Immigration officers are often the first ambassadors of a country we meet. Many years ago, I was returning to the UK on a passenger ship. I had boarded in Auckland. Quite by chance also on board was a fellow Brit who I had played rugby against in Australia. He had boarded in Sydney. As we both had UK passports, we hatched a plan to spend the hours that the ship would be reprovisioning in Suva by hiring a car and seeing a little of Fiji, some of which we spent in a swimming pool while eating and drinking.
Immigration in Mexico and the USA
Back on board we agreed that we would disembark in Acapulco and travel across Mexico and the south of the USA by bus and return to the ship, which was travelling through the Panama Canal, when it called in at Florida sometime later.
At immigration in Mexico there was brief alarm when my companion caused some consternation among the officials by declaring his occupation as a ‘solicitor’. On verifying that he was in fact an ‘Abogado’ (lawyer), we were allowed in.
After brief stays in Acapulco and Mexico City, there was a long overnight bus ride to the Texas border.
We arrived without visas. The US immigration officials, to us at least, were friendly and smiling. The first question was “have you any criminal convictions?” Much to my surprise my colleague answered in the affirmative, drew a newspaper cutting from his wallet and passed it over.
The cutting had a brief local newspaper report of his court case. The court heard about a rugby game, about after match ‘refreshments’, and my friend’s obligations as captain of the host team. There was no mention of alcohol.
“Had he perhaps been imbibing?” asked a perceptive magistrate.
“I could smell no alcohol on his breath,” said the arresting constable.
It was an open and shut case. He was convicted of riding his bicycle the wrong way up a one-way street. In mitigation he offered:
“While riding my bicycle home that night I was so preoccupied with the song I was singing that I failed to notice the no entry sign”
The immigration official, after weighing up the report said, “I am going to take a chance on you guys, how long are planning to stay in the US?”
We are hoping to catch our boat in Miami in ten days’ time. “It’s a goddam limey boat”, he said, “I will give you two weeks!”
We pointed out that it was in fact a Greek-flagged ship. But he took our passports and stamped them (I can’t remember if they were red or blue). It later turned out that he had given us a month.
My USA experience happened in a different era, under a different president and different politics; there had been no talk of border walls.
The world has changed since 9/11.
Immigration in Moscow and Brisbane
Two more experiences have stayed with me.
Passing through a Moscow airport the immigration officer was a stern-faced immaculately uniformed lady. After inspecting my documents, she handed them back to me and as I walked away, she said “nice name”. I was still smiling at the shock and fun of it as I eventually left the airport in a taxi.
I arrived in Brisbane with a bicycle in a bike bag. The immigration official asked “Is that a bike Paul?” and told me to follow him. Use of my first name helped put me at ease. I started unzipping the bike bag to reveal drop handlebars, at which point the official exclaimed, “It’s a road bike! That’s ok. You can zip it back up. We’re more concerned with mountain bikes”.
Mountain bikes, apparently, were an agricultural matter.
Hostile environment
The attitude of immigration officers is so important for the image of a country. It is at this point that a ‘hostile environment’ may or may not become evident or confirmed. Can you imagine being greeted at a border by a Priti Patel, a Nigel Farage or a Donald Trump?
I sometimes reflect (but probably not often enough), that although I have crossed many borders, I have never had to do so while fleeing a war, or persecution, desperately seeking refuge and having to do so in the unimaginably terrifying circumstances of a small dinghy crossing of a cold rough sea, or in the back of a large, overcrowded lorry while gasping for air.
It is all too easy to overlook or forget the privileges, or otherwise, that come with the accident of the geography of one’s birth, one’s race, of the simple human rights we assume which may be denied to many.
