Green Card

Green Card

Home Front Workers

Hank Van Driel

Moving to the United States

“You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna give you green card.”

“I went to the American consul in Rotterdam. And I said, ‘I need a visa,’ and they tell me, ‘Go and ask for one yearly visa and that you’re a teacher otherwise it’s a temporary visa.’ And the consul said to me, ‘What you gonna do down there?’ I said, ‘Well, you know, find somewhere to stay,’ which is a big no-no on a temporary visa. You’re supposed to go back, and the consul said to me, ‘You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna give you a green card.’ And I got a green card within six weeks. By the sixties, things had slowed down, and they had extra quotas. So it wasn’t that hard to get a green card. But they changed the immigration law 1965, 66, so I caught it just in time. After that, it changed.”

1965