Application for Permanent Residency: Granted

They called it the Big Dry. Before that, it was the cyclones. Always something, you know? But the dry, that was the one that made you think. Made you really think, this is not sustainable. My father, he always said, “The land gives and the land takes.” But by 1990, it felt like the land was just taking, taking, taking. We had our family land outside Lautoka, not big, just enough for some cane, some cassava, a little garden. Enough for us, and maybe a little extra to sell at the market. But the rains, they just stopped coming right. Or they came too hard, washed everything away. Then the salt started creeping in. You’d taste it in the water sometimes, a little brackish. The roots, they couldn’t handle it. The soil just got tired. My son, Krishan, he was just a little boy then, maybe seven or eight, running around. He didn't understand why the green was turning brown, why the well was getting lower. How do you explain to a child that the earth itself is giving up? You can’t, not really. You just try to make do.

My father, bless his heart, he wanted to stay. “We’re from here, Anish,” he’d say, “Our ancestors, they walked this ground.” And my mother, she just prayed. Every day, more prayers. But prayers don’t bring rain, not when it’s gone for months. And the crops, they wouldn’t grow. So, there was less money. Less food. It was a slow kind of panic, not like a sudden storm, but a quiet, creeping fear that just settled into your bones. That’s when I started looking at the papers. The Fiji Times, sometimes they had these little ads, for work overseas. Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Always looking for skilled people. I had a skill. Not in farming, not like my father. I was good with computers. I’d worked for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company – CSR – for almost fifteen years by then, in their main office, testing their new inventory software, making sure the numbers added up. It was a good job, steady. But steady didn’t mean much when the island itself felt like it was shrinking.

So I started applying. Sending out letters, long letters, filled with my experience. I didn’t have email then, not like today. It was stamps and airmail envelopes, waiting weeks for a reply. Most of them said no, or nothing at all. But then one day, there was a letter from California. Sacramento, California. A small company, they made software for, I don’t know, some kind of logistics. They needed a software tester. They needed someone who was meticulous, who could find the tiny errors in the code. I remember holding that letter, the thin paper, thinking, “This is it. This is the chance.” It wasn’t a dream of gold streets, not for me. It was a dream of solid ground, of a place where the rain came when it was supposed to, and the soil wasn’t salty.

The visa process was… long. Form after form. I don’t remember all the numbers, but I remember the stacks of paper, the waiting at the embassy in Suva. My wife, Sarita, she was strong. Stronger than me sometimes. She said, “You go, Anish. You make a life for Krishan.” It was decided that Krishan would stay with my parents. He was young, he needed their grounding, their stories, while I went to earn. It was hard, you know? Leaving your only child. Leaving your wife. But we knew it was for him. For his future, a future where he wouldn’t have to worry about the next harvest. I promised Sarita I would send money, every month, without fail. And I did. I never missed a month, not once.

I landed in San Francisco, not Sacramento. August 1991. Hot. So hot. Not like Fiji hot, where there’s the sea breeze. This was a dry heat that just baked you. I remember taking a bus from the airport. A Greyhound, I think. Route 14 or something. I had one suitcase, and a small carry-on with a picture of Sarita and Krishan. The bus was full of people, all kinds of people, speaking different languages. I didn’t know what to expect. Sacramento seemed so far away, so alien. The company had arranged a small apartment for me, just for the first month, near their office on J Street. It was small, a studio. Nothing much. But it had air conditioning. Oh, that air conditioning was a luxury. In Fiji, we had fans, if you were lucky. This was a whole different world.

My first job, at that company, DataFlow Solutions, it was just like I’d done at CSR. Sitting in front of a screen, line by line, looking for bugs. They were building a shipping manifest system for some big trucking company. I started at, I think, maybe $17 an hour. Which felt like a fortune. But then you saw the rent, the groceries. Everything cost. I remember buying a loaf of white bread, Wonder Bread, for almost two dollars. In Fiji, that would feed us for a day. Here, it was just one loaf. It was a constant mental calculation. How many hours did I need to work to send enough home? To pay my own bills? To eat? I ate a lot of instant noodles those first few months. Cup-a-Noodles. Beef flavor. They were cheap.

After a few months, I moved from the studio apartment. It was too expensive, even with the company helping. I found a room to rent in a house in North Sacramento, near Arden Way. It was a shared house, with three other guys. One from Vietnam, one from Mexico, and one American. We didn’t talk much, just nodded, used the kitchen, paid our share of the utilities. My rent was $350 then. This was late 1991, early 1992. I bought an old Honda Civic for $1,200. It was a beat-up thing, blue, but it got me to work. I remember putting the key in the ignition for the first time, feeling like I had a small piece of control. A piece of the new life.

The work visa, H1-B it was called, it had an expiration date. I knew I had to make a decision. Go back, or try to stay. My family, they were still struggling with the land. Krishan was getting bigger in the pictures Sarita sent. His smile was still the same, but his face was changing. I couldn’t go back to the drought, to the uncertainty. So, I applied for the green card. Permanent residency. That was another mountain of forms. Form I-130, I think. And Form I-485. All the numbers start to blur after a while, you know? But each one felt heavy, like it carried my whole future on its page. The lawyers cost money, too. So much money. I worked extra shifts, sometimes on the weekends, just to pay for the lawyers. They were expensive, but they knew the system.

I was always careful with my money. Every penny counted. I learned to cook my own food, mostly dhal and rice, things that reminded me of home but were cheaper to make here. I didn’t go out much. Maybe once a month, I’d take the bus to the Capitol Mall and just sit on a bench, watching the people. It was so different from Fiji. So many cars. So many different faces. I missed the ocean. I missed the smell of salt and hibiscus. I missed hearing Hindi everywhere. Here, it was English, English, English. I had to practice. My English was good enough for work, but for talking, for really connecting with people, it felt stiff. I stumbled on words. I still do sometimes, I guess.

Then the company I worked for, DataFlow, they went through a merger. Early 1995, I think. It was a big deal. Lots of people got let go. I survived that one. My manager, a lady named Carol, she said I was too good at finding bugs. She kept me. But then, a year later, the company downsized again. This time, I was on the list. Just like that. After four years. My heart dropped. I had the green card by then, thankfully. It came in 1994, I remember that, because I finally felt like I could breathe a little. Like I wasn’t just a visitor anymore. But then, suddenly, no job. And Krishan was ten, eleven, still growing. Still needing money.

I went to the employment agency. Another stack of forms. Resumes. Interview after interview. It felt like I was back at the beginning, sending out those letters from Fiji. But this time, I was here. I knew the buses. I knew the streets. I got a job at another software company, a bigger one, called Technix, near Folsom. This one made accounting software. More testing. The pay was a little better, $20 an hour. But it was a longer drive. The Honda Civic was still running, barely. I fixed things myself, watched YouTube videos later on. Before that, it was just trial and error, or asking the mechanic a million questions.

Krishan… he missed me. I know he did. Every phone call, he’d ask, “When are you coming home, Papa?” And I’d say, “Soon, beta. Soon. Just a little longer.” Sarita, she understood. She knew I was doing this for them. She’d tell me about his school, how he was doing, what new mischief he’d gotten into. I missed his mischief. I missed his hand in mine. Sometimes, on the phone, I’d just listen to his breathing. Just to feel close. It was a long twelve years before I saw him again. Twelve years. He was a man when I finally went back to visit. A grown man. He was almost taller than me. It was… strange. Beautiful, but strange. Like we were both strangers, and family, at the same time.

My life here, it became a pattern. Work, home, send money, sleep, repeat. I moved a few more times. Another apartment in Rancho Cordova. Then a small house, a bungalow, in Rosemont. It had a small garden. I tried to grow a few things. Tomatoes, a little bit of basil. Nothing like my father’s land, but it was something. Something green. I never remarried. I thought about it, maybe. But my heart was back in Fiji, with Sarita and Krishan. I kept working. Testing software. The technology changed so fast. From mainframes to PCs, then the internet, then mobile apps. I had to keep learning, always. It kept me busy. It kept my mind from wandering too much. From remembering the taste of salt in the water, the feel of the dry earth cracking under my feet.

Sarita and my parents, they’re gone now. My parents passed a few years ago. Sarita, she went just last year. It’s a different kind of empty now. Krishan, he has a good life. He’s a teacher now, in Suva. Married, with two children. My grandchildren. He named his son Anish, after me. He sent me pictures. Beautiful children. I talk to him every week, on WhatsApp. He tells me about their school, their games. He says the rain is better now. Not like before. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back for good. It’s not home anymore, not really. This is home, now. This house, this garden, these streets I know so well. This land, it didn’t take anything from me. It just gave me a place to stand. A place to earn. A place for Krishan to grow, even if it was from a distance. That’s enough, I think. It’s more than enough.