Working Stiff by Grant Stoddard Page B

trying to reckon how I would get my immigrant status straightened out. It had become abundantly clear that I wanted to be legally allowed to live and work in New York; I was in the pursuit of happiness and was gaining some serious ground. Another ninety-day visa waiver period would soon elapse and it was likely that immigration officials would not let me into the country easily after two consecutive ninety-day visits.
    Everyone else in the office was dumfounded by the obstacles in the way of obtaining a work visa for me. Pre-9/11 New Yorkers looked at the people bussing their tables, delivering their lo mein, folding their laundry, messengering their documents, driving their taxis, cleaning their offices, serving their cocktails and assumed that the gateway to America was still flung wide open. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States is more than seven million. These men and women serve to do the jobs that Americans don’t deign to and as a result are largely unhindered by the authorities. Conversely, the INS is well aware that white, college-educated Europeans are not coming to America to scrub toilets and are in fact vying for positions coveted by their own blue-eyed boys and girls.
    While Becky was originally more than prepared to go to City Hall with me and quietly tie the knot, her motivation was becoming more romantic than practical. As a marriage of convenience became a more distinct possibility by the minute, she began leaking our plans to her mother, who started sketching out an elaborate summer wedding with all the trimmings, which had helped fire Becky’s imagination, and thetwo of them created this feedback loop of flowers, wedding dresses, wedding songs, prime rib, seven-tier cakes, and so on and so forth.
    As I weighed a marriage of convenience against the risk of deportation, Richard Gottehrer came to my rescue. Richard offered to produce a demo tape for me and sign me to a developing artist deal with Orchard Records. Richard’s business partner called in a favor with a family friend in Washington, and within a week I had an approval form for an O-type working visa, which was good for three years. It arrived immediately prior to my ninety-day visa waiver was about to expire.
    Becky was happy to hear my news despite having gotten carried away with the idea of a lavish summer wedding. She had just graduated from beauty school and had been accepted as a trainee at Bumble and Bumble, a trendy midtown hair salon where countless stars came to be coiffed. I returned home for two months to finalize my visa status, tie up some loose ends, and convince my friends that I really was going to live in America for good. I was an émigré.
    â€œSo you’re really going to live out there, are you?”
    Everybody asked me this, having regarded my previous stays in the United States as little more than extended vacations. When I told people of my intentions I unleashed a tidal wave of resentment. When you leave England, people sort of take it very personally.
    I recently read an article in a British daily paper about Kate Moss buying a place in LA that was headlined “Drug-Troubled Model Turns Her Back on Britain,” as if she’d left the rainy little island out of spite.
    Having the visa in hand made it official in my mind as well as everybody else’s.
    While I was at home Becky began searching for a place for us to live in Manhattan, now that we would both be working there. She eventually signed a one-year lease on a tiny, newly refurbished one-bedroom on Attorney Street between Houston and Stanton. Attorney Street had been a one-stop shop for heroin just a few years earlier, but by 1999 represented the easternmost reach of gentrification on the Lower East Side. Until I moved in there with her I had never been east of Essex Street. Because she was still in education of sorts, her parentsagreed to pay a third of her $1,400 rent, meaning that Becky and I only had to find a little