“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I’m a translator,” I replied.
“Why do people need things translated?”
What seemed like a casual inquiry into my financial standing was phrased in a manner that suggested it could quickly turn into a denigration of my very raison d’être. Not pleasant at the best of times, but all the more unpleasant when a cool head and a calm demeanour now, on a moment’s notice, required to be summoned at the end of a tiring day comprising 15 hours of airborne travel and a lengthy wait in line at Los Angeles International Airport. How is it that immigration officers, who I would hazard, by definition, deal with travellers who have come a long, tiring distance, seem to have zero regard for that fact, and only for the fact that you’re standing there in front of them in that instant, and how you got there is of no consequence whatsoever to them? How do you think I got here? I feel I want to ask them.
Another thought popped into my head, and, out of concerns of discretion—and ever reaching my bed that night—I swiftly evicted it again: I’d always assumed that immigration officers ask stupid questions in order to—disarmingly and cleverly—divine the dishonest from the honest travellers. Maybe the assumption was wrong—that was this sudden thought. Maybe US immigration officers ask stupid questions because … they’re stupid.
Officer Chavez continued his—by now—diatribe. “Why do people become translators? Why don’t they just go … do something else?”
The way he pronounced the words “something else” intrigued me. Like being a US immigration officer? I wondered. I hold four law diplomas and work as a translator. It’s true: there have been times in my own life when “something else” had a certain draw to it. I decided this was too esoteric for Officer Chavez, so I backtracked to a fifth-grade explanation of the activity “translation”.
“Sometimes people write something in one language that other people, who speak another language, would like to read. That’s where I come in.”
I don’t know if Officer Chavez felt I was being facetious. For that matter, I didn’t know whether he was being it, either. We suffered each other’s facetiousness, he stamped my passport, and my American vacation began. The year was 2017.
There had been hiccups upon entering into the States before. When travelling with my then partner to New York, we were forcibly separated: me from him, and he from the comfort of his native language. The question put to him was: “How much money do you have?” Having first, the patience of the officer starting to wear thin (JFK, you know), established that the question was not directed at his entire global patrimony, but rather what you might call “readies”, the answer was duly given. Unfortunately, that did not abate the intensity of the ordeal, because it was not an acceptable answer. Immigration officers at American airports at that time—understandably—had no conception whatsoever of what was a Belgian franc. Frankly, nor did many other people at the relevant time, but my partner galvanised his prowess in mental arithmetic, such as it was, into action to give a more acceptable response, this time in dollars. In fact, given the officer’s ignorance of matters monetary, Pete could easily have simply lied through his back teeth; but he didn’t. Honest to a fault. And that can prove faulty, as we discover below.
Immigration and customs is a grey zone. It is a rite—of passage—through which the bona fide traveller perforce must pass in order to leave there and get to here, or vice versa. There’s no avoiding it, and, whilst it can hardly be described as a high point in anyone’s travel itinerary, the fact remains that this tedious inevitability remains the point in your journey at which “they have you by the short and curlies.” You can’t go around, over or under. You must go through, and you do so at their mercy. Greater than their mercy is not even God in Heaven above’s. They can dismantle your goods and chattels and leave you to sweep up the bits. They can detain you, in irons, with or without reason. Heaven forbid!—they could dispatch you homeward on the next flight, without your having left so much as the imprint of a foot on actual American terra firma. They answer to no one, least of all to you. Of all the lengths of real estate through which you pass on your way from there to here and vice versa, the several metres that constitute your trajectory through customs and immigration are almost certainly the shortest. Shorter than the distance from the main airport entrance to your gate, or from your seat to the aircraft toilet. It is a fact of which the officers who work at these agencies are only too well aware.
Once you’re through immigration, they transform in the twinkle of an eye into an element that no longer has the slightest importance in your life. Their all-central, all-crucial, life-dependent presence at that short juncture makes them lords over your fate—at that short juncture. And, once you’ve passed to the beyond, they instantaneously assume less importance than the dust on your lapel. Until the next time you pass their way, of course. Or unless they pursue you out of the customs hall. While powers of arrest (should you be guilty of something for which they can arrest you) can conceivably be exercised outwith the immigration zone, they do prefer to keep those who break the law close at hand for those who enforce it. Whilst who it is that enforces the law is clear from their badges and uniforms, it is he who breaks the law who is the less obvious, to the untrained eye. Their job is to find out who is a breaker of laws and who isn’t, all in the several metres in which they have you at that mercy of theirs.
On yet another entry into the US, this time at Chicago O’Hare, I managed to survive to the last triage before leaving international air space and entering the realm of US domestic flights. A divided ramp led up an incline to a multiple set of double swing doors at its summit. Traffic was relatively light, I was the only passenger to be confronted with this arrangement at the moment in question. At the lower end of the ramp stood a coterie of some three or four officers. At the top were a further couple or so. And a dog. If those assembled at the foot of the rise were, by the looks of their dress, in gainful deployment, then they were being disingenuous about how they expected to justify their remuneration. They lolled around such as to resemble a group of East Los Angeles teenagers. Hangin’, they call it, and it was too good for these fellows.
Dividing the ramp not quite into halves, more three-quarters and one quarter, was a row of stanchions connected by ropes. I embarked on the climb, only to look up and realise that I’d chosen the portion marked “US passports only.” The smaller section was for “All other passports”. With seven officers and a dog to verify my sense of situational awareness, I decided to retrace my steps and instead take the appropriate “other” line.
Buggered if you do, buggered if you don’t, is the motto here. To wit, it dismays one to realise that correcting one’s wrongness has done nothing to improve one’s standing among those who exercise a control function over said rightness and wrongness. Of far greater moment in such a moment is, in their minds, one single aspect of the whole: you changed your mind. Never mind it was because you hadn’t read the sign. Hadn’t been watching where you were going. Were anxious to do everything the way it needs to be done, according to the edict of the large, blue-and-white signage. Were tired, for heaven’s sake.
The reaction from the indolent-looking lower-ramp officers was not only far from lacking in speed and dispatch, but it came accompanied by a tone of voice that clearly conveyed irrepressible delight. For a second, I felt like Richard Attenborough caught out by the language trick of the Gestapo officer, as he boards a bus after breaking out of a PoW camp in The Great Escape. In the end, prison breaks and passing through immigration do have that much in common: many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.
“Oh, no, you don’t! Noooooo wayyyyyy! You just keep on going up the ramp you’re on!” I’m sure I also heard him mutter under his breath, “F***in’ a’, man!!!” As if I was about to score a goal. As if he was about to score a goal.
Remonstrating with the man that I did not, perhaps contrary to a misunderstanding on his part, if I may venture such a thing, possess an American passport did not strike me as wise. It was then that I twigged his meaning. The dog. He figured I had clocked the dog and, speculating that I was a bearer of proscribed substances, he divined that I had endeavoured to describe a wider berth around the animal in order to avoid the reach of its olfactory senses. To be honest, any drugs-searching dog worth its salt could have smelled drugs on me from the distance I was at even before I had embarked on this false start; but, under his explicit commands to continue, and now with the rapt attention of seven pairs of eyes following my every step’s progress up the ramp, I ascended to the top, whereupon I sauntered past the officers at the summit, and their dog, whose schemozzle I was sorely tempted to pat and which didn’t so much as stir a whisker or pay me the slightest heed, and proceeded through the double doors into America. I didn’t glance around to see the looks on their expectant faces, but I certainly had a smirk on my own.
In those days, I was just glad the ordeal through immigration was over. Nowadays, I’m more glad I can’t afford the fare.
The last time I traveled internationally was in August 2021 to Cozumel. We were given forms to fill out on the plane before disembarking. Much easier than trying to explain to someone of a different culture and/or language. I've only traveled as an American citizen (internationally that is) When I was a Canadian it was only day trips by car to Niagara Falls or Buffalo NY - so no problem at all.
I'm sorry you had so much difficulty. In 2017, it would have been during trump slime's first presidency and he only likes filthy rich foreigners (I don't think, you qualify, Graham) - just be grateful your skin isn't dark and you don't wear a turban.