not - "The British Government".

I would SO like to describe how she wrung the guts out of the OTHER people in the room, who were:
1.) Browner than me
2.) Not backed up by a whole file of bank statements
3.) Scared that they didn't have her manicured nails and (fake) pudding-island accent.

But I leave that to your imagination.

The simple truth is - long-drawn out procedures like this are designed to kill the intellect with boredom, bankruptcy and sheer frustration. So this is what I tell my friends now:
Colour-code your files! REFUSE to let 'her' mess them up. Demand a date by which your original copies will be sent back to you. If you do go for a interview after all that (which I doubt you will), be polite, sure. But DO NOT be servile and sugary and stare at your feet whilst you're being spoken to.
Honestly. Even people who THINK are made to feel it's wrong. What nonsense.

Right. Rant over. Now that I actually have the damn visa I might as well get back to studying, since that' what I endured it all to do.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

After all your visa and passport travails, do enjoy your scholarly time in California.
In the English town I lived in there was at least one studio which knew all about American specifications for official photographs.
As someone on an American passport who lived in England for twenty years I know what it means to negotiate the intricacies and constantly replenished queues of Lunar House in Croydon, but my annual nightmare ended after four years, when I was given an "indefinite stay" visa.
At least you did not experience the indignity of the novelist Ian McEwan, who a few years ago was refused entry into the United States because his visa did not allow him to lecture in the country for a fee. It took high official intervention to resolve that.

[Xjy]

Mary, I think you are repressing the "rage" bit of your title in the piece itself. You have every right to be enraged, both for yourself and for people living in Lampeter, Toxteth or Shetland. All these ridiculous formalities and costs are typical of an Old Regime on its last legs (just like the ironic detachment of most of the minions - except the torturers).

The peaceful everyday exchange of ideas, research, experience etc is what makes human society tick. Wartime measures (curfew, blackout, paranoid id checks, "walls have ears", armoured combat points) and their concomitants (black markets, spivs, fatalism, devil-may-care irresponsibility) just gum everything up.

Just as in "1984" we're "living" on a permanent war footing. (Walter Benjamin characterized the "modern" mentality as "die Katastrophe in Permanenz" as early as the 30s, taking Baudelaire as his guide to our modern Inferno!)

I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay in LA, but then, the American people aren't the same as the US state.

You're not being "churlish", you're being apologetic and (in your own word) "servile". You should instead be outdoing Lear's elements:

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head!"

There, doesn't that feel better? :-)

[Katharine Edgar]

Just a tip on the photo thing: take it with a digital camera and then you can resize it in a matter of seconds to whatever size you need.

[Max]

Once upon a time the embassy was open to the public and held free jazz concerts.

You're lucky you renewed your passport now. It'll increase the time before you're forced to be interviewed/fingerprinted for an ID card and your fingerprints will be checked against the records of unsolved crimes. Mind you, your private medical records are already about to be shared with drugs companies; see http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org.

[Susan]

Here in Canada, many of us are startled by the new passport requirement for Canadians entering the US. Consider how long our shared border is; I myself cannot imagine the quantity of traffic and goods moving daily in both directions. Usually, our national evening news contains stories about health care, global warming, education, parliamentary brawls, what somebody thinks about George W., the equipment with which our military makes do, and reports about who was lately murdered. We are also looking forward to Lord Black's trial in Chicago. Now, we daily hear hardship testimonials as people travel across vast Canadian distances to get passports in time before their pre-booked vacations as well as unending complaints about the paperwork backlog at passport offices. To what end this bureaucracy? Who do Americans think we are? Could they be afraid of Canadians without passports?
The US often seems funny to Canadians because, among other things, it is so massive that many within can't see things to scale. Everyone here knows someone who has tried to explain to an American visitor that Canada has its own currency, for example. That said, like many things the US imposes upon Canada and the world, the passport requirement would, at very least, be funnier if the failures and weaknesses of the US affected the US as much as they do others.