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The New York Times
August 19, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Native of Nowhere
BYLINE: By ATOSSA ARAXIA ABRAHAMIAN.
A journalist at Reuters and an editor at The New Inquiry.
I ENTERED the green card lottery in the fall of 2010. It was a
surprisingly simple form, composed mostly of questions on contact
information, but a box that read ''Country Claimed'' gave me pause.
Most applicants write in wherever they were born, but for me it was a
bit more complicated; I could not, in good faith, claim any country as
my own.I was born in Canada on July 19, 1986. My Iranian-born parents
(of Armenian and Russian extraction) were living in Geneva at the
time, but Switzerland grants citizenship only to the children of
naturalized citizens. My parents, who both worked for the United
Nations, didn't know if they would live there long enough to meet the
residency requirements. I was destined to inherit an Iranian passport,
and they knew all too well the lifetime of travel and work
restrictions that would entail.
So they came up with a third-country solution. My mother would fly to
Vancouver, British Columbia, wearing an oversize raincoat just weeks
before her due date. She would give birth at a local hospital, stay
with her brother, who lived there, until my paperwork was processed,
and return to Geneva with a Canadian baby in tow. It worked so well
that she repeated the process four years later with my brother.
My mother was finally naturalized when I was 8, so I was able to
become a Swiss citizen after all. But my papers were, once again,
misleading. Growing up, I spoke four languages at home -- Armenian
with my father, Russian with my mother and English and French with
baby sitters -- and attended international schools in which no one
cared where you were from unless it was during the World Cup. I lived
in Switzerland, but for all intents and purposes, I grew up on
international soil.
When I went to college in New York, I was invited to Armenian events
on the basis of my last name and Iranian ones on account of my first
name, and I didn't think too much about where I came from. I was busy
making friends and falling in love with the city. I spent summers
working here, and it was the first place I'd ever lived that felt like
home to me. Having spent my entire (albeit short) adult life here, I
couldn't imagine leaving. So when I graduated, I found myself in need
of a work visa.
There are several types of visas under which foreigners can work here,
from seasonal farm work programs to O visas for ''extraordinary
aliens'' -- Nobel Prize winners, celebrities and occasionally writers.
For someone like me, just starting out in a career, this one was a
long shot. The most common visa among college graduates is the H1-B.
But the application process takes months, and the employer is required
to shell out thousands of dollars in legal fees to pay for
sponsorship. The foreigner's legal status in the country also depends
on maintaining his or her employment.
When I graduated, right before the Great Recession, no one was
sponsoring. I asked a lawyer if there was anything I could do to stay.
He took my $100 consultation fee and asked if I had a boyfriend I
could marry.
I left. But I had no idea where to go. I felt like a foreigner in
Geneva, and most of my friends had left. I'd spent no time in Canada.
I had nothing in Iran. I tried out Russia for size, but lasted barely
six weeks (life advice: don't go to Russia if you're depressed).
Eventually, I found a job at an international organization in Paris
and spent the year Skyping with my New York friends, listening to WNYC
reruns on my laptop and applying to graduate schools back in the
United States.
Had I not had the good fortune and the funds to go back to school, I
don't know where in the world I'd be. In 2010, I was able to return to
New York for a master's program in journalism, and I spent that year
working harder than I ever had before. I would have to make up for my
nationality with labor and talent, a school counselor told me. When I
interviewed for jobs, I felt like a leper. My international classmates
joked that coming clean about a limited work permit at a job interview
was like telling someone you had herpes on a first date.
In the meantime, I entered the green card -- also known as the
''diversity'' -- lottery. They call it a lottery for good reason; the
odds of winning are minute. But I'd marked the deadline in my calendar
the year before, and it seemed like a waste to let it pass. I didn't
have the right-size photograph to attach to my application, so my
boyfriend snapped a picture of me standing against a dusty white wall
in our kitchen. It was 7 a.m., and head-on, I looked like a sleepy
convict. I wrote down my phone number and address, and under ''Country
Claimed,'' settled on Switzerland.
Last summer, when I found out I'd won, I couldn't believe it could be
that simple. I called three lawyers to make sure it was real. They
said it was.
It wasn't.
Two painful months later, I received a letter from the United States
Embassy in Bern. It informed me that I was disqualified from the
lottery because I'd claimed the wrong country of origin. Although I
had Swiss citizenship, I was not a Swiss native, because I was born in
Canada. Canadians typically aren't eligible for the lottery, but if
I'd claimed Iran, where my parents were born, I wouldn't have had any
trouble. I appealed and complained, but nothing could be done. My
mother's trip in the summer of 1986 came back to bite me. The punch
line, of course, was that I was too diverse for the diversity lottery.
Even I can't tell you where I'm from.
I used to think of immigration as a problem for the migrant poor, not
something that affected college-educated global citizens. I now know
that getting a work permit is a complicated and often heartbreaking
process, no matter who you are. Thanks to months of pitching articles
to whoever would let me write them -- not to mention a good lawyer --
I finally obtained an O visa this year. I don't have to get married,
to a man or a job, to have a career in the United States. But I was
able to stay only because I had the time, resources and support to
make it work. For most people, the odds are stacked against them from
beginning to end.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/home-is-where-the-green-card-is.html
August 19, 2012 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Native of Nowhere
BYLINE: By ATOSSA ARAXIA ABRAHAMIAN.
A journalist at Reuters and an editor at The New Inquiry.
I ENTERED the green card lottery in the fall of 2010. It was a
surprisingly simple form, composed mostly of questions on contact
information, but a box that read ''Country Claimed'' gave me pause.
Most applicants write in wherever they were born, but for me it was a
bit more complicated; I could not, in good faith, claim any country as
my own.I was born in Canada on July 19, 1986. My Iranian-born parents
(of Armenian and Russian extraction) were living in Geneva at the
time, but Switzerland grants citizenship only to the children of
naturalized citizens. My parents, who both worked for the United
Nations, didn't know if they would live there long enough to meet the
residency requirements. I was destined to inherit an Iranian passport,
and they knew all too well the lifetime of travel and work
restrictions that would entail.
So they came up with a third-country solution. My mother would fly to
Vancouver, British Columbia, wearing an oversize raincoat just weeks
before her due date. She would give birth at a local hospital, stay
with her brother, who lived there, until my paperwork was processed,
and return to Geneva with a Canadian baby in tow. It worked so well
that she repeated the process four years later with my brother.
My mother was finally naturalized when I was 8, so I was able to
become a Swiss citizen after all. But my papers were, once again,
misleading. Growing up, I spoke four languages at home -- Armenian
with my father, Russian with my mother and English and French with
baby sitters -- and attended international schools in which no one
cared where you were from unless it was during the World Cup. I lived
in Switzerland, but for all intents and purposes, I grew up on
international soil.
When I went to college in New York, I was invited to Armenian events
on the basis of my last name and Iranian ones on account of my first
name, and I didn't think too much about where I came from. I was busy
making friends and falling in love with the city. I spent summers
working here, and it was the first place I'd ever lived that felt like
home to me. Having spent my entire (albeit short) adult life here, I
couldn't imagine leaving. So when I graduated, I found myself in need
of a work visa.
There are several types of visas under which foreigners can work here,
from seasonal farm work programs to O visas for ''extraordinary
aliens'' -- Nobel Prize winners, celebrities and occasionally writers.
For someone like me, just starting out in a career, this one was a
long shot. The most common visa among college graduates is the H1-B.
But the application process takes months, and the employer is required
to shell out thousands of dollars in legal fees to pay for
sponsorship. The foreigner's legal status in the country also depends
on maintaining his or her employment.
When I graduated, right before the Great Recession, no one was
sponsoring. I asked a lawyer if there was anything I could do to stay.
He took my $100 consultation fee and asked if I had a boyfriend I
could marry.
I left. But I had no idea where to go. I felt like a foreigner in
Geneva, and most of my friends had left. I'd spent no time in Canada.
I had nothing in Iran. I tried out Russia for size, but lasted barely
six weeks (life advice: don't go to Russia if you're depressed).
Eventually, I found a job at an international organization in Paris
and spent the year Skyping with my New York friends, listening to WNYC
reruns on my laptop and applying to graduate schools back in the
United States.
Had I not had the good fortune and the funds to go back to school, I
don't know where in the world I'd be. In 2010, I was able to return to
New York for a master's program in journalism, and I spent that year
working harder than I ever had before. I would have to make up for my
nationality with labor and talent, a school counselor told me. When I
interviewed for jobs, I felt like a leper. My international classmates
joked that coming clean about a limited work permit at a job interview
was like telling someone you had herpes on a first date.
In the meantime, I entered the green card -- also known as the
''diversity'' -- lottery. They call it a lottery for good reason; the
odds of winning are minute. But I'd marked the deadline in my calendar
the year before, and it seemed like a waste to let it pass. I didn't
have the right-size photograph to attach to my application, so my
boyfriend snapped a picture of me standing against a dusty white wall
in our kitchen. It was 7 a.m., and head-on, I looked like a sleepy
convict. I wrote down my phone number and address, and under ''Country
Claimed,'' settled on Switzerland.
Last summer, when I found out I'd won, I couldn't believe it could be
that simple. I called three lawyers to make sure it was real. They
said it was.
It wasn't.
Two painful months later, I received a letter from the United States
Embassy in Bern. It informed me that I was disqualified from the
lottery because I'd claimed the wrong country of origin. Although I
had Swiss citizenship, I was not a Swiss native, because I was born in
Canada. Canadians typically aren't eligible for the lottery, but if
I'd claimed Iran, where my parents were born, I wouldn't have had any
trouble. I appealed and complained, but nothing could be done. My
mother's trip in the summer of 1986 came back to bite me. The punch
line, of course, was that I was too diverse for the diversity lottery.
Even I can't tell you where I'm from.
I used to think of immigration as a problem for the migrant poor, not
something that affected college-educated global citizens. I now know
that getting a work permit is a complicated and often heartbreaking
process, no matter who you are. Thanks to months of pitching articles
to whoever would let me write them -- not to mention a good lawyer --
I finally obtained an O visa this year. I don't have to get married,
to a man or a job, to have a career in the United States. But I was
able to stay only because I had the time, resources and support to
make it work. For most people, the odds are stacked against them from
beginning to end.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/home-is-where-the-green-card-is.html