Immigration Sucks When You’re In Limbo
Even when you play by the rules, being an immigrant in this country means feeling like the other shoe is about to drop
By Sarah Lally
After Covid-19 there was a real rhetoric in New York that “Only real New Yorkers stayed.” Never one to be outdone, I had to go one step further and move 3,000 miles across the Atlantic just before the borders closed to prove myself. I took the honorary title of “New Yorker” quite seriously.
So then why exactly am I writing this from Ireland?
I guess I need to go back to the summer of 2019. I had carved out a nice life in my little country with my better half. He was a software developer and I worked in media. All in all, we had a fairly stable, happy life. My husband's job sent him to New York so I could tag along for a cheeky holiday. On day one our lives changed — he was asked to transfer to New York.
Now a little background about the other half of me — he has only ever lived within 26 miles of where we grew up. Pheidippides ran that distance to Athens, Cian just about drove a moving truck that far.
I only mention this to explain our differences. He has been lucky enough to get work within commuting distance of our home while my career had caused me to roam like a nomad, traveling and living out of my suitcase for long stretches of time. So I was used to being constantly on the move.
That day in June he told me “They’ve asked me to transfer,” my reply was an incredibly hasty “When do we move?” My inner nomad reared her bedraggled head, shoes on and bags packed, but having a far more logical head than I, Cian suggested we take the three weeks on offer to decide.
We spent that week weighing the pros and cons of moving. Although, if I am being honest with myself, my mind was made up. I was already there. I would see every Broadway show, I would meet creative people and make art and I would happily get lost in a sea of 8 million people and drink in the madness that was New York. I could see it all like a reel of 16mm film, grainy and flickery and oh so romantic. Earthy tones that compliment the brooding, acerbic, self-deprecating nature of my people.
Fast forward to 2023. We have settled in quite nicely in New York. We have two cats (Pan & Púca), a nice apartment, friends, I’m working at a magazine having made the transition to video producer. We braved the pandemic, wore masks, were socially distanced, and stayed put for three years. Three years without stepping foot on home soil, without a session of music in our local pub where everyone knows us and our entire family, without seeing rainbows or stars, and without saying hello to Magpies.
It was a fairly typical day at my job when a text came through from Cian asking me to call him.
His contract was finishing in a month.
A lot of things went through my head — What did that mean? Where did that leave us? Would we make rent? But mostly I was worried about my husband. I left work abruptly.
Cian worked close to the World Trade Center so I met him at The Oculus. As I walked through the second floor and spotted him below me, standing in the middle by himself, my heart ached a little. There he was, the love of my life, my true north, and he looked so lost.
I won’t go into the details of the conversations that followed. We’ve had a lot of tough days in our time together, and these were certainly up there.
We got some answers. He would work out the month, then he would have 60 days to find new employment or it was back to Ireland. We settled on going home, the feeling that our time in the USA was over. In a move that only the universe can answer for — a day before he was informed of his contract finishing, I had turned down a job in Ireland.
Due to the nature of his work visa, I too had to finish my job. It didn’t matter that for nearly four years we paid our taxes, that we did everything above board — Uncle Sam didn’t want us anymore.
If I sound bitter, it is because I was.
A lot goes through your head when your life choices have been made for you with no regard for what you want. The top one for me was “Well, fuck this place.”
There was a nice feeling moving to New York. Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. However, there was something exciting about coming from a town of just over 10,000 people and taking such a huge step into 8 million people. Like we were doing something. Like this was the start of an adventure. And now that was being taken from us.
So I know you are probably thinking “if you’re so bitter, why are you so enamored with the idea of New York?” The truth is I’m not really bitter anymore.
I think anyone who comes to a country seeking a better life or better opportunities deserves a chance at it. I think legal status shouldn’t dictate how deserving you are to stay. I will say this as someone who is self-reflective enough to identify my own faults, at the time I did feel like I deserved to stay, it was a time of ill-advised self-pity and that can often cause blindness to other more pressing things going on in the world. Thankfully I’m not prone to much self-pity — pity isn’t given lightly in Irish households so you learn very quickly that there is not much point in wallowing. In a moment of clarity, I realized that it wasn’t the city's fault. It wasn’t the people’s fault. It just was.
Next Steps
On his last day of work I received a message from him…
We were prepared to move home. We had gotten quotes for shipping things home, we had called our friends and family back home (delight and excitement). We had told our friends and family in New York (sadness and disbelief). By all accounts we were heading home.
He saw a dream job advertised on the day he was told the contract would be finishing. In a panic he applied. He applied for exactly one job. He applied for exactly one job and on his last day of work they reached out to him.
The Universe was definitely having fun with us.
For four weeks we sat on that information because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Four weeks of dodging questions about flights home, shipping stuff, and what we were going to do next. Four weeks of interviews and technical tests. On week five we told our immediate families there was a chance we would be staying. On week six he was offered the job.
But it couldn’t be that easy, the next problem was the visa transfer.
We still had two weeks before we had to leave New York or else we would be deported or our status would be “illegal.” The visa transfer takes much longer than 2 weeks.
On the last possible day, we went back to Ireland and I’m still here now. In the quiet of the countryside, where mice have been shooed out of the house, the stars shine oh so brightly, and there seems to have been a rainbow every day since we came back.
We are living in a state of limbo. It’s been really fucking tough. I’m not a great sleeper at the best of times. These days I toss and turn and constantly complain about my back and my lack of sleep. I worry that the visa won’t transfer. I worry that they will rescind the job offer. I worry that we won’t be allowed back into New York to close our apartment and bring our cats home if all that happens.
I worry that I am wishing our lives away just hoping for an answer. I worry that the universe was telling us to go, but like true New Yorkers, we told the universe to go fuck itself. I worry that the universe is spiteful and will chew us up and spit us out.
However, it hasn’t been all bad. We’ve been able to catch up with friends and family. To celebrate birthdays, we’ve toured Ireland and seen its beauty with fresh eyes. We’ve met and gotten to know our friends' children. We have reintroduced ourselves to our growing nephews and nieces as well as our aging aunts and uncles.
I know that this isn’t the worst story you’ll ever read of this kind. I know that there are people separated from their families, that there are people who have not stepped foot in their homeland for 30 years let alone my measly three. I know that there are people who can never go back and I know there are people who never wanted to leave. However, those are not my stories to tell, this one is.
I used to work with Sarah when I was at Inked. She sat directly across from me and we used to verbally snipe at each other all day long. There was no meaning behind it, we are very good friends, but it is a friendship based on taking the piss out of each other. As such, I often would tell her that I couldn't wait until she was deported, and we'd have a laugh because this seemed like a far-fetched possibility. Until, as you know after reading this, it wasn't so far-fetched any longer. I might even go as far as to say I feel slightly badly about the jokes, as if I spoke it into the universe in the first place. But please don't tell Sarah I said that, I'll never hear the end of what a sappy bastard I was in the comments...
Brilliant. Touched a cord.