More rambling about Mexican Immigration

Pictured above, our xmas nativity.

I made it through Veracruz, passed a few pleasant days in Oaxaca, and headed back to Guadalajara.

Sadly, going back to Guadalajara meant going back to the immigration office. Of course my paperwork had been rejected once again (for mysterious reasons), and now I would have to pay a huge fee for a special letter allowing me to leave the country for Christmas. This time I got an "audience" with some big boss to protest the situation. Typical of Mexico, behind the supposed web of intricate bureaucracy and complex rules there is a swaggering patrón who decides everything according to his capricious moods. The "audencia" happens right in the packed waiting room of the lobby. El Patrón calls out names one by one, and you have to push forward and make your case before he loses interest or someone else grabs his attention. Unfortunately, I hesitated a bit after he barked out "¡Dígame!" (tell me!). That, combined with my accent, was too much. He cut me off before I got a whole sentence out and told me to write my NUT number on a scrap of paper so he could research my case file. Then I had to wait another two hours before talking to him again. There are worse fates though. Another guy (who was a native Spanish speaker) failed to respond after his name was called 3 times. When he finally did answer, El Patrón contemptuously crumpled up his slip of paper in front of him and skipped to the next person.

This was the last day before the offices closed for Christmas. If my papers weren't in order, I wouldn't be able to get back into the country. In the end, Jenny who works at the American School, had to talk to someone to talk to someone so that an expert with inside connections could come to my rescue. Having spent from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM, I was the very last person there, but I finally got my damn work visa extended for another year. Since I'm not staying that long, this means I should never, never have to go back there again...(knock on wood).

Now I am back in the land of War on Christmas for a few weeks to relax, drink non-poisonous water straight out of the tap, be cold, and other such yuletide traditions.

All of this has been, by the way, just to register that there is no change whatsoever in my employment status.

Another day, another damnable trip to the immigration office. Yesterday I arrived 40 minutes before the office opened, and there were 27 people ahead of me. (Luckily only about half of them were there to go to the pick up documents window though). So I only had to wait about an hour and a half before getting the bad news: I'd put an extra "2" in my passport number on ONE of the official documents, meaning the whole application had been rejected and I would have to start over from scratch. (Actually I hadn't done this. The woman I paid to do it correctly for me had).

My classes are finished, so luckily (?) I had the whole day to re-gather, re-fill out, re-photocopy, and re-submit everything. Oddly enough, the woman once again typed up my letter with the exact same mistake, but this time I caught it. Perhaps I'm back so frequently that she just has the thing on file, who knows. I had some more lovely photos taken. This one is extra because the immigration office demands six, while the photographer across the street has a special camera that only takes groups of four pictures. I always wonder whether things like this are just part of the day-to-day randomness of Mexicoor intricate plots to squeeze a few more pesos out of gringos. Then it was back to the immigration office to wait in the line to drop off documents, which I was miraculously able to do in the same day. Everything appeared to go fine except for a brief episode where I had to convince the lady at the window that I was not in fact "Eva Evalin" from the Russian Federation, despite having grown up in Moscow, Idaho.

Return to the Dark Tower

Yesterday I arrived at the immigration office early before it opened and got a relatively good spot in line-#30. I also bit my tongue and let the Lake Chapala Society members stand in the wrong queue (see my earlier post on the immigration offices for why I would stoop to such knavery). I have actually been back to INM a number of times since that visit. Each wretched occasion has involved a long boring conversation with the retired followed by a personal meltdown. I now know each INM official on either side of the hall as well as the security guards, and I hold a personal grudge against each of them.

My goal for yesterday was not to lose my shit. It was going pretty well: I had a book to read and some Louis Armstrong cued on my MP3 player. It's a little harder to be angry at the world when listening to Louis Armstrong. But then, as the time dragged on, I became nervous about making it to my 1 pm class (factoring in the commute). It was the day of the final exam, so it would be a pretty big deal to show up late or miss it. Finally, the number on the counter changed to 28. Clutching my ficha #30, I went to hover by the windows lest they skip past me. Then, I waited and waited. And waited. At a certain point I realized that no one was being helped at any of the windows. It was about that time that a terrible rumor began to circulate throughout the waiting area: "se cae el sistema." Indeed, about 10 minutes later a smiling man came out to tell everyone in the front row where I was seated that the system had crashed. We were welcome to wait as long as we liked, but there was no telling when Mexico City would resolve the problem. I calmly got up and left without doing a Basil Fawlty impression. Mission accomplished.

Absentee voting

I voted an absentee ballot last week, though I'm not sure it will ever arrive in the USA. I did take it to the consulate so it would get there on time. I've always heard consulates and embassies are like foreign soil, a little outpost where the other country exists in miniature. I was kind of imagining that I would step inside and there would be a guy in a Hawaiian shirt barbecuing steaks. Or at least a seasoned bureaucrat with a firm handshake and a no nonsense attitude who always displays a framed photograph of the current president next to the miniature flag on his desk.

Instead, I found myself waiting in line on the sidewalk to talk to some low level Mexican security guard through a staticky microphone on the other side of a window. No old glory rippling proudly in the breeze, no English spoken, no one with any particular knowledge of absentee voting procedures. I knew I was in trouble when the Mexican lady in front of me started griping (in Spanish of course) that she couldn't understand the guy behind the window because of all the static.

I had left the envelope unsealed because I figured if I had done something wrong, an embassy official could help me. Realizing that there would be no such help, I went to seal the envelope only to realize that there was no glue on the flap. It makes sense, really. In a country without a functioning mail system, why would you need to seal an envelope? The guy behind the window had nothing to seal the envelope with. He suggested that if I came back next week there would be an election official who could help me. Instead of taking his recommendation to try voting after election day, I went running all over the block looking for glue, or envelopes, or something. I ended up taping it together with dollar-storesque clear tape. Then I wasn't sure if it needed postage or not. Does the embassy deliver it directly to election officials or just to the Post Office or something? The security guard assured me that no postage was necessary. I'd brought a bunch of stamps anyway. When I tried to explain that I would put stamps on it just in case, he became upset. Hadn't he just told me that it didn't need stamps? Was I doubting his integrity?

So if it's really close in Illinois, and my one lone vote does matter, the election could well turn on the quality of Mexican scotch tape or the wounded pride of some random security guard.

Journey to the dark tower

Well, I am back in Mexico after a spell in the USA. I've started a new job which unfortunately means registering a change in immigration status with the Mexican government. This is not a simple process. So far I have been to the Palacio Federal five times (traveling an hour and back each time to get there). This palacio is more of an unadorned concrete rectangle than say the Taj Mahal or Versailles, but that's how Guadalajara rolls. My trips there have resulted in two scenarios: waiting in line so long I just have to leave or else being given false information that will be used against me the next time I go back.

So yesterday, amid a number of other early morning emergencies, I rushed to get there before 9:00 am. (If you get there after they open, even by 5 or 10 minutes you are absolutely screwed--you probably won't talk to anyone before they close again at noon). But luckily I managed to get into the queue outside the locked doors at 8:45. There were some lost American senior citizens who had found their way from the retiree paradise of Lake Chapala to the big, bad city. Having experienced their confusion on similar visits, I told them what line to stand in, what floor the bathrooms were on, and so on. Boy was that a mistake. Unfortunately the line they needed to stand in was also mine, so I was now subject to their annoying banter for as long as it took to wait there.

"English teacher, huh? You teach Ebonics? You don't teach them to talk like blacks do you?"

"Umm, no."

"Well, good. They think they can talk that way and then they complain they can't get a job! Because they'd rather just chill in their crib. And another thing..."

It was a two hour wait. So I've pretty much sworn off the bond of common fellowship with my countrymen who come to Mexico to live out their golden years. If they come down here to die, from now on I say, let 'em die. Darwin and all that.

Finally my number was called, and I expected to at last pick up my new work visa. The guy looked over my papers, had me sign some other papers, and went into the back office. However, instead of a work visa, he returned with an official letter demanding that I pay $2,400 (pesos) within 10 days or else be deported! This is an unwelcome sum to pay on a Mexican salary. But the agonizing part is that it means going back across the hall to wait in line to get a payment form, leaving to pay at a bank, then bringing the bank receipt back to the Palacio Federal to wait in line to prove I've paid it, then waiting at his window with the notification that proof of payment was accepted.

I tried to argue with him that two separate immigration officials had independently assured me that this fee was no longer being charged. (Both the lady that had given me the wrong forms to fill out and the lady who refused to admit that she lost my passport told me of this). He shrugged, took a bite of his candy bar, and gave a bored explanation of how, due to 'mala suerte' I had come in after the new law was passed, but before it actually took effect, causing them to re-evaluate my application.

A new coworker of mine mentioned getting through immigration by pulling the ugly American--demanding to talk to a supervisor, yelling, etc. after which the problem was cleared up within a matter of minutes. But the thing is, I'm pretty sure he's also a native Spanish speaker. For me as second language learner, high-stress situations are very hard to communicate in. I could maybe achieve a primal scream as I gouged the bureaucrat's eye out with a pen, but that would be about it. I can barely express myself in English when I'm this angry. After I left I was able to compose a quite flowery and savage denunciation of the INM in Spanish as I walked down the street, and I'm sure this greatly impressed other pedestrians.