TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIBED BY Indigo Mudbhary (x 6)
The first question I have for you is: What do you remember from your first few days in the United States when you arrived?
I was thinking about this. I have to ask you a question first, which is—
Please.
I have two answers, as it were. When I first first came to the U.S., I was here on a three-month visa, like a J work visa. But then I went back to the U.K. for like two years. So, to me, it's like—I was here for three months in the country working, but then two years later I moved back, and then I’ve been here ever since. Do you want the first—when I first came here on my J visa, or when I actually moved here and got my green card and all that?
Both would be great.
You want both?
Both would be great.
Okay.
And then if you want to share which one feels more like your first days, or if they both feel like first days, that would be — or in different ways — that would be great.
Okay, cool. When I came— I'm from the U.K., and there's a program for the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, and I think several other countries too: the J-1 visa program. I don't know if it's still—but this is 20 years ago. This is 2004 and I had just finished my first year of university in the U.K., and I had worked all year and saved money to pay to get the visa. When you arrive—we all arrived in New York City, but processing is kind of weird. They do it in batches. I showed up to New York City. You stay overnight in this hostel kind of place in Manhattan, and then the next day, we went to this big, huge room where basically hundreds of J-1 visa kids were being processed, and visas are put in the passport — you couldn't leave the building until you had the thing inside of your passport. And then you were free for three months. So I remember sitting there and being like “Where am I?“ [laughs] The room was the most nondescript thing and it was full of British and Irish people. It was like, “I don't know where I am or what this is.” I did all the stuff, but then I remember opening the door to go outside, and it was like entering the country. Even though I was already in the country — I had already come through the airport — it was like, once I had that J visa, I opened the door, and it was—. I think it was the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I just remember opening the door and all the energy of New York City just kind of hit me in the face. It was all this movement and I'm from a city, so I'm not a country mouse person, but there was a specific, different energy to it that didn't feel like any other city I'd ever been in, and it was pretty intense. And I was like, “Okay, this country I think might be a lot. I think this country is going to be a lot. I think it's going to be full on. It’s going to be kind of intense.” And at the time, I remember thinking, “Oh, well, I'm just here for three months. Whatever, I'll make the best of it.” I didn't know whether I would like that or not. But yeah, the main impressions was like, “Oh my goodness, there's six lanes of traffic.” All the delivery trucks, are twice the size of delivery trucks in the U.K., everything's double the size. In cities in the U.K. some parts are pedestrianized, and some parts are one way and some parts are closed up. It was total free for all—it was just all lanes of traffic all the time, just massive trucks, massive buses. Everything felt so big, but also so contained at the same time because of the geography of being in Manhattan. And then I stayed there that night. And then the next day—. I had already got a job in San Francisco through the J visa program—so you can apply ahead of time — and my first job in the country was actually at the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39.
Wow.
[laughs] It was a tourist job, you know? And so I remember coming—. I flew to San Francisco, and I came to a hostel in the North Beach area, and I remember checking in and just being like, “Are we still in the same country?” Because in Europe, when you fly six hours, you're never in the same country. And it just blew my mind that I had been on a six-and-a-half-hour flight, and we're still in the same country. That really was wild to me, and when I stepped out into San Francisco, there wasn't that intensity at all. It was very—it felt a lot more open. New York City is kind of like, “This is what's happening either way. If you can find a space to jump in, then fine. If not, you're on your own.” It's just this movement and if you can jump into the movement. San Francisco felt more fluid, more open. And it was like, “Okay, there's more space for me to find a window somewhere in here.” So those would be my first impressions from when I first first came to the country in 2004.
I see. And then do you want to talk about the second time you came for a longer period of time?
Yeah, when I moved here. When I was here in 2004, I was here for the three months. I ended up living in that hostel in North Beach and working at the aquarium. It was actually kind of cool, because if you work at the hostel, you get to stay there for free.
Oh, cool.
I would wake up in the morning and I would make—they did a breakfast at the hospital, just bagels and coffee and whatnot. I would do the breakfast, and then I would—so I would work like 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning for like four hours, and then I would go down the hill to the wharf, and then I would work like a full shift at the aquarium. I probably wouldn't do that now, but at the time, it didn’t really bother me. What was great was that that way, I had money to go travel at the end and stuff. But when I was in the hostel, that's where I actually met the person who would become my husband. We met in that hostel, and then I moved back. I went back to the U.K. because my visa had expired and I was in school, and he then came to visit the U.K. The laws have since changed massively in the U.K., but at the time, you could come and visit for up to six months—
Oh, wow.
—on a visitor visa if you were from certain countries, like visa waiver program. Because he was a U.S. citizen—he’s originally from New York City, but we met here— he was able to do that. So he came to live with me in the U.K. for six months, and then we realized you run out of options pretty quickly. It's either you have to get married so you can be in the same country, or you just break the whole thing off, or you have to be super lucky to be in a program or something where you can get a visa and that's not easy. So anyway, in 2005 we flew to New York and we got married in New York. I was only there for a week. Then we went back to the U.K., and he had a residency permit in the U.K. Things were okay, but it wasn't really like the best fit.
We talked about it, and we talked about maybe moving to New York, and then in the end, we were like, “Why don't we go back to where we met?” Because that's like a neutral place. In 2006— actually it's coming up on my immigrant anniversary, so it was early July 2006—we flew to New York. We stayed a couple of days with his family, and then we actually—that was weird, because I was coming into the country, and when you're married to a U.S. citizen, you can apply for a green card, but there's different ways of doing that. I could have applied when I was in the U.K. and had that ahead of time, but for us, we did not have our shit together enough [laughs] to do that at all. Also, we had no money, so we decided to do it the other way, which is if you come into the country—he can obviously be here because he's a citizen, and I could be here at the time for up to three months on a visa waiver, and during that time, as long as I had an address and could apply for my green card process in that three months, then I would be okay. The challenge was: come in the country, find a place, find an address, without having any papers or a social or any of those things. We came into New York, and we went to stay with his mom for two days, who has since moved a little bit upstate. And I remember standing in this suburban supermarket, and it was so huge. And I remember thinking—it's always so interesting, because everything in the U.K. is smaller, but again I'm from a big city but I was just like “Everything is so massively big.” And being in the supermarket and seeing—I remember so vividly, we were at the deli counter, and she was like, “Oh, pick what you’d like.” And it was just hundreds of cheeses and meats. And I was so overwhelmed. I was like, “I don't even know where to begin.” And the guy was like, “Oh, how do you want your sandwich?” And I remember he would rattle off this huge list of things, and I would just pick the last thing he said each time, because that was the only one I could remember. I was like, “I don't even know what that is, but just give me that on a sandwich.” It was so overwhelming. Everything was very big, very—too much choice. And then from there, we actually took a Greyhound bus from New York City to San Francisco, which takes three and a half days.
Wow.
Yeah. So that was actually my introduction, really, truly, to this country, was being on that Greyhound bus for three and a half days knowing you've decided to move here, you decided to do this. You don't have a plan, you don't have any money, you don't know where you're going to end up. You don't know where you are. But this is what you've decided to do. And being in some of those spaces in the middle of the country, and—when I think back on it now, it was actually a pretty excellent crash course of how to be, but at the time, it was—I remember not really speaking the entire time. I just was listening and looking. And it was—there was some moments where I was definitely not sure which way it was going to go. My now ex-husband is Puerto Rican and we would receive a lot of looks from being together which we didn't receive in San Francisco. That was interesting.
I remember really vividly being at this place in the middle of—it would have been either Missouri or Kansas—in the middle of the night at a truck stop, and I had my passport in one shoe, and I had all my money in the world in my other shoe, and I kept everything in my shoes. I didn't trust anything or anyone. I never left anything out of sight. I had one bag. I came to this whole country with one bag and was never separated from that one bag. I kept everything in my shoes or strapped to my body, because I was like, “If I lose this, there's no backup. That's it.” And I didn't really understand. I knew that if I lost my passport, the embassy would help me, but I knew that you have to be in a major city for that.
Yeah.
There's no one in [laughs] wherever. On that journey, my ex gave me a couple of books to read, because three and a half days. So this is obviously, like pre-smartphone, pre—
[laughs] Yeah.
[laughs] I had a mini disc player—which you may have to look that up [laughs].
Yes. [laughs] Perhaps.
It was the bridge between tapes and when tapes happened, and then when CDs happened, and then it became early iPod, mp3. Sony was doing this thing called mini disc at the same time, which sadly doesn't exist anymore, but that was my thing. I had six mini discs and these two books. And I read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Yeah.
That was my first introduction to American history, and I read it on the Greyhound. And I also read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
Okay.
And I remember we were in the middle of nowhere—it might have been Utah—and this family gets on with two young kids, and the kids were not wearing any shoes, and the grown person had all their belongings in a sack. And I remember looking around and being like, “Oh my goodness. I’m feeling how all of this is connected through space and time.” Reading The Grapes of Wrath, now I'm on the Greyhound with—yeah, it was very—some people have been like, “Oh my god, that was a very hardcore introduction to the country.” But I'm like, “Actually, in a way, it was perfect, because it's completely real.” And at that time, we met several U.S. military who had just come back from Afghanistan and Iraq and were being discharged, and the military give you a bus token. That's all they give you, they were on the Greyhound. There's people from all over the country, people in all different kind of life situations. To me, it was very eye opening. And I didn't sleep for four days, and I can still feel the imprint of my passport on my foot, but it also was the best introduction, because I think it served me well in a lot of ways. It was like I knew what I was getting into. This is actually real America, three days on a Greyhound. That was my overarching— and then when we came to San Francisco, I was like, “Okay, all right, this feels like something I know.” I had spent time here before, but it was very big. The fact that it takes three and a half days to cross this country is still wild to me. The first time I saw a desert was through a Greyhound window, and it felt like I landed on the moon. There's no deserts in Europe. There's nothing. I had never seen anything so empty. I had never seen a landscape so empty, because everything is so populated in the U.K., even our national parks have towns in them. So just being struck, I think, by—everything’s so massive. The scale is so massive, and in the cities that is very overwhelming and very— the vibe is like, “If you can do it, you can do it. If you can't, good luck. You're going to drown. You know, no one's going to help you.” But what was more intimidating for me was being in those big, wide, open spaces and just feeling deeply intimidated by that. The same the first time I saw the Pacific, I was— I had never seen anything that big or intimidating in my life. So being a combination of terrified, but in a way that was very intriguing to me, fascinating to me, and still is. I'm still here 20 years later, and I still find it deeply fascinating, because this country is very young in some ways, both very rich, very deep, very complex in every way. I think I got that feeling straight off the bat.
Yeah, definitely. You answered all the questions I was going to ask you as follow up questions.
[laughs]
[laughs] But is there anything else you'd like to share about your first days? I mean, there's two separate sort of first days you talked about but anything else you'd like to share, or something that I might have missed?
I don't know. I guess the very, very, very first day in that anonymous room where they gave me my social security number. It's funny, because at the time, I remember thinking, “Oh, how weird. I have a number in another country. That's weird. I have a number here now. That means I'm on the books.” And then when I went back to the U.K. for two years, what happens is your social just goes dormant. But then when I applied for my green card, it reactivates the same social. You only ever have one social, just the same as if you were born here, right? And so even though I've lived mostly on the West Coast, my social begins with a zero, and I was issued it in New York City and so I always smile about that, because it always reminds me of that weird, anonymous room, and me thinking at the time, “Oh, that's weird. I'm on the books in this other country that I know nothing about and have no idea what even a social security number is.” And now having gone through all the immigration I have and everything else, sometimes I think back and smile like, “Wow, yeah, I had no idea what a social security number was.” And it's really weird when you come in as an adult, because I didn't come in—one thing about being British is we don’t—British people move to other countries and consider themselves to be expats, not immigrants. I consider myself to be an immigrant, not an expat. And the distinction for me is if you're an immigrant, you're coming into a country on that country's terms. You know what I mean? Whereas, if you're an expat, you're coming in with—you don't necessarily have to deal with that country on its own terms. You’re coming in with certain—so even though I'm a very privileged immigrant because I'm white and I speak English, and if I close my mouth, nobody looks at me—usually. That got me through my first several years in the country while I learned what was going on. It's still weird, because I don't have a community. If I was Irish, I could find community, because Irish have community wherever they go in the world, but British people don’t. I don't have community, and then I am not able to connect with other immigrant communities because I'm not—it's not applicable. So that's always been an interesting thing. It's always been this feeling of there's no community to tap into, there's no one to ask questions, there's no one to be like, “Wait, what is this again?” None of that. You have to figure this out alone. And when my ex and I went to immigration, we didn't have a lawyer, we did it all ourselves with internet from the library—one hour a day at the at the main library. That's how I did my immigration. It was just a very—I think there's always a part of me that feels like, would it have been different if I would have had a community to connect with? Would it have been different if I was the kind of immigrant who's like, “Oh, my cousin is here, or my uncle is here, or somebody”? There’s none of that I'm the only person in my whole family who lives in this country. That's always been an interesting thing. From the start, that feeling of “You're gonna have to figure this out because there's nobody to ask,” and maybe it would feel different now because I would have a smartphone in my pocket, right?
Yeah.
But that didn't exist then. I think that's the main thing that's been an interesting thread is that feeling of whatever you're feeling, you're just going to have to feel it and deal with it because no one is going to help you. There's no community, there’s no one to ask. And I was 20 when I first came here, and 22 when I moved here. I was really young, and it's interesting to think back now on what would have been the same and what would have been different. But yeah—I don't know— it’s still wild to me when I think like, “Oh, I've been here almost 18 years.” I've just been constantly trying to figure it out as I go. And then I wonder if, “Oh, if there was a community, how does that help? And how does that hinder, right?” It could be a hindrance, because then you kind of stay within a bubble. In a way, it was good. I didn't have that option. I just had to go out there and—but then it would have been really supportive and helpful. And I think that a lot of things have been a lot harder because of having to figure it out alone. And there's always a lot of pride as well. I think for me, if you're an immigrant or you go to live in another country, you don't want to admit to people that you need help, or you're struggling, or you have to pretend that you're okay all the time. That's a big part of it. You don’t—you live with a lot of guilt, and you live with a lot of “Am I doing the right thing?” And feeling like—yeah, I don't know how else to express that, but yeah, you live with a lot of guilt, and you live with a lot of those emotions, and there's a lot of pride of— you have to figure it out and not ask for help and not show your cards, not be vulnerable, not be a target, not be any of those things. You have to blend. You have to figure it out. You have to not stand out. You have to—. I think amongst those pressures, would have been interesting to see if a community element would have helped or hindered, but I don't know. I think that's all I have. [laughs] Hopefully some of that's helpful.
Yeah, I’ll stop recording.
