GREEN CARD CHALLENGE

As the three of us, Jacob Chacko, Abraham Mathai and I were nearing graduation, we started getting bitten by an aspirational bug that invariably gets into contact with every Indian student who is about to complete their studies in the US the urge to stay on in this land of endless opportunities.

We had begun to love this country and it was but natural we started looking at ways and means to make this our permanent home. The facts of the matter were simple, as were our options. We were here on a student visa. Once we were done with our studies, we had to go back.

There were only limited choices before us. You could marry either a US citizen or green card holder and thus pave the way forbecoming eligible for resident status. I was only 23, so there was no way I was going to get married so that I could stay back in the US.

Jacob decided to visit his home town and during that trip, he found himself a bride from India. Even though Sally lived in Bombay (now Mumbai), she was originally from my home town and belonged to a prominent family. During those days, the US administration used to give green cards to medical professionals.
The most preferred ones were nurses. Sally with her qualifica-tions was able to get her immigrant visa, paving the way for Jacob to become a resident within a few months. Abraham had found himself a wife in Dallas with the help of his uncle Pastor PJ Titus. She was also a nurse.
Soon enough, Abraham moved to Dallas. Now both of my roommates had moved out which meant I had to find new room-mates. My nephew James who was going to Bible school in Eugene decided he wanted to come and join community college. So James became my new roommate.
There was another young man named Joy, also a student, who was looking for a place to stay. As we had a vacancy for one more in our apartment, he became our third roommate. Joy was married and his wife Betty used to live in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
She was related to Cherian and Aleyamma. Betty was unable to join Joy immediately which meant the Cedar Street Apartment once again enjoyed full occupancy. Joy soon joined the University of Washington.
At this time, Philadelphia Bible College continued its intake of Indian students, most of them from Kerala. Samkutty and his wife Valsamma came together and stayed in an apartment close by. Another young man Ivan who joined up was single. We all became good friends.

During weekends everybody used to hang around in our apart-ment, cook dinner together and have a great time. Each roommate had to take his turn to cook food for the guests. We continued to work at the food center right through the summer months.

It was there that James found this young lady named Mary and fell in love with her. Eventually, he married her and moved out. I was the best man at their wedding. By this time, I was almost done with my studies. I was getting concerned about what to do by way of a full-time job.

After graduation, the Immigration Department allowed theimmigrant to stay back another 18 months, a period which was allowed for the students to acquire practical training. If I was unable to find a proper job by then, I had no option but to return to India. During my last quarter in college, a couple of local companies came looking for technicians to hire. I met Mr.. Ron Crockett, who was the owner of Air Repair, Inc.

I talked to him and said I had another quarter to finish college but would like to work for him. He gave me his business card and told me to apply after graduation.
All of a sudden, or so I felt, it was time for my graduation. There were two ways to look at the day. One was to be positive, as I had achieved my primary goal of getting my certificate in aeronautical engineering. The other, a more practical issue facing me, was start worrying about what to do next.
The only job prospect that I had was the placement meeting three months ago with Mr. Crockett. So, I drove down to his company at the Renton Airport and put in my job application. Besides the application, he required everyone to take an IQ test as well as a Math test. After the test, he called me to go over my application form and test paper.

He wanted to know the logic behind some of my answers. By the time I got through all that, I was a bit unsure how I had fared. To my immense relief, he met me again and said I had done quite well. But he did not offer me the job immediately but said he would let me know soon.
I was quite hopeful as I knew even companies like his, which had only 20 employees, had to follow some rules while hiring fresh hands. Truth be told, I had always wanted to work for a small company of this size for various reasons.

I thought this allowed me to learn all aspects of the business. I wanted to work in every vertical of a company regardless of whether I was trained or not.
Moreover, I wanted to prove myself to be a great hire to them so that they would not hesitate to apply for an immigration visa. I wanted to build an intimate relationship with the small company owner which would help me move up the ladder. But these were all part of my wishful thinking.
About a week later one Sunday, when I was in the apartment watching television, the telephone rang. It was Ron Crockett. He asked me what I was doing. I was honest and told him that I was watching football. He asked me whether I wanted to work in his company.

I remember my reply as if it was yesterday, "Yes. I will report there Monday morning." To which he replied, "No. Can you come today?" I eagerly blurted out, "Yes". That was it. I had my first real job in the US. Ron instructed me to reach the company and ask for Jupe Weigel, his second in command, who would then tell me what to do.
I lost no time in changing my dress before taking my car and driving down to Renton. There I met Jupe for the first time. He asked me whether I had any experience in electrical engineering.

I told him no, that I had just finished college and this was my first job in the aviation sector.

Once he heard I was a fresher, with no practical experience, Jupe went out of the way to help me. I was soon told that Jupe was originally a school teacher who nurtured left-wing ideology. Due to his political views, he had lost his school job but what came to his aid was the fact that he was trained to be a wiring technician.
During the ensuing days, while he trained me, I also had to suffer his monologues, comprising mostly of his communist philosophy.

He had his own opinions about the Vietnam War and his take on the topic was fundamentally against those held by the US government. I silently heard him out but made sure that I did not miss out on any useful information he had to impart on aviation technology.
I was not unduly bothered by his political views as long as my practical training in the electrical wiring division of aero-planes did not become a casualty. Between Jupe and me, we made sure that my training did not suffer in any manner.

My first job was to build electrical modules using drawings. I was taught how to use various crimping tools, read drawings and build based on the drawings. Three other classmates from South Seattle College also worked with me. About a week into my training, I was asked by Jupe to join one of my classmates, Paul. The brief to me was to repair aircraft components.
One of the main customers of Air Repair was an airline from Alaska called Wien Air Alaska. They had three 737 "cargo combi-aircrafts", which in essence meant these aircraft had big cargo doors to accommodate cargo in the front of the aircraft while the rear half accounted for the passenger seats.
Now, coming to the crux of the issue, as Alaska had several gravel runways, it was required by the technical team to ensure the protection of the engines and to keep the aircraft itself free from

gravel because these "combi-aircrafts" had low-hanging engines from the wings.
While landing on the gravel runways special to Alaska, these low-hanging engines would work like vacuum cleaners, sucking in the gravel, which in turn, would damage the engines. Hence, these engines were installed with what were called vortex dissipaters to break up the suction effect.
On account of the protection panels installed at the fuselage, wings and control surfaces, gravel would get scattered all over when the aircraft landed and began taxiing on the runway.
Given such a delicate situation, Air Alaska had to make sure that whenever a component failed, it got replaced immediately with another serviceable part even as the original component was sent for repair.

Air Repair saw this as a great opportunity moving forward and promptly created a division specifically to repair these faulty components.
As Paul had been working there for a few months before I joined, he was my boss in this unit where we had to do pretty much everything ourselves. The work schedule followed at Air Repair involved job numbers being assigned to these unserviceable units, as and when they got delivered. Since there were no computers then, everything had to be written down.
On many occasions, there were no manuals which we had to order so that we got to understand how these units worked. We also had to build the necessary test equipment to gauge the level at which these parts worked, post-repair.

We disassembled the faulty part for troubleshooting, ordered parts for replacement, reassembled them, tested the repaired parts to see if they functioned well and then certified them accordingly.

Once all these due processes were followed, we would be ready for the final step billing the customer. It was a great learning experience.
I put in a lot of overtime hours as there was plenty of work for the two of us. My detailed work report which comprised the repair work specifications, customer feedback and the final summation was circulated to all technicians as the model report. I was very proud of what I could achieve in such a short span. Ron had begun to take a special interest in me.
He would joke with me and narrate stories. He knew that I understood not only the technical aspects but the financial side as well due to my academic background in economics. Soon, I was being asked to help him with creating invoices for other jobs that the company was taking up.

After about six months, by which time I had become an integral part of the company, one day I asked Ron whether Air Repair would sponsor me for an immigrant visa as I wished to stay on in the US. To my utter delight, he was open to this idea and asked me to find out what the procedure was.

The next couple of weeks saw me making several phone calls to the immigration office and the labor department, till I got a good handle on the process of applying for an immigrant visa. I must admit it was the labor department that proved to be of more help. Naturally, as the most important step towards getting the immigrant visa was the mandatory labor clearance.
An officer at the labor department connected me with his colleague, Katherine Brown. I told her my employer would like to apply for my visa. She asked me a lot of questions.

What made things a bit complicated was the fact that Boeing had laid off about 80,000 people in the Seattle area during that period. Her major concern was why I was trying to procure labor clearance amid such a massive layoff in Seattle.
I told her I was trained and certificated to repair aircraft, as I was neither an unskilled nor a semi-skilled assembly line worker. After about 45 minutes of my persistence, she gave up and told me to collect the papers and have my employer apply directly for the labor clearance certificate. In less than a month, Ron called me to his cabin and showed me the labor clearance. It was signed by Katherine Brown.
Normally, this process would have taken three months. Since I talked to Katherine directly and was able to convince her about the type of work I was trained to do, it took much less time. Several others whom I knew were denied their labor clearance. I believed it was all in God's infinite plan and I was merely his tool.

I did not disclose the details of what was happening at the labor department to anybody except Tom, who had always encouraged me to find a regular job and stay back in the US. After he had graduated from the University of Oregon, Tom got his employer to help him get his visa.
Another reason why I wanted to keep it a secret until I got my immigrant visa was there were jealous people around who could easily have called the immigration office with negative feedback, thus putting obstacles in my way.
It took another nine months for me to get my green card. It came through in December 1973, about three years after I had landed in the US, with the grand plan of returning home soon after getting my certificate in Aeronautical Technology.
In retrospect, this great land had kept me so occupied all three years that I had not had any opportunity to visit my parents or siblings for such a long time. It is not that I did not wish to go home earlier but I simply could not afford the air tickets and the associated expense of a home visit while going all out to find a permanent home in the US.

It was Tom who had told me something that I was not aware of till then, which paved the way financially for my first return trip to India. When a person works in the US as a non-immigrant, the employer cannot withhold his social security tax. This amount is taken out of your paycheck and the employer matches the same and gives it to the government.

Since the employer collected it without authorization, they are required to refund it directly to get their share of the tax reimbursed. It is here that I was able to claim quite a tidy amount, which was the aggregate of the monthly deductions claimed from my paycheck until I got my green card. This covered payments that covered a period that spanned a little over two years.
Now I had enough money to travel to India in a style befitting a young green card holder and not just a student returning after completing his studies. In January 1974, I got time off from my regular employer to travel to India.

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