We're back to the classic and stereotypical yet vastly different stories of Asians in America in the process of getting their green cards. Gaining citizenship in a country one isn't born in is a tedious process. Weike Wang highlights this situation in 'Status in Flux', published in The New Yorker on June 19, 2023.
This is the sort of thing that is troubling when you're poorly educated or you entered the country with not much money. It's equally painful if you're well educated or have more money. You go through that same period of waiting and to have the US government decide if your application or your marriage is bona fide.
And this is in a country that speaks English, a language that presumably most of us speak if we want to migrate. Imagine replicating a residency application process in a country that speaks a working language of, say, Norwegian, Swedish, German or French. Then you'll be very driven to pick it up quickly and master it, in addition to English.
The story is set in the third year of the pandemic when travel cautiously resumed to much celebration. The author pens it rather succinctly in the protagonist's emotions, words, thoughts and descriptions of her friends' lives. And from all actions, her husband is a rather lovely man.
In this story, the unnamed protagonist has been advised not to quit her current job or travel out of her home state New Jersey to go overseas in view of her status of 'waiting for her green card' and "not having a clear residency status". She could travel within the country though.
On each form, we triple-checked dates, addresses, and the spellings of our names. One form was titled “Petition for Alien Relative.” Another: “Application for Advance Parole” (“parole” allowing me to travel for absolute emergencies, which the lawyer said to avoid). So it wasn’t just that I felt both alien and criminal: the words were plainly there.
The lawyer mentioned possible complications that could lead to delays. Although I had Canadian citizenship, I was born in China. The green card would open my route to American citizenship, and I might end up a citizen of two countries, neither of which was my birthplace. In an annoyed-male voice, my husband asked why that would be a complication. In an annoyed-female voice, our lawyer replied, I don’t make the rules. Just anticipate delays.
If the unnamed protagonist had remained in Canada or married a Canadian, she wouldn't have had to go through this immigration process. She already held a Canadian citizenship. She had chosen to stay on in America after grad school, married her husband Matt, and here is the situation she is in.
Although she mentioned that she didn't like the logistics of traveling or the insomnia that comes with jet lag, the readers can't quite tell if she wanted to travel at all. With everyone traveling, and all the photos strewn on social media, would she have FOMO or would she feel secretly relieved that she can't travel? Would that be me, not just a few years back or would that be me today? And the reasons for not traveling are completely different from the protagonist's.
Later, I asked Matt if he wanted to talk about it and he said what was there to talk about, our two families abroad, having fun without us, what was the big deal about that? He busied himself with e-mails, one in particular, politely worded but long, asking our lawyer when we could expect to have news—not that we didn’t understand the process or were trying to rush it, not that we wished to piss off the U.S. government or her. Both she and the government had important jobs. Freedom, etc. Waiting for a green card was a First World problem, and while the mention of First World problems has never made a person living in the First World feel better, we were grateful to have these problems over others. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
Beyond manifest anxiety, it was unclear what the e-mail was actually about. He got a reply immediately: an out-of-office message informing us that the lawyer was on holiday.
In an interview with the same magazine, the 35-year old author was asked about the racial traits and ethnicity of her characters in her writing,
Like your previous stories in the magazine, “Omakase” and “The Trip,” “Status in Flux” revolves around a couple in which the woman is Asian American and the man is white American. What keeps drawing you back to this territory in fiction?
I’m laughing. Well, the practical reason is that I know the territory well. The craft reason is that I do find the clash of cultures and issues generative for tension. For instance, in this story, the couple’s mixed marriage is already different from that of their parents. The narrator’s parents would not know what marrying into a white American family is like. Matt’s parents probably had not envisioned a foreign-born Asian woman for a daughter-in-law. Matt has not needed to assimilate in the way that the narrator had to. The narrator has no idea what it’s like to have grown up in America or as part of the majority. So, there are multiple learning curves happening all at once, all the time, and that kind of friction in trying to make a marriage and family work is great for storytelling (though perhaps less straightforward in real life).
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