Do you feel settled yet?
“Do you feel settled yet?”
For the first few months after I moved to the USA, this question would rattle me like no other. To be “settled” suggests finally reaching a fixed place, a sanctuary, after you have plodded through indecision and insecurity. It also connotes a soothing aura of serenity, even complacency. You can finally establish roots, and not worry about being wrenched away by the next gust of wind that blows too hard in your direction. You are comfortable, at home, and you belong.
But what does it mean to feel “settled” in a country that makes you wait for years to be with the person you love? What does it mean to feel “settled” in a space that makes it clear that your very presence there is an attestation of its authorities’ generosity and magnanimity towards you — even as thousands of others continue to demurely stand in line to have their worthiness proven before they are let in, if at all? You see stories of others who never even made it to that line, despite following every rule and advice in the book. You read of families being pulled apart due to sudden changes in immigration laws, after being admitted in. You hear about detentions and separations at borders, of people being treated like criminals for daring to migrate. Jobs revoked, because you are suddenly not eligible to stay and work. As an immigrant, the sense of precarity of your situation never really leaves you, nor does the anguish that accompanied you on your journey here. The word “settled” has the ring of a taunt.
My admission into the USA is marked by a five hour wait in a crowded, stuffy room in an airport, with limited access to water and no food, while the immigration officers call out each aspirants’ name, one by one, to interview you about various aspects of your life, loudly enough for the whole room to witness every intimate detail. (“I’m moving here to join my partner. We met at a wedding in 2015. For our first date, he took me out to a Thai restaurant. He proposed to me at the Golden Gate Bridge after we had been dating for ten months. Yes, I have visited him in the US a few times before. No, I have not been back since we got married two years ago now.”) This goes on for about two to five rounds (depending on how convincing you sound) and only then is your admission into the country proclaimed, with a resonant stamping of your passport. The declaration is made with the flourish of opening the gates of heaven for you: your tearful gratitude is requisite. You’ve never lived before then! Go ahead and start your life in this greatest of lands now! (“Welcome to the land of dreams,” a well-meaning friend had texted, when I told her that I had finally got the visa that allowed me to join my husband in the USA. This message pops up like an imaginary speech bubble every time I hop to avoid a discarded needle, or a puddle of poop, on the streets of San Francisco.)
After I had been in that stuffy room for about four and a half hours, awaiting the final verdict to find out whether I had been deemed worthy enough to be let in, a representative from an airline comes in looking for an elderly couple. “Mr. and Mrs. Khan” are called out. Mr. Khan jumps to attention. I look at them. They must be in their seventies, both smartly dressed in salwar-kameez and clutching leather satchels that sit uncomfortably across their bodies. Pakistanis, I predict. They have a scared, worried look on their face. The kind of terror that only immigration offices can evoke. The representative wants to let them know that their baggage will be held at the airline desk, from where they should retrieve it once the interview is over. Except that he can explain none of this to them, since they do not speak any English.
“Do we have any Urdu speakers in the room?”
Here is my chance to shine and prove my worthiness. “I am an interpreter!” I shout — and run to the rescue of the harassed-looking couple. Worry not, Khan Uncle, your savior is here! I explain the representative’s message to him in the most chaste Urdu I can conjure. The couple nod, gratefully. Everyone (including the officers) take notice. I am a hero!
The officer asks the Khan couple to approach and asks me if I can translate another message for them. Yes of course I can! Anything else, officer?
Five minutes later, my name is called. I am through! Admitted — into the land of dreams! The officer even smiles and says “welcome.”
Picking up my handbag, I am on my way out when Khan Auntie rushes to me and grabs my hand: “Aap hamari madad karein. Hum yahan saat ghante se baithe hain. Hum apne bete se milne aaye hai, magar hamari baat inhein samajh mein nahin aa rahi. Aap inhein samjhaein.”
(“Please help us. We have been sitting here for seven hours. We are here to meet our son, but they cannot understand what we are saying. Please explain this to them.”)
I feel helpless. I know that I cannot go back to the desk. I have seen the officers snapping at whoever dares to approach them unsolicited. Who can I explain this to? Should I wait another few hours, until their name is called again? But who knows when that will be? My husband is waiting, and I have not been able to inform my parents that I have landed and that I am now safely admitted into the land of their son-in-law. “Your sasuraal,”[1] my Nani (grandmother) keeps calling it. “Your real home.” And like the sasuraals of many new brides, this one too smells of uncertainty, fear, and ominousness.
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My husband and I met in our native country, Mauritius, in December 2015. He had already been living in the USA for almost two decades at that point, and had a coveted job in tech, while I was completing an academic fellowship in South Africa. We dated transnationally, meeting in different countries every few months, and got married about a year and a half later. And then, the saga of immigration to the USA began. A process that, we were promised, would take about four to six months ended up taking almost two years. This, despite the constant following up by lawyers, who my husband insisted on hiring to give us the best shot at being together in the shortest possible time. In the meantime, the words of “advice,” “reassurance” and “commiseration” kept coming in:
“You’re so highly qualified. You have a PhD! You’ll definitely get in!”
“You have nothing to fear; it’s the Muslims that they are suspicious of.”
“Stop posting all that political stuff on Facebook while your application is under process! The US government is probably keeping an eye on you.”
“Why is Pravin Jugnauth [Mauritian Prime Minister] now picking a fight with the USA over the Chagos Islands?[2] This will not bode well for those who are waiting on US visas.”
“It’s the fault of all these illegal immigrants! They have forced the authorities to be harsher and more vigilant. That’s why the process is taking so much longer nowadays!”
“Please don’t bring up your work on post-colonialism at the visa interview. You don’t want to raise any unnecessary red flags!”
In spite of (or perhaps because of?) my privilege, I waited two years. I was lucky. Many others are not so lucky.
As I open the news last week and read about the President suspending H-1B and other visas that are likely to lead to thousands more stories of anguish, many invariably worse than mine, I cannot help thinking back to those initial few months when I would get rattled by that most inane of questions.
Families putting their lives on hold as they embark on a process that sometimes take years to be concluded — without any guarantee of a positive outcome. Professionals begging employers to wait for the final word from immigration authorities, before they accept jobs and sign employment contracts. Parents asking schools to hold the seats for their children, even as they are unable to give a final commitment on a date when said children might be able to join. Not knowing whether you can take a loan, pursue a relationship, get married, start a family — because you are at the mercy of an ever-moving line, in which weeks become months, and months become years. The torment of not knowing whether any of this will actually work out, despite you toeing the line fastidiously. The emotional, social and financial consequences of perpetually being in that liminal space of “in process.” The anxiety that actually belies the “happily ever after” narrative that officiously accompanies the stamping of your passport and admission into the country. The awareness of enforced “luck” at the expense of your dignity, sanity and stability. And the knowledge that, any day, this could be revoked by the whims of an arbitrary system.
Will any of them ever feel “settled” in a country that forever seems to have them hanging by a thin thread to have a chance at carrying on with their lives?
Will I?
[1] Sasuraal is the Hindi word for the home of a woman’s “in-laws.”
[2] Diego Garcia, one of the islands in the UK-administered Chagos Archipelago, is also the USA’s major geostrategic and logistics support base in the Indian Ocean. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled the UK’s claim to the island to be unlawful and stated that it needs to end its administration of the Chagos Islands — leaving both the UK and the USA unhappy with the decision. See Julian Bowger and Owen Bowcott, “Chagos Islands: Isolated UK and US face thrashing in UN vote on ownership,” The Guardian 21 May 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/21/chagos-islands-un-expected-to-call-for-end-of-british-control>.
