Immigration

Immigration.
Mankind has been doing it since the beginning of time. Leave starvation behind and move somewhere where there’s more to eat. But the invisible who walk amongst us can no longer forage for food seamlessly. Immigration officers are out there and they know where to look too.
I too have roamed the streets illegally of the southern mediterranean country where I live, trying to blend, and blending because of my fair skin. I have bowed my head and looked the other way as the police scan the crowd for “sin papeles” (without papers), that dreaded word for illegals. I have been vulnerable and humbled by my own helplessness.
I don’t take for granted what it means to have the right papers. And I have learned to wait in ceaseless lines, prostrating myself to a malevelant bureacracy.
Certain unalienable rights contains an alien in its quiet closet. In 2005 Spain instituted an amnesty process in which all illegals were given a chance to supplicate, to announce their illegality and beg forgiveness in return for residency. I was one of hundreds of thousands who awoke each day at 5 am to wait in line with the other thousands to receive a piece of paper and advance to the next line where quietly and expectantly we arrived at our fate-which involved awakening at 5am the next morning and going to the window with the number on it to be moved to the next line, etc.
That line became my world for about a month. I believe I was the only North American in my particular line of 2,000 or so mainly Africans and South Americans. I envied the others for their sense of camaraderie and bright clothing. They had a waiting-in-line culture that I wanted, laughing and telling jokes without ever looking at the watch or wondering at the ineficiency of the system. But I had something that they didn’t have which set me apart, made me lonely, special. My being North American never had to be voiced. It’s something I wore like a tribal jewel.
I remember one Asian woman (Korean? Chinese?) who had been standing in line in front of me for a number of days. When she reached the window, the tired, Spanish bureacrat started screaming at her to sign the paper, which he shook in her face. She didn’t understand, and was turning away, beleaguered and despondent, to retreat to yet another line. I took her small hand in mine and helped her sign her name, the angry line pushing into us from behind. I remember the tremble in her hand and the look on her face, which I can only describe as resigned.
As the process drew to an end, and the selections were made by virtue of having the right paperwork done, you could smell the fear in our line. I saw one African man, his bright orange sarong swinging behind him, holding his head in his hands as his compatriots looked away, willing away the unbearable truth of rejection. I imagined the places they would have to go home to: the hunger, the camps, the tired look of the expectant children.
It’s not easy to explain the racism in immigration issues. In theory, the law was the same for all of us. But the fact that I was born above a certain latitude and had a certain skin pigment adjusted to northern latitudes gave me the edge on most people in that line. The work force needed them more than me. Their need was higher than mine, and yet I was one of the small percentage that got chosen for residency.
This BLOG will look at issues of cultural identity, racism, immigration issues and psychological adaptation. We’ll have ongoing articles about psychological evolution and what that means about cultural identity and expanding consciousness. We welcome you to contribute.