Immigrant Diaries

The secret shoebox that distracted me with all those invalubles, held one item that actually triggered the "Chuck Norris for President" post.

It was my little account notebook where every cent was balanced,over my first eight nine months of living in America. This was done till debts were closed in India.

Except for my roomate from those old days, nobody has seen this notebook.

Here are the first three pages..




Lot of "fresh off the plane" memories. Note, how I spelt Pizza (Pietza?!?) two days after landing here. Was rolling on the floor laughing after seeing this and some other entries. Also note, how I learnt to return things in a store (a concept that was really new to me after entering the USA). Still remember asking a college senior, "What do you mean, return the phone? I already bought it! How will the store take it back after I already paid for it and there is nothing wrong with it?" and he said "Tell the store, that your friend gave you a hand me down phone!" and the store will take it back. And "take it back" they did, with an understanding smile and I just could not believe it!




Will never forget having a sleeping bag instead of a bed for nine months and using Kellogs cornflakes boxes as a shelf of sorts to keep all my stuff. We used to watch a hand me down four inch black and white TV, with the two extended antennas which had to be tweaked very precisely to the 0.01 th of a degree, to get NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. The funniest thing was that someone actually stole that TV, when we were moving from one apartment to another a year later.

Things have changed quite a bit now. There is a 52 inch LCD TV at home, which suggests that the growth is 13 times in 15 years, if of course, one measures oneself by the ratio of the diagonal TV size!

Somewhere, somehow, the lessons in those early days on growing up, taking care of oneself, dealing with debt, having the drive to get over a barrier, have all made me what I am today.

Life goes on, without the precious notebook!


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The grass is always Greener ?

The last two weeks have been busy and hectic, but nothing compared to what my green card awaiting colleagues and relatives are going through.

First they were told the good news that their waiting for I485 was over and all dates are current. This set off a rush of events. To mention a few:

1. Resumes were printed
2. Monster.com was bookmarked
3. Old photo albums were searched for that "maaplai" or "ponnu" look photo
4. Matrimonial ads were placed frantically
5. Air tickets were blocked with hopes of an "imminent marriage"
6. Realtors were consulted..

just to list a few!

Then came the big letdown. Just when all paperwork was kept ready and lawyers were consulted, the announcement was practically reversed!

I have seen all those happy faces turn sad. Most of them are over it now, partly because their faith in the Immigration department is near zero! All these years of waiting, while people who cross the border illegally are going to be legalized ! What kind of message does that send ? Why punish people who wait in line for a few years to legitimately cross over for residency and reward people who cross over illegally ?

Beats me!

One of my buddies sent me this forward, which takes a Gandhigiri approach to things.

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Hey There -

Were you affected and disheartened by the recent fiasco by the USCIS over priority dates? The priority dates were made current for July and were then retrogressed to a status of unavailable without accepting a single application.

One of our biggest handicaps is the lack of awareness and lack of media coverage of the problems surrounding the process of legal, skilled immigration. Most often, media is not looking for details and legalese, it is just looking for a good interesting story.

Some folks on the discussion forums at Immigration Voice came up with this brilliant idea of sending a bouquet of flowers to the Director of the USCIS on the same day. Imagine the director getting hundreds, if not thousands of bouquet on the same day. If we are able to get sufficient numbers, media will certainly get interested. This is our response, a la Gandhigiri, to USCIS's fiasco.

You may just cynically delete this email, thinking that it will not make a difference - or take a chance on it - maybe it will. If you are sending the flowers, then please take an additional minute to drop an email to legalimmi@gmail.com with subject line "Flowers Sent". It will help us keep track of the number of flowers being sent; we can alert the media only if we have a respectable number.

Please forward this email to your friends who might be interested.

Please note the following information regarding the flower delivery.

Date of delivery should be 10 July.

Select Occasion: "Sympathy"

The message: All the best for future Employment Based visa estimates. (You may use a different message but please don't be rude in your message)

Delivery location type is Business, US Citizenship and Immigration Service

Address:

Emilio T. Gonzalez
20 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20529

Phone number: 202-307-1565

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We live in interesting times!


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SSDP an update..

Same Shit Different Place : An update from the previous post.

I was reading the links provided by the anonymous commenter on the area that is the center of the controversy over the new Chennai airport location. I also got an update on the situation of the immigration protests on a followup news item on NPR today!

This is Deja vu of SSDP in slow motion. You wouldnt believe the similarity of the way people are treated by governments across the globe and how people treat the government !! Maybe most of you readers are worldly wise to know this. But I can write about this because I am just growing up!!

Why the comparison ?

Apparently the people in Chennai in that area were encouraged by the local politicians and MMDA (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority) to put their life savings and build houses in that governmnent owned land! How could people build houses with their life savings in a land where they do not own "patta's" a.k.a "title deeds". Maybe I should find some spot in Madras and start building!! I thought it was the poor people erecting tatched huts (something that can be done in a day or two), but NO! There are brick and mortar buildings that would take months to construct. How could someone be so naive and build a house in land that they couldnt possibly own? And if they have been given some certificate by the government or its agency, they should be able to defend themselves legally against any attempts to evict them. But I am really torn because,
a. Today, the bad guys seem to be able to manipulate gullible folks with effortless ease!
b. These guys could have been led on by the same local politicians who are tryiing to make it look like they are protecting these people today!

Anyways, the links were informative. Next time please put your name when you comment.

Now back to San Francisco :

Apparently the IRS has set up a website, hotline so that the "illegal aliens" like a commenter pointed out, can PAY THEIR TAXES !! We dont want these guys in the US but we want their money!! These folks are paying their taxes to show that they are "law abiding" and they do it to win some brownie points with the INS in case they are legalized later! They actually played a piece from the automated IRS (Internal Revenue Service) which says "if you are unable to get a TAX ID number because you are here as a ....., do ....". The article also interviewed some dude who spoke in Spanish and said "no American wants to do what I do here. I have been working here for 10 years because of that". Then the reporter went on to say that if only these people could be legally brought into the US to do these jobs ("sheetrocking, painting, washing dishes in restaurants, etc.), there would be no issue!

I thought we get our news from the media. Looks like they will take alternate sides every other day on issues like this!! One day they will do an expose on the poor folk. The very next day on the government!

I will toss a coin for tomorrows news updates. In the meantime the lesson from this for me is "Governments will be governments, and gullible people will stay gullible! The poor (including the lower middle class today), will always get the shaft!".

I think I have finally figured out why I still have these takes on these "isssooos"! All said and done I have "lower middle class values", something that was pointed out a few years ago by a friend in the USA!! Now that will be a post for another day, when I am fully awake and in a good mood and can proofread before I hit the publish button!!

Acronyms and more..

YIMBY !

(Yes, In My Back Yard. I thought I was being creative and had coined YIMBY based on NIMBY. Went to WIKI and YIMBY is not just there, but there are YIMBY movements across the USA to bring affordable housing to certain areas !!)



The mouth watering goes on..

SSDP : (This one didnt turn up any WIKI hits. SSDD stands for "Same Shit Different Day". SSDP is Same Shit Different Place! (I will take all credit for coining this one). Why SSDP ?

Two different events in two different places.

Chennai:

We are flying from Chennai to Singapore on our way back, and they give us some Malay Straits newspaper in Tamizh. The newspaper was obviously pro Jayalalitha(opposition party) and was pretty much a government bashing propaganda machine. The headlines was about how the Airport Authority of India had spotted a location for a new Chennai airport but they couldnt go through with the plans because
a. some people had illegally erected huts in that location and
b. a political party called PMK had threatened to protest, move against the local government, etc. etc. they tried to evict those people or even try to relocate them and pay them monetary compensation.

I was planning to write about this, especially after my experience at the Chennai Airport where the place is operating at pretty much maximum efficiency just to keep the existing number of flights moving. If they add more flights in and out of the place, they will have to expand.

San Francisco :

Was listening to KQED (local public radio station) last week and the headlines ? A whole bunch of people protesting outside the Immigration office in San Franciso (Dept. of Homeland Security which encompasses the former INS or Immigration and Naturalization service). They were protesting the raids that have been taking place over the last 9 months where 13000 illegal immigrants have been caught and deported. The DHS says they are specifically targeting repeat offenders who are illegal and are involved in shady activities. The people outside are saying (and I kid you not):

"people are scared to send their kids to school or go to the local doctor because they are worried that they might be picked up by the DHS". If you are living illegally in a country, shouldn't you be worried anyways ? They were claiming the raids are a slap in the face of the immigrant community, especially after all the immigration reforms promised by the newly empowered democrats. But the bottomline is, legal vs. illegal!

Before the illegal immigrant community decides to flame this post, I would like to mention why I even put this in the blog. A couple of years ago, San and me were going towards downtown San Jose. The car in front of me was swearving, speeding and we could make out that it was either a bad driver or someone who was not aware of rules. Just while we were talking about it, the driver sped up to cross a light which had already turned yellow. Problem was that this was a light where the perpendicular road was a highway exit, that too at an angle and the people standing at the exit had already started turning. This driver went and hit the first car that came out, smack in the middle. The car spun a few times and came to a stop. The middle aged lady who was hit had to break open the window and get out. She was bleeding from all the cuts and bruises. San and me went to help her. The cops came and we were held as witnesses.

The car that ran the light was actually being driven by a lady. The minute she realized that she had hit the car, she ran out and the guy who was with her in the passenger seat went and sat in the driver seat. Later while we were helping the lady go to the ambulance, this guy walks up to me and says "please say you saw me driving the car!" and walked away.

There were other witnesses as well. All of us told the cops the same story! That the driver was actually the lady and had given a description of the lady. 10 minutes later the cop told us that she had been picked up and was an illegal immigrant and that is why the guy was trying to cover for her!! My take on it was that if you are illegal, by the very definition of the word, you have no respect for the law and you are going to be a menace to others intentionally or otherwise.

But Chennai or SFO, people who do things that are illegal, still think they have a right to do what they want and actually protest, strike, etc. and get to bully the guys who are actually trying to do their job. SSDP !!