Say-So

In brief research for this essay I have come across accounts of rude and unfair treatment, poor judgment and discrimination by British and Canadian immigration officials among others. A Spanish, German, French or Italian language internet search would most likely produce similar examples having taken place in continental Europe. Rigid immigration laws and blind bureaucratic adherence to their implementation amount to an invisible, red tape equivalent of physical barriers erected by governments around the world in order to define political spheres of influence and restrict movements of goods and people. Examples are the Mexico – US border fence or the Israeli West Bank wall, the upcoming Israeli Egyptian wall and the no longer standing Berlin Wall, the fall of which was celebrated with pomp and fanfare throughout the world last year. At the core of protectionist immigration policies lies the idea that health care, education and professional opportunities are finite resources reserved for nations’ citizens or residents and are in danger of being depleted by those deemed unworthy by the qualification process and therefore of lesser human value. This forceful segregation on the part of the Developed World is a panicked attempt to preserve its economic advantage and ethnic composition of a given country, in Israel’s case, its national and religious purity. The restrictive immigration laws are generally economically and not racially motivated in my opinion, however a quick look at a wealth distribution map of first, second and third worlds makes it apparent that a more liberal immigration attitude on the part of First World countries would tip the racial balance away from its original makeup of dominantly white constitution.

United States attracts many desiring immigrants from around the world. In that sense, the country views itself as a victim of its own economic and political success. It therefore deems justifiable to hold a defensive immigration stance. The US maintains difficult to attain immigration criteria and the immigration process is expensive, lengthy and arduous, all aspects of which were made factorially more difficult with the advent of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Among the immigration processes of the Developed countries, the US practices of the last decade are arguably the most repressive. If you travel only occasionally and are rooted in a single place, jumping through the hoops of US immigration is a foreign experience to you. The inefficiencies and outright failure of the brute force, rudimentary psychology which border control agents engage in, may surprise you. If you are in any way ambiguous residency wise, rely on visas and have not committed to one country as your home, or are a citizen of a nation where day to day living is a never ending struggle - this post is for you, in solidarity.

Multitudes of people whizzing through airports daily, wide and long across North America don’t know about the “back room” behind the stalls of the stone faced immigration officials “greeting” visitors and citizens into the United States. If you are a US citizen - you have never seen one, unless you are visibly dark-haired, dark-eyed and dark-skinned and were racially profiled and therefore automatically classified as a threat or otherwise ended up on a no-fly list. It is very likely that you may not know that such rooms even exist at all international terminals in the US and at some Canadian airports where the Canadian flights are channeled into domestic gates. If you are a tourist - you are not aware of the Back Room either. That is, if you are visiting for a week or two and have secured the required visa. Residents - the Green Card holders and professionals on various types of work visas, roll through the Back Room at one point or another fairly smoothly yet without the courtesy due. To the rest of us who are not easily classifiable, commit the error of naive honesty, or who’s paperwork is out of step with the suspected intent - the same offices become interrogation rooms, where coercive questioning and forceful intimidation take place.

I lined up in the long winding queue indicated for visitors, my Canadian passport at hand, having disembarked off a Lot Polish airline flight Warsaw - Chicago. I noted with irony how consistent all arrivals to the USA are, irregardless of the port of entry. US citizens and residents stand a line apart which is always shorter and moves quicker than its languishing visitors’ counterpart. December 22nd, 2009 - our line constituted of Poles, but also Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and others to whom Warsaw - as if the Iron Curtain has arcanely shifted further east - is the gateway to the West. The visitors’ line I estimated, was tenfold longer than the other queue and unusually resistant. The flat screens over the immigration stalls looped a “Welcome to the United States” video. “Propaganda” - I ascertained to myself, looking at the images of healthy, happy, well assimilated people of color, images of African-American girls skipping rope in a sunlit park and smiling well dressed Central or South American Immigrants. I have learned to differentiate the fake PR face of the United States from the hard, street reality I witnessed first hand while living in the country as a professional class visa holder on and off for the last 10 years. The flyover views of Manhattan, the mandatory inclusion of the Statue of Liberty, lest anyone forget what America professes to be, did not mix in images of homelessness, rampant obesity among the low income population, perennial theft and street vandalism, violent youth crime, prison overcrowding, and extreme poverty in hallmark cities such as San Francisco for example, where I used to live.

It was my turn to step up to the booth and face the immigration official. The usual questions followed: why am I coming to the United States, how long and where will I stay. Being a poor strategist and arriving with genuine, lawful intentions, I didn’t think twice about telling it like it was: I was coming to stay with my boyfriend whom I have not seen in a long time, I was going to live with him and hoped to stay for several months. Tired after a long flight and unsuspecting, I spoke in casual, conversational manner. In retrospect I ought to have stuck to dry facts, for it soon became apparent that the job the immigration officials at the airport take upon themselves is to nail and indict and not to fairly adjudicate.

I was escorted to the Back Room for further questioning. I sat down not yet excessively worried and took a look around. There were others whose fate was swinging in balance, while they waited too. I noted right away, a young black woman on the bench in front of me. Her back hunched, arms resting on her thighs, head hanging low. Three hours later, when I was set free - she still maintained her posture, as if immobilized by the weight of her predicament. During that entire time, her name was never called, not a single immigration official had approached her, and she never gave away a clue as to what her story might have been.

Out of Vancouver, when the dust has finally settled, I investigated what went wrong for me that night. Not a hint of explanation was given to me during or after the interrogation to assure the office of US Immigration had a one sided, overwhelming position of power. I wasn’t informed of the bureaucratic inconsistency my case presented. As a Canadian citizen I’ve made a mistake of attempting to enter the United States on a visa waiver, whereas I should have applied for an entry visa after all due to my expectation to stay longer than the 90 days accounted for by the program. I was suspected of having a dual-intent without accompanying, appropriate visa or in lay terms, intending to immigrate into the US illegally.

“What is it that you want?” - asked the first female officer with an all-knowing smirk, leaning back in her chair and cocking her head. I looked at her apprehensively, sensing that I was presumed guilty before my personal situation was duly examined. - “I don’t think you are asking the right question, it isn’t up to me to say what I want, it is up to you to tell me what I can or cannot do.” I was scolded for getting smart and forcefully led on with the expected line of inquiry - “Do you want to work?”. I collected myself and delivered a vague explanation of being “in transition”, and how I expected to take the time of my stay in the US following a difficult apartment renovation project in Warsaw to reconnect with my boyfriend and decide on a direction in which I was going to take my life. So no, I did not intend to work, at least not right away and certainly not illegally. I proceeded to remind her what should have been glaringly obvious had she payed even the slightest attention to my immigration history as opposed to the stereotype she saw me as - that of an Eastern European woman with a marked accent coming to stay with her “boyfriend who has a job and will provide”, perhaps a case of a Russian Bride.

I lived and worked in the States for 7 years this time around while enjoying the H1B status twice, having had ample time to legally pursue a green card. I had made no such attempt. I consciously rejected the chance of becoming an American permanent resident - I simply did not want, or need to, having both a well respected Canadian citizenship and an EU passport as well. It wouldn’t make any sense, given my history, to pursue the illegal alien route to US immigration… That irony was lost on my overzealous inquisitor. I couldn’t point it out to her as I was rarely allowed to complete a sentence even in a direct attempt to answer questions.

It was time to get back to the benches, along with the others, and wait. A Latin American Family with kids was brought in, then another. None of the families spoke among themselves, but remained reserved, knowing full well their lower hand. Routine, random checks it seemed since they were processed and handed back their passports without a word before my second round of interrogation came up. A Russian woman in her mid thirties, wearing tall white boots, flowery knit stockings, elaborate coat and too much makeup arrived and sat down. She was confident. Perhaps she, like I in the past - armed with a thick stack of corporate documents and visa processing approvals - was yet unaware of the precarious, fine line she was walking. I overheard the officers speak among themselves within her ears’ reach, knowing she would not understand, that she had all the necessary invitations by the Russian Foundation. To their poorly disguised surprise, they had no grounds to detain her. An old man with a hearing aid, whom I seen lost and confused earlier when he was being helped by an airport worker also turned up and nervously tried to explain in his limited English that his son lived and worked here and he came to visit his son. He bowed repeatedly on exit when handed back his passport, thankful, shaken and teary eyed. There was Mrs. Ferrera or Ferreira a Spaniard or a South American, whose brother, husband or companion - an airline pilot - peeked in and asked: “you’re still here?” - to which she just shrugged and nodded - as if immigration detentions were something she has come to expect.

My name was called again. This time I was facing the first female officer and her supervisor, also a woman. The US border control watchdog was springing heads. The lights seemed to glow brighter, the entire experience started to take on a surreal quality. I realized that my words would make the difference between an allowed discretionary entry and a deportation. I repeated my story as I have recounted it previously. The supervisor kept interrupting. Questioning became personal, my relationship to my boyfriend quizzed, private arrangements and money matters combed through in embarrassing detail. I maintained that my stay would be a visit - not a migration. I was not listened to, believed or otherwise my story did not compute. The supervising officer summed it up: “You are not a bonified tourist” - I was told, likely intending to convey that I did not deserve a special consideration. Sadly, that is precisely who I was. I arrived bona-fide never intending to break the law. While on a work visa in the past, I dutifully payed taxes having had all the responsibilities of a resident but none of the privileges. With a squeaky clean immigration record, never having overstayed my visas, arriving as a tourist for the first time in a decade - my good faith was being violently questioned without justification. I was ordered to get back to the benches, once again.

I was summoned back, for the third time, sometime later. The US immigration personified this time by a three-headed all female, blood thirsty chimera - Cerberus - guarded the gates of Hades. The newly arrived, third officer turned the interrogation up yet another notch. I was yelled at and heard myself say: “Please don’t raise your voice, why are you trying to intimidate me?” - “If you feel intimidated that’s your problem” was the response. I recall eventually hunching forward, resting my forearms on my thighs. Cerberus, sensing capitulation, slowly started sieving her words and the verdict. I held my breath. I was being graced with a two week entry into the United States of America. One of the officers indicated that I should follow her to finalize the visa. She lectured me on having “an attitude and no respect for authority” which would be recorded in my file, while all I ever tried to accomplish, was to calmly and respectfully answer questions I was being posed. She added: “I bet that have you had to deal with Polish authorities, you’d behave all together different”. I waited for her to stamp my passport then looked her in the eye, shook my head in resigned disbelief and muttered: “Why do you assume so much, you don’t even know me.”

My personal story was recently, uncannily echoed by the story of a Nova Scotia woman Ayat Manna who was denied entry to the United States when flying to visit her husband. She was interrogated, yelled at and intimidated by the US immigration, as I was, perhaps more, and was never told why she was being subjected to such treatment. It is clear that neither mine or her incidents are unique and that they weren’t a case of a few bad apples among the immigration officers who took out their bad mood on random travelers, they are too similar. The abuse is systemic. The women officers were expressly trained and instructed to coerce and brutalize instead of investigate potential migratory transgressions. When did we as human beings, as citizens of the world, come to accept and condone a governing system that not only monitors and restricts our movements but keeps us from visiting loved ones?

As I was stepping of a gate and onto a San Francisco-Vancouver flight precisely two weeks later, an airline official took my boarding pass, checked my passport and smiled: “Going home?”, I nodded - “Yes I am, and please take that I-94″. - “So you’re not coming back?” - with great satisfaction I answered: “No, I am not” and lighter than air I floated on board.

In an attempt to expand my horizons last year I attended a short math refresher course. I very vividly remember my delight at solving very simple math problems. It was the absolute and definitive nature of it that had me almost laugh out loud. There may be numerous methods, but unequivocally there is always only one correct answer and it is always persistently true. Having heard about Grigori Perelman’s refusal to accept the Field’s Medal for a body of work helping to solve the Poincare Conjecture I found his response pleasantly in sync with my impression of mathematics. Perelmans refusal to accept the honors and attend the prize ceremony was unilateral, unquestionable and left unapologetically unexplained. And so, I spent the last few weeks contemplating *absolutes*. Operating outside of the scientific realm, absolute imperatives of conduct are willingly adopted and broadly accepted. Political opinions, family values, belief in God in all their permutations are all convictions assigned highest importance often promoted by the beholder as “true”. These personal biases surface anytime a person is asked to state an opinion. At best they are choices based on a mix of personal experience along with a certain amount of introspection and logical thought, and at worst they are indoctrinations by nurture, never shed in adulthood. In either case the absolutes we live by, are arrived at not by mathematical deductions but by more or less haphazard choice or worse, by blind faith. How can we then trust our convictions? American Civil Liberties Union for example, has adopted individual rights as its highest principle:

The mission of the ACLU is to preserve all of these protections and guarantees:
* Your First Amendment rights-freedom of speech, association and assembly. Freedom of the press, and freedom of religion supported by the strict separation of church and state.
* Your right to equal protection under the law - equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.
* Your right to due process - fair treatment by the government whenever the loss of your liberty or property is at stake.
* Your right to privacy - freedom from unwarranted government intrusion into your personal and private affairs.

Seemingly, no one who’s thought has been shaped by western civilization would disagree with the above statements. Certainly all Americans to whom the Bill of Rights carries special significance would subscribe to ACLUs mission statement. Why is it then that its actions are considered controversial? Howstuffworks poses that question and attempts to answer it:

Simply put, the organization holds an absolutist view of liberties — they defend all people whose liberties have been violated, even if their views, ideas or actions are unpopular. Therefore, the ACLU ends up defending Nazis, pornographers, religious zealots and extremists of all types.The point of such unpopular cases is to protect the rights of all minorities. Many minorities do have unpopular points of view. In the ACLU’s eyes, the right of a Nazi group to freedom assembly is just as important as, for example, Native Americans’ freedom of assembly. Allowing the government to restrict any group’s freedoms would invite restrictions on other groups.

That is a simplistic explanation and a very dangerous one at that, if true. It suggests that the Civil Liberties Union automatically dishevels its objection to any violation of free speech, only because the first amendment says so, and since ACLU’s raison d’etre is to uphold it, Native American freedom of assembly is qualified on par with that of the Nazis whose hostile motives are regrettably well made known through history. A little research however seems to indicate that the organization supports free speech only to the degree where it assesses that there are no superseding concerns of detriment to others or where the expression of free speech isn’t at odds with other clauses of the amendment. The depth of consideration is well illustrated in The Rutherford Institute ’s interview with Nadine Strossen the president of ACLU.
She explains her position:

Ironically, I have been attacked by some of the Christian organizations lately for defending the free exercise of religion, specially defending the rights of fundamentalist Mormons to engage in polygamy. I have to say here that no rights are absolute. That is true for freedom of speech, and it is also true for the free exercise of religion. If, for example, your religion believed in human sacrifice, you would not be allowed to exercise that because there is a countervailing interest of great importance in protecting human life. The same point can be made about polygamy. It could be limited to protect the safety and rights of all the participants, and to ensure that all participants were consenting adults.

The ACLU as a point in case of cogency of our moral beliefs, is an example of critical thought at its finest. In its non partisanship, lack of attachment to any particular outcome and its attention to due process, the union’s practices mimic the objectivity of the scientific method. The yard stick is the same in all cases (the individual rights guaranteed under the first amendment), but it is the unique scenarios and specific combinations of circumstance which prompt the ACLU to take a stand one way or the other. I wish there was a paradigm shift in common thought and our moral values, instead of being considered the final and absolute judgment, were instead the guiding principles of a moral algorithm .

When things don’t makes sense, when what you thought right is wrong, when all reference points have shifted resulting in a general confusion - the French say: “Le Nord est Perdu”. To the argonauts of the Arctic hemisphere, the North Star is a guide. But, it is a successive position. The usual shifting of the Earth’s axis points to a different star every couple of thousand of years.

In the case of the earth, precession is caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. The earth’s axis makes one complete rotation over the course of approximately 26,000 years. If you trace the path of the axis in the sky, you will find that Polaris, Vega, Thuban, and Alpha Cephei all fall on or very close to it. So when the earth’s axis is at a point on the path near Vega, Vega becomes the North Star while Thuban is the North Star when the axis is near it on the path. Five thousand years ago, Thuban was the North Star. Five thousand years from now, the North Star will be Alpha Cephei. Seven thousand years after that, it will be Vega…

That is of course, if our Earth isn’t in the early stages of a Magnetic Reversal .

As a matter of geological record, the Earth’s magnetic field has undergone numerous reversals of polarity. We can see this in the magnetic patterns found in volcanic rocks, especially those recovered from the ocean floors. In the last 10 million years, there have been, on average, 4 or 5 reversals per million years. At other times in Earth’s history, for example during the Cretaceous era, there have been much longer periods when no reversals occurred. Reversals are not predictable and are certainly not periodic in nature. Hence we can only speak about the average reversal interval.

Certainty, or positive affirmation of any kind seems unattainable in a world where Ying and Yang are not only in constant flux, but worse - are perfectly interchangeable. So… which way Is North?

I resisted Blogger and Friendster while in hype, dismissed the popularity value, sullied the inherent self promotion factor.
Because the two phenomena focus on outward expression and communication with others, I understood “the others and their response” to be the central focal point and the purpose of engagement in Blogger and Friendster activity…

Having had some experience, my Bayesian Inference would have to be seriously re-adjusted.
Both are forums for self expression, “I” is the topic, the public nature is secondary, a response whether in form of site hits or new friendship invitations is trivial. I do obsess about the hit statistics, length of visits, origin and ISP. Work my social network to acquire new friends, write messages to strangers, search demographics and interests, compare friends in common, the number of friends, admire size and vitality of an extensive Friendster network. But, my drive is expansively Apollonian, I am very proud to say. It is about acquisition, numbers and status.
As I revel in my cyber persona, muse about being a disembodied sentinel, watching and reading, absorbing and ingesting news and information online, I reflect about my stat tracking and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. How much the information I gather about my visitors affects my posts? I also occasionally follow the entry pages back to the visitor’s homes. Read their posts. Do they track? Do they revisit my Blog? Would the reality of my blogging experience be different if I didn’t track?
Since the subject borders on esoteric why not check out your past life experience? Only make sure to read the disclaimer, next.