For being a nation of immigrants, we sure hate foreigners and don’t want our citizens to travel anywhere outside the U.S..
Last week, DH and I took the kids out of school early to renew Eli’s passport. We plan to go to El Salvador to visit family over Easter.
I took the 1:30 p.m. appointment on Friday because both my husband and I plus daughter had to be there and it was difficult to secure an appointment. The downtown Berkeley office is open for a limited number of hours and there is so much paperwork that an actual appointment is required to assure sufficient time and no backlog of people.
Whew! I showed up with the application I printed from the Internet all filled out, Eli’s old passport and DH and my passports, as well as all of our birth certificates, a photo copy of our driver’s licenses, two separate checks for the appropriate fees and Eli’s passport photo. “Did you read the directions before filling out the application?” the woman at the desk curtly asked.
“Yes.”
“No you didn’t.” She then pointed out the fact that my husband and I signed the form without a witness. Ugh.
It took me 20 minutes to re-fill the application. I kept making mistakes, which required a whole new application since white-outs weren’t allowed. “Since 9/11, they (the U.S. State Department) have gotten very strict. They’ll disqualify your application over anything,” the clerk said.
She then asked us if we wanted a “passport card” for Eli. Basically, it it is the short version of the passport book that looks like a driver’s license. We only wanted the book.
Then she said something that made my jaw drop. “If your child were darker I’d tell you to get some ID for her for school. That way she won’t be deported.”
WTF?
“You heard about the little girl that was a U.S. citizen and deported to Guatemala, right?”
I hadn’t. But I looked it up and she was right: a 4-year-old girl was detained and not allowed to come back to the United States even though she was a U.S. citizen. And don’t get me started on the African American teenager who was deported to Colombia recently. We have a major problem with racial profiling in this country.
And I am not convinced it is over 9/11 or our safety. I just think we’ve hit this ugly spot in our history where demographics are changing in this country and people are afraid of our newest Americans. I can’t blame the clerk for being as direct as she was and it is certainly something I will carry with me as we travel. Ugh.
we just mail Tai’s passport for renewal
The post office is staffed with nice folks who know us. I must say, I worry nowadays about Tai’s future with these wildly boneheaded deportations. I keep his old Chinese passport with me when I travel as it also included his visa.
Wtf is right
Although I agree that the clerk was trying to be helpful. I’d do the same thing if I thought a kid needed some extra documentation to not get embroiled in some horrible “confusion.” Sad as hell though.
One of my BFF lives in Arizona. She is naturalized American citizen born in Taiwan. Her kids are obviously American. But given that Arizona is crazy, I started to get worried a couple of years ago that she or her kids would be stopped and then somehow harassed about citizenship.
Sad and wrong.
Good point
I think the clerk could have said it in a better way though. If there is a better way to say something like that, I dunno.
Agreed
The thing about her not subtle way of saying it though is that she is right on the mark. It’s largely about skin color. Uncomfortable to hear someone come right out and say it.
That’s exactly right…
I was so uncomfortable with what she said and it rubbed me the wrong way. Unfortunately, I do think she is right. It was a hassle to renew Eli’s passport!
I had not read about the 4yo
This country gets uglier and uglier, I agree. The fear-mongering that was brought about by Bush post-9/11 has brought with it this ridiculously definition of “other”. (And yes, I mean that as the mother of 2 disabled children.)
This is an outrage to me. I calmly hear my conservative friends who hail from the west coast telling me I don’t understand the immigration issue because I’m east coast, but then I think of you Elisa, and I see how white they are, and I realize I do. Not to sell my friends down the river, I just think it’s always hard to see outside your own box…but we ALL must do it.
Yes
I am about to sell your friends down the river right now. I live in the west, I’m white, and I’m pro-immigrant and pro-immigration. It is quite possible to live here and see its effects and not have the same opinion they do about it.
Yep
I was born and raised in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. I am pro immigrant and pro immigration…and I’m married to a Canadian. It is not that hard to see outside the box.
Trying to give them benefit of the doubt…
..because sometimes I feel so New York that it’s hard to see all the arguments. To tell the truth, I was shocked at the comment that was made by a friend…I didn’t at all think he came down anti-DREAM act, but there you have it. It was far too late to debate that issue after I’d just debated the flat tax issue with someone else. LOL, that’s more politics than I’ve discussed after nearly 10 years in PA! (
Nah
I’m with Gigi and pat of butter. You’re a nice friend to give them the benefit of the doubt but there are tons, millions of people here who are pro Dream Act and not anti-immigrant. There are no special arguments we are privy to by living here.
You might even find people who just want a good amnesty program already.
the anti-immigrant stuff
here can be very strong, I find. Even scratching the surface of polite society can bring it out. I noticed it the last time I was at the pool on a weekday. There’s a new crop in the class I used to take, and they had gotten friendly. One guy (rich, white) was bemoaning sobriety checkpoints, because “You can be over the quote unquote legal limit after only 2 or 3 glasses of wine. That’s not fair.” Orilly? Could you do me a solid and put a sign to that effect on your car, so I will know to stay far, far away from you? Same dude made an anti-immigrant comment.
There’s a virulent anti-immigrant guy a couple doors down from us. He came to the door — once — to ask us to sign his “Save Our State” petition. That was Prop 187 (banning public services for undocumented citizens). I might have yelled a little. I have another neighbor who complains about being driven out of her town by Asians.
That’s nice of them to offer
to drive her.
LOL
LoCa…lol!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
if memory serves,
she made her getaway in a mid-sized Japanese sedan.
I should add that she has surprised me in recent years. And this is a girl who proudly and loudly voted for Bush in 2000, so I really had no hope. Maybe you can take the (provincial, snotty) hometown out of the girl?
Ha! You and Katie…
always crack me up in the most serious of topics. LOL!
Those deportations terrify me
Since I was a kid I’ve seen those assumptions, that if you’re brown in any way, you’re “mexican.” Never mind if your family is from India. Never mind that the oldest families who can document their presence in the US (before 1500) live in New Mexico and speak spanish at home.
I’m a little blonde girl. No one has ever asked me for ‘my papers’ or to prove I was legitimately where I was. I’m waved through checkpoints. (More fools they.
)
Blonde girls who can speak spanish aren’t mexican. We all know that. Oh, except, oops, I went to college with one. She’s a mexican national and she’s got a STEM Ph.D.
That happened to
a friend of my mother’s – she was U.S. born Japanese American. She took a trip to Mexico with a German friend back in the 60s. On the way back in, the white, non-American woman was waved right on in, while the U.S.-born but nonwhite friend was questioned for ages.
Everything
Everything has gotten crazier since 9/11 though, even for white people regarding the border. Not dismissing that there is racism going as well of course.
I’ve have relatives in Canada (not Canadian citizens though, whatever the equivalent is of a green card up there) who used to freely travel from Canada to the U.S. who have gone through hell trying to get over the border since then.
Even a long time ago, I remember it used to take us hours to get through JFK coming back from Ireland because my mom wasn’t a U.S. citizen, she had a green card.
I was asked for ID once
It was weird – I was a passenger in a car being driven near, but not at by any means, the Canadian border in Washington state. I really felt the cop was fishing for my immigration status.
I just want to point out that
the passport system is run by the Department of State, not Homeland Security, and therefore has nothing to do with the broken immigration system nor with deportation.
Not to seem like an idiot
but can you explain more? I mean, it seems like institutional racism would cross departmental lines…
The woman was ripping on another agency.
Her point was that those dumb f**ks at Homeland Security can’t get their heads out of their a$$es and do their jobs right by, y’know, not deporting American-born children. It’s exactly like if you went to apply for Social Security or SSI/SSD and the woman who served at the counter was complaining about how now the IRS will probably screw up your tax return.
Passports have nothing whatsoever to do with immigration to the United States. So to title a post about the passport system “the ugly truth about our immigration system” is like titling a post about the SSA “the ugly truth about the IRS.”
Or in short
when she said that if Eli was darker, she’d suggest the ID, she was not trying to suggest that’s immigration policy or make an official recommendation. She was, as I said, bitching about a different agency that’s making her job more difficult.
How
How is Homeland Security making her job more difficult? Her job is just to administer the passport applications.
Ah
I got it.
I don’t think so
If I am understanding the story correctly, I think the woman was saying that she would recommend Elisa get a passport card for her daughter to carry IF her daughter was darker. She wasn’t completely out of line to suggest something like that, since passport cards are her territory IMO.
Yes…
exactly right. She made a half-assed sell for the passport card for Eli because she isn’t dark-skinned. Then she tied it to the story about the Guatemalan girl as proof that dark-skinned children need passport cards. Asinine. But I am sure she has seen enough that it didn’t come from left field.
But yes, she tied the (lack of) passport card to the deportation — not me.
Ah, got it…
Let me re-title then.
had our passport appt. today
Both our kids need passports for a spring break trip to Mexico.
We made an appointment at our local post office. It was painless and fast, even their pictures came out cute.
The lady at the post office did not suggest that my children, who are “darker” than Eli, might get deported if I don’t get them additional ID. And we live in heavily Republican Orange County. IDK, I find the comment made by the woman in Berkeley a little strange.
The story referenced is not as black-and-white as brown girl gets deported to Guatemala because she is brown. I was all ready to be outraged and thought it was a similar situation to the African American girl who got sent to Colombia.
It’s still an unfortunate set of circumstances and I hope she is reunited with her parents ASAP.
I admit to a little paranoia on this topic
My foreign born brown children are quite dark, and they look Guatemalan. I am aware of the phenomenon of “honorary whiteness”, that they are perceived differently when they are with me. But with every passing year they spend less and less time standing next to me.
I admit, DH and I feel paranoid about this
It’s so strange. DH is always questioned when we go into the US on family trips. We all have the same name. DH is often carrying one of the girls. We go through together. But while the girls and I get a “welcome back, nice to see you”, DH will always get “What are you doing here?” and rudely. I always wonder what would happen, with DH coming in on his Australian passport, escorting two American girls through. It worries me.
You don’t want to get me
started on this. Grrrrrr
I’ll admit my experiences were better the last year or so, than in 2001-2002, but ugh!
And every time I come out
thinking “Now what if I were not Caucasian and did not speak English pretty well…”
I know, I know
it’s dehumanizing.
Yup.
We get the same thing. I must admit that it makes me giggle a bit. Which is unfair, because if the tables were turned I would NOT be happy.
Oh well
we do survive, as you know. It’s just that the ‘welcome to the United States’ the whole thing ends with sounds just a tad insincere. And again, that’s for an educated Caucasian who speaks English (not a native speaker, like your DH, but still).
He doesn’t speak English.
He speaks Strayan. Totally incomprehensible to at least 80% of Americans.
I think that the only thing that saves the situation is that he lived in America for 12 years and kind of “gets it”. Otherwise, we might be in trouble. I do tease him way too much when I get “Welcome home, Dr. M!” and he gets “What is the nature of your business in the US?”
Mind you, he tried being funny (in an Aussie way) once. And nearly got deported. I now lecture him before we get off the plane that the only correct responses are “Yes ma’am”, “No ma’am” and “The US is the best country in the world, ma’am.”