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STARS AND GRIPES
A fascinating new documentary reveals how US Embassy staff in London cope with the onslaught of visa seekers... and troublesome tweets from Trump
Diplomacy. It’s not a word to set the pulse racing. But new documentary series Inside The US Embassy delivers more raw emotion than a boxset of soap operas. Filmed over a year, with unprecedented access to the US ambassador and his staff in London, the footage reveals the demands placed on diplomats by Donald Trump’s unpredictable ruleby-Twitter, and how British politicians are battling to work out what Brexit means for the ‘special relationship’.
But it’s the dilemmas facing the visa staff that really deliver human drama, as hundreds of applicants every day beg for permission to travel to America. Tough immigration laws mean many must be turned away in the most heart-wrenching circumstances – and it’s the embassy employees who make those choices.
Small wonder that, in a backroom of the visa offices, there’s a full-time psychiatrist on hand to help traumatised staff deal with their emotional overload.
Typical of the crisis cases is Georgia, who is desperate to visit the daughter she hasn’t seen for 20 years. Their relationship seemed irretrievable – until Georgia learned that her daughter, now 28 and living in the States, has terminal cancer.
She would give anything to fly to her daughter’s bedside. But there’s a problem. When Georgia first came to Britain from Jamaica, she overstayed her visitor’s permit. She was given permanent permission to remain in the UK, but infractions like that remain on record – and the US takes a dim view. After a tearful interview, she is granted a visa.
Other cases, although no less dramatic, are easier to decide – such as that of the middle-aged man who wants to be at his mother’s 80th birthday party in America. A glance at his record reveals he served five-and-a-half years in jail for gross indecency with a child. It’s no visa and no surprise.
There’s drama of a different kind on the fourth floor, where the ambassador, 71- year- old tycoon Rober t Wood Johnson, is being ‘murderboarded’ – jargon for being toughened up for an interview. Johnson, or Woody to his friends, is about to be quizzed by Radio 4 journalist Justin Webb on the Today programme, and Woody’s public relations team are hurling the hardest questions they can devise at him.
Luckily, Woody is used to playing hardball. The heir to the Johnson & Johnson cosmetics business owns the New York Jets football team and is a friend of Donald Trump. But Trump isn’t making his life easy – as the embassy prepares to move to a new £750 million building in
Vauxhall, the President tweets that he won’t attend, in protest at Barack Obama’s sale of the old site in Mayfair. ‘Bad deal!’ fumes the Donald.
That bombshell explodes a few days before Woody is due to schmooze Cabinet ministers at a soiree to discuss post-Brexit trade treaties. The ambassador is astonished at the pessimism in some quarters. ‘As an American, I’m not used to hearing that!’ he
snorts. ‘How can you have a country with this great a history, this great a language, this great a legal system, this great a presence and not be successful? The special relationship that some people are sceptical of, there should be no scepticism, because the bond is there and it’s very, very powerful.’
Inside The American Embassy, Monday, 10pm, Channel 4.