IMMIGRATION AT A USA AIRPORT

Sunday, August 30, 2009

IMMIGRATION AT A USA AIRPORT

When my husband joined Kennedy School Of Government , Harvard University for his second part of Masters in Public Policy Management, first part being completed at National University, Singapore, we started making plans to join him there. I had heard that post 9/11, security system in USA had become very stringent , it was difficult to get a visa and visitors had to undergo a lot of harassment by the customs and immigration officials upon arrival at the port of entry. Since I was going alone with my son , I was really aprehensive about the visit. What if they stopped me at the airport and did not allow to enter . I had read in the news paper about several incidents of racial profiling of Indians. I started rummaging through the websites to find out more about obtaining a tourist visa and and the steps to be taken for a smooth immigration. What I gathered from the websites and experienced visitors that once in the US, you’re under the jurisdiction of the USCIS, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who have an almost dictatorial powers to stop you from entering the country even if you had valid visa . You have to answer questions put by these agressive, brusque, bullying, stern and intimidating officers in a courteous , no-nonsense manner. One of my friends told me “It seems they have frisked several politicians like PV Narasimha Rao. They removed his dhoti, they have done it with NDA ministers like George Fernandes. So be very careful. Carry all your papers with you. No one will come to your rescue if there is any problem". Even though I was highly scared , I did not have any other option since my son and I wanted to meet my husband there. So I told my husband, who has a positive phobia towards using cell phones to take a local mobile connection and carry it with him when he came to receive us at the Logan Airport, Boston.

My son, oblivious of all the scary thoughts churning inside my anxious brain , was making his own plans for the proposed trip to USA. Before I went for my visa interviiew, my boss told me to carry as much documents as possible to prove our intentions of returning back to India. "You are young and you are an IT professional. So they may just presume that you would enter with tourist visa and refuse to budge out ". So we went for the visa interview with enough ammunition in the form of statements of asset , proof of holding a public sector job etc to convince the authorities about my certain return. But I should not have taken so many documents, since they did not even bother to see any. We got our tourist visa and got the tickets booked in British Airways to Boston with a 5 hour stop over at London , since there was no direct flight from Calcutta to USA. When we landed at Heathrow Airport, the security checks were much more than I had anticipated. They even asked me to remove my gold bangle and send it with the mobile for checking. Since I never kept my hands empty after marriage, I just tied a handkerchief around my wrist and gave the bangle for testing. I was not the only one. Every one, whether white or coloured was going through the stringent security checks. But instead of feeling irritated , my son told me a very important thing then. He said " mama, if they are checking every one so seriously , there is less possibility of any untoward problem on the way forward". His confidant pronouncement did give me a new sense of security and safety through out our USA trip and I never disliked or felt irritated by such enhanced level of checking.

After spending about four hour or so at heathrow which looked more like a small town than an airport, we boarded our next BA flight for Boston. I called up again my husband from the airport to make sure that he was coming to receive us with his cell phone so that I could inform him in case there was some problem. The BA flight from London to Boston was quite a contrast from the flight from Calcutta to Boston. The later one was filled with Indian people (mostly Bengali) , one of the Air Hostesses was Indian , bengali announcements could be heard in addition to Hindi and English , there were Hindi movies being shown on your TV and you had an option of Indian meal, whereas former had predominantly foreigners with nothing Indian or Asian about it. We were the only Indians apart from another old lady . These things like absence of my people did not help to alleviate my apprehension. My biological clock was giving the sleep signal even though the local time still showed there were still 5 hours to go to sleep. Keeping all our worries in abbeyance both of us went off to sleep till we were aroused by the air hostess to fill arrival/departure record card (I-94) . She politely requested us to help the other Indian lady having trouble filling her form . After the flight landed, we all proceeded towards the immigration area. There were two queues , one for the ‘US Citizens’ and the other for ‘All Other Passports’. I was checking and rechecking our passports and arrival departure cards . You are getting paranoic- observed my son. "If the officer is not satisfied with our answer, he might not permit us an entry. Also the length of time you are permitted to stay is decided by the immigration officer ." I told him. Our turn came quicker than I had expected , the long queues were vanishing fast. After the finger printing and digital photography was over, the officer asked me how long I wanted to stay in USA. I said I wanted to stay for 3 weeks since he was going to stamp the duration on the passport. Then he asked me "Madam , When did you last visit US " . Since this was our first visit , I answered accordingly. He smiled and said " This is your first visit and you want to stay for only 3 weeks . You must stay longer and enjoy our country. You are going to lve it , I can assure you that. Have a great stay " and then proceeded to stamp our passport for six months of stay which was the highest duration allowed on a tourist visa. He gave us a friendly smile and attended the next man in the queue. As we went to collect our baggage , I was thinking how unnecessarily we form wrong impression on certain things and worry ourselves. The so called immigration process , thought of which had intimidated me so much, ended in just 2 questions and that too in such a friendly manner. As we proceeded towards collecting our baggage, I was remembering how I was harassed by the immigration officer asking me all sorts of irrelevant questions at our very own Kolkata airport while going to Singapore. Strange that we never never felt embittered by that incident.

That is why when all the chaos about Shahrukhan being detained at Newark Airport started with alleged ethnic / racial profiling , I wanted to contribute my personal views of the incident which was published on merinews.com. (http://www.merinews.com/cj/tsarmisthapati) .