Scenes at the Embassy

I was at the American Embassy this morning, applying for a visa for a working visit in mid November. Gentleice Goes to Washington (but that's another story for another day)!

It was my second time at the American Embassy, but I don't recall getting such a strong Ellis Island vibe before. This time, I was in the waiting room for over an hour and heard a number of interviews. I think someone could make a TV series centred around the waiting room of a Visa Services Department in an American Consulate. Every episode would feature a different applicant, hoping to get a visa to visit to land of the free and the plenty. The stories are so compelling, so human.

I saw two applications being turned down, and the reactions were painful to behold; shock, denial and finally (and most devastating of all), resigned dejection. One was a young man who was caught out in a (perhaps minor) mistruth by the visa officer. He denied having previously applied for a visa. It simply was not a very smart thing to lie about, given how easily these things can be checked on computerised systems.

Then there were the IT professionals who had gotten job offers in the US and were applying for work visas. These interviews seemed brutal! They were asked to detailed information about their American employers as well as their own job histories in Singapore. One gentleman admitted to having almost as many jobs as years he has worked in Singapore, which seemed to have set off several alarm bells. Another one was bringing his wife along and she too had to be interviewed. When asked how she met her husband, she revealed that it was an arranged marriage (I suppose that it is common in her culture and she felt no qualms about revealing such information in a roomful of strangers, but I would not have been so comfortable were I in her shoes).

Then there were the families where not all members speak English. So much potential for "lost in translation" scenarios (beyond my abilities to discern as I did not speak any of the foreign languages in question).

Most heartbreakingly, I saw an Indochinese gentleman who spoke halting English and was having an almighty struggle trying to understand and be undertood by the visa officers. I gathered that he was applying for a special category of visa that one officer called "diversity program" (a quota-based immigrant visa issued to applicants from countries with low immigration rates to the US). It was just heart-breaking to watch him patiently requesting for something that the officers repeatedly told him could not be done. He had also apparently filled in his application form wrongly because he had not understood what he was being asked. I found myself wondering how he and his family would survive in America when communication is so obviously a problem. I hope that he has family and friends there.

Watching this gentleman, I thought about America's almost mystic appeal to so many people. I wondered at the lengths that people would go for that precious green card. I wondered it it was worth the effort and the stress. What awaits some of these people in America, if they do not speak the language or have the right skills? Menial jobs at minimum wage? Then I got to thinking that maybe what they are leaving behind makes the effort and the stress (and the minimum wages) worthwhile. It is easy for us who live in Singapore to realise that American streets are NOT in fact paved in gold. Materially, at least, living conditions here are decidedly First World. Many of these hopeful applicants are fleeing poverty, unemployment and discrimination. So, yes, for them, there is metaphorical gold to be found on American streets.