I’m entering a bureaucratic nightmare after the US’s so-called Independence Day

Fresh out of the Fourth of July bank holiday weekend, it’s hard not to feel a little perturbed about what America stands for. After all, the central theme of Independence Day – the one thing upon which all those miniature flags, fireworks and star-spangled banner cakes are predicated – is “no taxation without representation”. It’s a fair enough demand from any former colony, but as an American taxpayer who can’t even vote in the city’s mayoral elections, I do object somewhat to the idea that all of that’s been solved.

In between watching residents of my Brooklyn neighbourhood dare each other to set off fireworks (technically illegal in the state of New York, so instantly cool to teenagers) in their hands, I’ve been having my usual fights with US immigration. The US embassy is closed to British applicants right now (bar spouses of American citizens), meaning that my fiance – whose visa has come up for renewal – can’t get an appointment. A few days ago, we were told that he would have to leave New York this week and would not be able to get an embassy interview to secure his new visa until February 2022.

After 18 months of being trapped together across the Atlantic during a pandemic, it felt like another especially cruel hurdle. We pay taxes in the US; we have a lease in New York City; we own furniture, and books, and absurdly large cat trees – and, indeed, the cat himself. To be told that one of us now needs to bed down (with his parents) for potentially eight months away from the other while we wait for a bureaucrat to tick a box feels mind-bendingly absurd. But wait we must, as must thousands of other people in our situation. And as Boris opens up the whole country to Covid back home, American embassies respond by saying that they definitely can’t begin their processes any sooner because the safety of their staff isn’t guaranteed.

Amongst all this, of course, we are now trying to resurrect the dregs of our wedding planning, after a cancellation in September 2020 and another in May 2021. Our conversations with each other ping-pong between “Did you get your third British-government-approved Covid test done yet in time for the flight?”, “What do we do if one of us catches the Delta variant while we’re separated?”, and “What colour bridesmaids’ dresses do you think will go best with these flowers?” I have zero sympathy for anyone who has ever had a meltdown over a cake, a band or a table centrepiece now. I’m just hoping that my wedding guests will be alive, and that I’ll be able to see my husband for more than half the year.

Gone are the days when the only hurdle to a peaceful wedding was my divorced parents and their various relatives meeting again for the first time in the ceremony room. Still, nothing affords perspective like a global pandemic. Covid means everyone’s suddenly started working together – even if the vagaries of US immigration, and Boris’s so-called plan, continue to work against us.