53 questions that a life may depend on

[george lee]

the kitchen sink list from the past, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/...-may-depend-on/

 

edit: please feel free to move the topic, i didn'r really find a right place for it.

Edited July 23, 2009 by george lee (see edit history)

[dnoblett]

In the 1990 movie ¡°Green Card,¡± Gerard Depardieu¡¯s character is deported because he cannot recall, under questioning by immigration agents, the type of skin cream his American-born wife likes. In real life, dread of such encounters has prodded many aspiring immigrants to prep for their interviews with elaborate¡°study aids,¡± particularly if they were adopting new identities.

 

Few of these crib sheets survived. ¡°You were supposed to throw the cheat sheet overboard,¡± noted Nancy Shader of the National Archives and Records Administration in New York.

 

Which is why there is excitement in archivists¡¯ circles about a small brown notebook with handwritten Chinese characters, long overlooked in her archives, that once belonged to a Chinese immigrant.

 

The notebook appears to contain ¡°coaching¡± materials that might have been used by an immigrant known as Chung Fook Wing when he entered the United States in 1923. Seventeen years later, he was arrested on a drug possession charge by New York City police and the notebook ¡ª 50 pages of coarse sheets bound by string ¡ª turned up in a search of his papers at a New Jersey opium den. Taking up eight of the pages were handwritten answers to 53 questions that a newcomer could have anticipated being asked upon entry or re-entry, leading authorities to suspect they were written to ¡°coach¡± the book¡¯s owner through the process. MORE....

 

COOL! http://documents.nytimes.com/a-chinese-imm...ment/page/7#p=1 (Some reading for our Chinese members!)

 

I will move this one to the language/culture forum, the article is more about old historical information and has a bit of a culture angle to it.

[Zhen's Tiger]

the kitchen sink list from the past, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/...-may-depend-on/

 

edit: please feel free to move the topic, i didn'r really find a right place for it.

"Once the United States and China became allies in World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to bring that era to a close by signing a 1943 law repealing the exclusion acts. Historians say some obstacles to immigration lingered for another two decades."

Huh, only 2 decades, I would've said it has been much longer, like 6 decades...

[tsap seui]

OH BOY....in it's way this really brings home to me some feelings that have been cast aside by me in our visa journey.

 

It's the system and it's what we all have to deal with, some are just luckier than others. That doesn't make the mistakes by the very arrogant and uncaring "God's" that work for the State Department in Guangzhou, China any easier to handle by those who have been run over....needlessly.

 

My wife should have been by my side on the plane ride back in early August of 2007, but I flew home alone that day. Then, over, one and one half years later the USCIS re-affirmed the fact that the DOS had screwed up in our case and wrongly denied us...after making us wait out a dumb-assed blue slip for 10 months before their denial.

 

I have no way of getting justice from the State Department. My wife and I can never get back the 2 years we have already lost, and probably another year before she gets a chance at another visa attempt.

 

Yep, I can't get back the time, the anguish, the unfairness, the stress....but...I can get the VA to PAY for the State Department's sins. And pay they DAMNED WELL WILL.

 

 

Sometimes I almost feel like sending GUZ a thank you card...but I want to keep the bastards in the dark, just like they did to us for all those many many months.

 

tsap seui

 

There is always a way, if'n you don't give up.