Green Card

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“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.”