Lost in transit

Expat Without A Visa

Three days ago, my Australian student visa (subclass 573) expired.

Now, several weeks ago, I applied for a tourist visa extension for 3 more months so I'd have enough time to finish up the freelance projects I'm working on, plus continue to look for work and see if I can find a job worth staying another year for. So I'm actually still legal: with an application pending, I'm automatically covered by a "bridging visa" until the decision comes through. I crossed and dotted all the "t"s and "i"s on my application, and I don't think there should be much of an issue in getting approval – when I met with the case-worker at the Department of Immigration (unexpectedly, a young and very handsome man, dashing all my preconceived notions about bureaucrats), his attitude pretty much indicated that he didn't foresee any problems, and I think my situation is a fairly common one.

Still. Here I am, in the city that's been my home for 2 years; in my house, where I live, surrounded by the things I own (furniture, personal possessions, major appliances, a car), and it's a bit daunting to think that with a stroke of a pen, someone in a government office down on Londsale Street could tell me that my application was denied, and I had exactly 4 weeks to sell off, pack up and ship out my entire life here and have to start over again back in NYC. That's the thing about moving to another country – you're in a place where you don't just have a right to be there, unlike when you live in the country of your birth. You're a guest in someone else's house, and even if you've been paying rent and buying the groceries and cleaning up after yourself properly, they can still show you the door at any time.

But I'm not complaining: I realise, of course, that I have it so much easier than many. Let's be frank: I'm a white, middle-class American citizen who came here for a full-tuition postgrad degree – I'm not exactly in danger of being packed off to some detention centre in the middle of nowhere. But we all know that Australia has not exactly had the best record on dealing with immigrants and asylum seekers (or even their own citizens, for that matter), so it's still just a bit nerve-wracking to have to sit and wait for my fate to be decided by these people. While most of daily life in Australia is similar enough to feel comfortable and fairly familiar, jumping through hoops to beg immigration officials for a visa has been an entirely new experience for me.

But I suppose that's both the reward and challenge of expat life: learning not to take the once-simple things in your life for granted – the right to live and work somewhere, the ease of native communication, the intuitive understanding of a culture.

Of course, as of four days ago, my overseas student health cover expired, too, so now I don't actually have any medical insurance unless I pay an exorbitant monthly charge for out-of-pocket coverage. But hey, that's nothing new – I've been unemployed in America. I guess some things about Australia do feel just like home.

Posted by wildsoda at March 18, 2007 02:59 AM