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| US passport. I'm so privileged to have one of these, but still, being an immigrant is HARD. Image source. |
I wrote this post a long time ago. Just publishing it now~
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So I'm working here in China, and every year I have to renew my residence permit. (Which is functionally the same as a visa.) Last year, we hit so many problems while renewing it- it was just one complication after another after another- but the BIGGEST ONE was finding out that you can't use the last 3 pages of a US passport for visas or residence permits, so I needed to get a whole frickin' new passport.
And now I'm way more familiar than I ever wanted to be with the big Shanghai immigration office, the local office for the district where I work, and the US consulate in Shanghai.
I got the residence permit, in the end. I didn't get kicked out of China. But Hendrix and I had planned to go on vacation in Japan- 1 month after all this residence permit stuff was supposed to be done- and I couldn't go because the whole thing kept dragging on, and when it was time for the vacation, I didn't even have my passport with me, it was at some office waiting for some government official to look at it or whatever, so I couldn't leave Shanghai. (And even if I did have my passport and I did go to Japan, I wouldn't have been able to get back into China.)
I spent that whole month completely stressed out, trying to figure out what I would do if I couldn't get my residence permit. (I told Hendrix, "I'll miss you when I get kicked out of China and have to go live in Hong Kong"...) And Hendrix ended up going to Japan without me. We lost all the money we had paid for my ticket.
It just sucked. It really sucked.
I didn't pray. I didn't pray because I don't want a god who helps one immigrant not lose her vacation that she spent a thousand dollars on, while leaving other immigrants in dangerous, live-threatening situations. I don't want god to favor me over others. I certainly wanted the government workers at these various offices to favor me over others- and I don't think there's anything wrong with pushing for that- because they are finite human beings. They aren't able to assess the situation of everyone in the world and give out help in a way that's 100% fair. They are limited to inhabiting a specific place at a specific time. They have limited knowledge about who needs what. They have limited resources. I don't expect them to be perfect judges- and so it's fine for me to ask if they can push things along faster, even if I'm not the most deserving person in the world.
But I don't want a god like that. God should be the perfect judge who helps the most poor and helpless people before anyone else.
And while I was stuck at home and Hendrix was in Japan, our toilet started leaking. And I hate how my first thought was, "maybe this is why God planned for it to happen this way- because if I wasn't here when the toilet started leaking, we would come back from our vacation and find water all over the floor." I hate that. I hate that I used to believe in a God who thinks the best way to address a future leaky toilet is to completely sabotage my residence permit renewal process, so I get all worried about getting kicked out of China, I lose all the money from the vacation, and Hendrix and I have an argument about it... But that's how people thought, in the church culture I was raised in. If something bad happens, God planned for it to be that way for a reason. So you search for a little minor slightly-positive result of the bad thing, and claim that it MUST BE THE REASON that God did the bad thing.
"Perfect Number, you didn't want to come home from your vacation and find water all over the bathroom floor, did you? No? Well then you have to admit this was a GOOD THING God did to you, and you're not allowed to be unhappy about it."
I'm so glad I don't believe that crap anymore. There was no "silver lining." It just sucked.
Anyway, I'm telling this story because this is the kind of stuff that happens to immigrants. It's not that uncommon. In the community of international people living in Shanghai, we all know people whose visa process took way longer than it should have. We all know the stress of trying to navigate this giant bureaucracy. We all know people who are trying to do it without even being able to speak Chinese. A lot of us know someone who married a Chinese citizen and then spent thousands of dollars and filled out so much paperwork to get their spouse a US green card. A lot of us know someone who's teaching English here illegally on a tourist visa. We know people whose passports have been stolen, and they had to run around to various consulates and government offices to get a new passport and visa. We know people who came here for a job, and then when they got here, the job turned out to be way different than what was promised (it's teaching English instead of teaching music, the company can't actually get you a work visa, the company wants you to hand over your passport "for safekeeping", etc), so they had to scramble around and find a different job or else leave China. And we all know what the "Hong Kong visa run" is- in some situations, people are required to leave mainland China in order to renew their visa, and the most convenient way to do that is to fly down to Hong Kong.
It's just part of life, being an immigrant. These things just happen sometimes. It's stressful and it sucks, but that's what being an immigrant is.
So remember us.
But we are privileged immigrants. We chose to come to China. We chose to leave our home countries. We are educated and can speak English. We can find teaching jobs easily- especially those of us who are white. We have enough money for international plane tickets.
Nobody is trying to kick us all out of China for political reasons. Nobody is claiming we are dangerous, or we are stealing their jobs, or we are a "burden on society."
So remember the immigrants, anywhere in the world, who have it harder. The refugees who didn't have a choice, who had to leave their homes because of violence. Remember the immigrants who don't have money and don't have good job prospects. The ones who fill out visa applications while politicians make speeches about how dangerous their country is, how immigrants of certain races or religions are all criminals.
This kind of crap happens to us, and that's just the way it is. We don't have the same rights that citizens do. We need piles of paperwork just to live here. Just want you all to know that.
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Related:
I Didn't Count the Cost Before I Moved To China
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