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 lot of people want
to know how my INS interview went on Thursday. (The story so
far. Derb applied for U.S. citizenship last year. Yes, before
9/11, thanks very much. After filling out forms & getting fingerprinted,
the next big step is the interview. You have to show a reasonable
command of English and answer some questions about U.S. history
and government. Now read on.) Well, here is my report from the belly
of the beast — in this case, the INS offices in Garden City,
NY.
I'll admit
I was apprehensive. Yes, I can speak English; and yes, I've tried
to inform myself about U.S. history and government. Bureaucrats,
though, have a separate Constitution all their own, and I haven't
exactly been polite about the INS on this site. See
this one, for example. If any vindictive INS officer wanted
to get back at me, the interview would be a good time to do it.
Some years
ago I accompanied a Chinese friend to his driver's test in New York
City. We got stuck in a traffic jam on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
and were 15 minutes late getting to the test center. The examiner
was one of those fierce cubic black ladies that New York City specializes
in, and she was furious. "You don't come late to a driver's
test," she thundered. "Nobody comes late to a driver's
test. You're not late when you have to take a plane,
are you? Did you ever know anyone miss a plane? Right! Well,
this is more important than catching a plane. This is a D-R-I-V-E-R-'S
T-E-S-T."
We apologized,
we cringed, we groveled. After a few minutes watching us eat dog
poop, the cubic lady graciously allowed that my friend might take
his test. She got in the car with him and off they went. My friend
had actually been operating a car for months, and was a perfectly
good driver. He stopped at the stop signs, he signaled clearly,
and he finished up with the sweetest bit of parallel parking I've
ever seen.
Now, when you
take a New York State driver's test, at the end of it the examiner
hands you a blue form with a long list of items on it. Alongside
each item are two boxes: a "fail" box, and a "needs
attention" box. If any of the "fail" boxes is ticked,
you've failed the test. Well, at the end of my friend's test the
lady handed him his blue form, turned on her heel (one of the very
few times I've actually seen that done) and strode off.
She had ticked
every single "fail" box.
In view of
the things I've been saying about the INS, I half-expected some
similar experience on Thursday. I wished I'd been a bit less cavalier
with my past comments. I heard the voice of my dear old mother:
"No thought for the morrow — that's you, our John! No
thought for the morrow!" It's true, of course — who knows
you like your mother knows you? I live in the present. Never regret
the past, never worry about the future. This makes for a cheerily
stress-free life, but it has its down side.
So I showed
up at the INS office Thursday morning carrying a certain load of
apprehension. Now, I don't want to break any hearts out there in
reader-land, and I'm ready for accusations of having succumbed to
Stockholm Syndrome. I still have issues with U.S. immigration policy,
both particular and general. However, in all honesty I have to report
a pleasant, polite, and efficient INS experience. There was hardly
any waiting — less than at the average doctor's office. I went
in at 10:00 am and came out at 1:30 pm, but half of that was optional.
Once you've passed the test (yes! I passed!) you can sit and wait
for your appointment letter — for the oath ceremony, that is
— to be printed, or you can have them send it in the mail.
I chose to sit and wait. Both the INS and the USPS do their best,
I am sure; but both have a certain screw-up rate; and by a well-known
principle in the Theory of Probability, the rate is compounded if
you string them together.
[Though just
one remark here about the sitting and waiting. In a room of 80 or
90 people, all of whom have had enough interactions with the INS
to know that there is waiting to be sat through at every stage in
the progress of their applications, there was me reading a book
(some Robert Cohen short stories I'm reviewing for a newspaper whose
name is an anagram of "Wogs in hot pants,") half a dozen
others reading through crib sheets for the interview, or the Barron's
prep book, and nobody else reading anything at all. Most of the
people in that room spent the entire waiting period staring into
space. I suppose they were thinking about something: but as a bookworm,
I want to know what, if you don't read at every opportunity, do
you have to think about? And: If the current U.S. immigrant pool
consists almost entirely of people to whom, faced with an hour or
so of waiting, the thought of bringing a book to read does not occur,
have I made a serious life error opting for a career as a writer?]
My interview,
after a one-hour wait — no worse, as I said, than many a private-sector
experience — was conducted by a courteous and chatty lady (Hi,
Roberta!) with a pleasant domesticated office: pictures of kids,
framed certificates of competence, cool screen-saver. She sat me
down and we exchanged some small pleasantries. I swore to tell the
truth. I signed a couple of things. I answered a string of yes-no
questions about my health, criminal proclivities, membership of
the Communist and Nazi parties, etc.
Then came the
test. It was tougher than I'd thought, but I'd been hitting the
books. By the time I showed up at Garden City, I knew the U.S. Constitution
as well as I know Britney Spears's belly button. So I aced the test
questions — even the one asking me to name the original 13
colonies. (Here's how I remember them: 4 New England, 3 local, 3
tidewater, 3 South.) We had an interesting discussion about the
question that asked: "What did the Emancipation Proclamation
do?" I gave the rote answer, which is the right thing to do
in these circumstances — they're not looking for scholarship:
"Freed many slaves." My inquisitress nodded and ticked
me correct, then observed that it really hadn't done a darn thing,
since the Civil War was still under way, and if the Union had lost,
no-one would have been freed. I pointed out that there were slave
states fighting with the North... and a very interesting discussion
followed. (In which it emerged that the INS lady was much
better informed about U.S. history than I am.)
After 15 minutes
or so it was all over. The lady told me I'd passed, congratulated
me, and showed me to the waiting room for my appointment letter.
April 19th, at the Javits Center. That's when I become an American.
Oh, boy. And, er,... thank you, INS.
Erratum.
Yeah, yeah: Muhammed Ali said "Float like a butterfly..."
It was
my mistake, not the gentle editor's. Hey, even Homer nodded
off once in a while (according to Horace). You try being
chained to this oar 3 times a week while Goldberg whacks a big drum
up on the fo'c'sle and Kathy Lopez strides up and down the aisles
brandishing a whip. I'm told I misquoted Lou Gehrig, too; but everybody
who's told me this has a different version of what the guy actually
said, so I want some kind of authoritative ruling before I do the
sackcloth and ashes on that one.
Non-erratum.
In
my Enron piece I said: "I'd also like to see suggestions
for enforcing the Mr. Wu principle: that if your business fails,
you end up personally broke." Several readers emailed
in to explain the principle of limited liability to me, with much
patience and only a little sarcasm. Well, duh. But the purpose
of that principle is to spare failed businessmen and their estates
from being hounded to the grave by creditors claiming un-limited
liability. It is not to enable failed businessmen to walk
away from their screw-ups with two yachts, three private planes,
four condos in Aspen and a 5-mile stretch of Galveston coastline.
Yay for limited liability: but when a business has failed so comprehensively
it has temporarily beggared hundreds of people and blotched the
fair face of entrepreneurial capitalism with a large stain, thus
supplying free ammunition to the many, many enemies of liberty here
and abroad, it's unseemly for the officers to escape with anything
more than a decent middle-class lifestyle. Who disagrees with this?
Why?
And, as a kind
and wise reader has said for me: "In fact, the vast majority
of businesses in the U.S. are small sole proprietorships and 'subchapter
S' corporations in which the primary owners hold the company, and
the stock in the company is basically worthless to anyone but the
proprietors. These companies are almost always fully at risk of
financial failure, and fail with great regularity. The reason you
don't hear much whining from the owners is the 'Mr. Wu' syndrome.
I have seen it many, many times. In the end, most of the wealthy
people I know live with this risk every day, and benefit from the
personal responsibility which certainly sharpens their attention
to the matter." Thank you, Sir.
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