So, basically... New York=good, London=bad?????????

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C'mon, did you even watch the movie?

Ofcourse New York gets glamourized, because that's what people do when they're stuck in some sh*thole. You think of an utopian alternative to where you are now. For a lot of 3rd World people the first world is that utopia, and especially New York because it's been so romanticized in movies/music/books/etc.

How'd you guess religion got so large during the middle ages in the first place? Life on earth sucked for the majority of the population so people held on to what little hope for a better place they had. "Believe in god and he'll get you to heaven" and all that kind of blah blah.

Senay needs New York to be beautiful otherwise she can't hang on in London. Simple as that. Okwe realises that and keeps the dream intact.

The grass is always greener on the other side. That's the attitude the lady has. She simply has a romanticized view of what awaits her in America. Stop taking it personally.

Didn't they just want somewhere that they could show off a passport and not be deported?

Didn't you see the end of the movie? Senay just needed to leave the UK. At the end, she goes back to Okwe and tells him she knows its not going to be as good as she anticipates. (Okwe tells her she's going to see cops on white horses and lights on the trees and she comes back crying and says she knows its not going to be like that) New York was just a different spot. When things aren't good, people just want to move on or strive for an unrealistic dream. It's false hope some times but that's what keeps us going.

I think its simply the case of the grass being greener on the other side, they went to London and assumed New York would be better cos of the way people (mainly her cousin) bigs it up to her. I'm guessing if she had gone to New York first and had immigration on her tail there and people blackmailing her into sucking them off then she'd have assumed that London would have been a better place to live.

Like i said, its mainly cos she had a family member living there that she was probably more intrigued to go there. Don't think Okwe actually said that New York was better than London either, just that somethings over there were easier. And that is true, there are certain things in America that are better and certain things over here that are better. Don't think she would have hated London so much if they had actually allowed her to live in the country and work without being hassled every two minutes - this place really isn't all bad!




Ashmi any question

Would the film have worked if the characters had nothing to look to forward to? Nowhere to go to start afresh and put the events of the story behind them? New York is depicted as it is in order to sell the film to American viewers simple as that, whether or not the reality of New York is better or worse than London is irrelevant in terms of the films narrative.

Inside the dusters, there were three men.
Inside the men, there were three bullets.

I agree with a poster here that since Senay had a cousin in New York, New York would become something of a draw, especially if, as the poster said, the cousin "bigged" it up to her. But it does seem, as a U.S. citizen who has lived in New York, that immigrants really learn their way around, perhaps especially in New York. With someone in place who already knew all the angles, Senay might have had a better chance. That could very well have worked the other way if she had been in New York and the cousin in London. It does seem, though, that many illegal immigrants here end up never leaving. They somehow get established ... maybe because they have children here, who automatically become U.S. citizens, I believe ... and many start terrific business and even become wealthy.

Of course, at this point, Senay has a passport. I'd have to watch the film again, but was it a British passport? That actually might have brought up a whole new set of problems, because I believe the U.S. only allows foreigners to stay a month without a visa, six months with a visa and here, as well as in Britain and possibly the rest of the world, you should have some special skill to be able to get citizenship, unless you marry a citizen. But I don't know if anyone goes around checking, or tries to haul people in if they get, say, lost. Also, as Britain is so much smaller, perhaps immigration is far more restrictive there than it is in the U.S. I just haven't heard of immigration checks, and all the other stuff that was going on in the movie re scaring the immigrants. It may go on, but here as well there there are jobs no one wants to do that are under the table but here maybe no one is looking at the businesses too hard. Just a guess but, again, immigration doesn't seem to have been on the front burner too much except for people complaining that immigrants get all the welfare benefits. Notwithstanding that the so-called American way of life feels as if it is being threatened. Maybe immigrants keep it alive. They certainly seem to come here with stars in their eyes and hope in their hearts expecting all kinds of freedoms and they get jobs, cars, education, housing like nobody's business as if they were born to it. It's actually probably very helpful for the rest of us, because they are keeping the American Dream alive.

Also, if Okwe was going back to where he was from, wasn't he a wanted man there? That sounds pretty dangerous. I wonder if the issues of how Senay and Okwe would be received at their respective destinations are a plot hole.