Immigration

Visiting and staying in Argentina for a long period of time is not hard. It's nothing like the herculean effort that it takes for Argentines to visit and/or stay in the United States. And what does a new U.S. immigrant receive in return for years of toil and thousands of dollars in legal fees to attain citizenship?

Basically, it comes down to opportunity. In the U.S., you have the opportunity to make a ton of money and to have access to mountains of cheap but relatively high quality products. On the other side of the coin, you also have the opportunity to lose all of your hard earned money the moment you get sick and the hospital wipes out your savings because you don't have insurance or because your insurance stinks. Or, you can easily blow your savings on your kid's college education.

These days, you can even lose your money by putting it in the stock of a big supposedly stable bank or lender like Bear Stearns, AIG, Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, New Century Financial, Merril Lynch, Freddie Mac, or Fannie Mae (I'll stop there even though I could go on:(). As an aside, has anyone noticed that our financial system is melting down and the President is insisting on bailing out failing banks with tax payer money? Of course, this makes since.... We are in an election year and if there is a big enough financial crisis, the Democrats win.

The truth is that the banks shouldn't be bailed out. They were extremely greedy and made horrible bets in subprime mortgages and now they should pay for it. The banks who played by the rules should emerge victorious and lead the way ethically into the future. If we bail out the banks with overexposure to subprime mortgages instead of allowing them to fail, we will only be prolonging this mess. The U.S. government needs to allow this crisis to happen (let the free market do its job) so that we can move on with new rules, lessons properly learned. In a sense, we are like a sick person injecting ourselves with adrenaline every day so that we can continue with our lives. What we should really do is stop with the injections, allow the illness to run its course, rest, pay attention to our condition, and address our core needs until we get better. Instead, we are choosing to wander zombie-like, ignoring the illness until it turns into a pneumonia of sorts, driving with the check engine light on until the engine melts down.

Instead of allowing banks to feel the consequences of their actions, the lessons of this mess will be blunted and bad behavior will continue because the lesson learned is that the government will bail out big banks despite the risks they take. Here's a reasonable metaphor... A kid leaves home for college, signs up for a credit card, drinks almost every night, incurs 1000s of dollars in debt, and then flunks out of school. Any outside observer would say that this kid needs to deal with this crisis himself by getting a job, paying off the credit card debt, and maybe going to a community college until he can find a way to earn the right to return to his original college. Instead, his parents, like the fed, swoop in, make a large donation to the university as a means of getting their son a second chance, and pay off junior's credit card. In the end, the kid experiences some trauma, but will his behavior change? No, because the lesson is that you can screw up as much as you want and it's ok because mom and dad will bail you out every time. Same thing with the banks. Only the members of the Bush Administration are the enabling parents and WE are their wallet.

The worst thing about this is that I'm almost certain the decision to bail the banks out was about politics and not about what the country really needs. The tax payers are getting slapped with billions in taxes to reinforce bad behavior so that the Bush administration and Republicans can save some semblance of economic face in this election year. I don't care which party you are in support of, this decision is disasterously short sighted and without a doubt as irresponsible as the behavior that provoked it. But I digress.....

As I was saying, it's easy to stay in AR legally. What do you get as a visitor or resident of AR? On the plus side, you have access to free health care at public hospitals and verrrrry affordable care at private ones. Folks, I'm paying 60 dollars per month to have full access to arguably the best private hospital in the city, the Hospital Aleman. In the event of an illness or accident, I receive free ambulance transportation and everything at the hospital is covered-no copay or deductible. My only expenses are when I set up an appointment with a doctor (I pay a copay of less than 2 dollars) and half of meds. The most expensive service is that I can pay an exhorbitant 3 dollar copay IF I WANT TO HAVE A DOCTOR PHYSICALLY COME TO MY APARTMENT TO TAKE CARE OF ME!! (I almost want to call one up and have them come, just to see if it's for real). Can anyone imagine a doctor in the states doing that?? I know it was common in the past, but these days, you would have to be rich to access a service like this. Anyhow, health care is an advantage of being in AR.

In addition to health care, public universities are also free to citizens as well as visitors from around the world. Of course, you have to pay for housing and books, but tution is gratis or free. The truth is that public hospitals and universities here have taken huuuuge hits in the last 50 years as Argentina's political and economic fortunes have stuck a one time wealthy and thriving nation in a gooey morass from which escape any time soon appears more or less impossible. All public institutions have lost millions, maybe billions of dollars in funding and as a result, professors and doctors are horribly underpaid and the buildings which house universities and hospitals are in gross disrepair. Still, the quality of professors and doctors is supposedly very high, in spite of their pay. Perhaps they do their jobs because they really care about taking care of people or teaching students as opposed to making lots of money. Or maybe they have no other choice.

In any case, there are significant social service advantages to living in AR (To be fair, I should mention the downside: jaw dropping inflation, political instability, filth, pollution, noise, and insane drivers).

Finally back to my topic. To come to AR from the U.S., you need only have a passport. Upon entering the country, your passport is stamped and you automatically receive a 90 day tourist visa. Easy enough. After 90 days, you can extend your tourist visa in 2 ways. The easiest and cheapest (if you know what you're doing), is to go to the office of immigration in Retiro, across from the Retiro Station (Av.Antartida Argentina which is open Monday-Friday from 7:30-13:30). You walk into the office, walk past the initial crowd of people, and then down a narrow center aisle into the entrance of another large room. At the entrance, you must present a copy of every page of your passport and say (Me gustaria extender mi visa turistica). At that point, you will receive a number, which is your number in line, and will be directed to the proper desk to make this transaction. If you are lucky, there will not be much of a line for this service. If you are not, you may wait an hour or two before you even talk with someone. Once you meet with a clerk, you will hand over your passport and the copies you made of each page. Both will be taken for processing and in the meantime, you have to go to a cashier to pay a 100 peso fee. You return proof of payment to the same clerk and then wait an hour or so while your passport extension is approved and processed. At the end of this period, your last name is called and your passport is returned and you are told the date that your new visa is good until (90 days later). You can only extend your visa once. After this point, you must leave the country and return to have another 90 day tourist visa. To do this, most people take a 180 peso(RT) 3 hour boat trip to Colonia, Uruguay as a means of getting their passport stamped and thereby extending their visa.

My 3 month limit was quickly approaching and as a result, I made the decision to go to the office of immigration as opposed to traveling to Uruguay. My decision to do this was two fold: it is the cheaper of the two options and I am cheap and this weekend is supposed to be rainy and cold and the idea of walking around Colonia, Uruguay in the rain does not appeal to me.

My own experience in the office of immigration was not nearly as easy as that described above. Although, I hope by my difficulty that at least one other person does it right so that my fumbling was not all for naught....

I first traveled to the office of immigration on a Monday morning. I decided to walk there (about a 5 mile walk) and when I arrived (after one wrong turn) approached the security guard and asked him where I should go to get my tourist visa extended. He said, 'Colombiano?' or was basically asking if I were Columbian. No, Estados Unidos, I returned. He smiled, 'The United States!' I smiled back. It was nice to know that the mention of the U.S. still excites people in a good way. It made me a little proud. He directed me to take a ticket where there were at least 100 other people waiting. This going to take long time, I thought to myself. I took a number- D20. Not bad, I thought. The sign said they were on 19. How lucky. A second later, 20 was called. I was baffled. How had I suddenly leapt in front of all the poor schleps sitting around? I walked up to the desk, handed over my ticket, and said veinte or the word for 20. The clerk said, 'C' no 'D'. Sure enough, I had 20D, not 20C. I looked up to the board and at that moment realized that I was 100 people away from being called. Ugggghh.

I sat down and pulled out a book. What followed is that I learned all kinds of embarassing things about myself....My first thought was.... Am I even in the right line? What am I waiting for? Are these people just going to tell me that I have to go wait in another line? There were few indications of where to go for specific services. My sense was that although I believed myself to be in a basic information line, I didn't think I had any choice but to sit, wait my turn, and then be directed to the next step.

I began reading my book, but was too uneasy to continue at first. The building was infested with insects due to its proximity to the swampy Rio De La Plata River and general lack of cleanliness. On top of that, the Bolivian woman behind me was coughing on my back. My hypochondria as well prejudice against people from the third world started to kick in. Sitting in the immigration processing center in a 2nd-3rd world country was putting me in proximity to diseases from around the world. Most of the folks waiting next to me were from countries even more poor than Argentina like Bolivia, Paraguay, or Peru where public health standards are relatively dismal. These thoughts of exposure to disease gave way to feelings of entitlement. I felt that due to my U.S. citizenship as well as my education and status, I shouldn't have to wait with people from the 3rd world. I almost resolved at that moment to instead go to Uruguay to extend my visa, like most ex-pats from the U.S. Then I felt shame for feeling this sense of entitlement. What made me any different from all these people? Why should I not wait like the rest? Why did I think I was better or entitled or more privileged? So the stubborn and cheap part of me won out. I'd sit there and go through it all just like the African guy in front of me with a briefcase of fake Rolex watches or the family of four from Paraguay who were all sharing one small Pepsi. I sat, tried to get comfortable, and read my book. 100 people and an hour and a half later, my number was called.

Just as I thought, I had waited an hour and a half only to be told that I must take yet another number and wait in another line. Perfect.

My time that Monday was running out. I had to teach English at 2pm about 1 hour away in Belgrano, a northern suburb. In any case, I decided to see how far I could get before I had to leave. I walked to the next line and asked for a number. It turned out, though, that I couldn't even get a number in this line until I had a copy of my passport. Of course I didn't. I was told to get a copy of my passport and then I could receive a number. Frustrated, I walked quickly away to look for a copier. It was then that I realized that I would have to wait through at least another 100 people in order to have my documents copied. Forget it, I thought to myself, I have to go teach my class. So, with only an hour to make the long trip, I hurried out of the office, practically ran across a cut through to Retiro Station, caught bus 152, jumped off 30 minutes later in Palermo, rushed to the Subway, got off at the Juramento Belgrano stop, and arrived at the Hewlett Packard headquarters 5 minutes late, which is early in Argentina.

The next day, I researched Uruguay:) I dreaded the idea of going back to the office of immigration. But a combination of not wanting to accept defeat, curiosity, shame, and thrift sent me back on Wednesday morning. On the previous Tuesday, my friend at HP had copied my passport for me and I was ready to go....

Upon arriving at the office, I went staight to the correct line, presented my copies, was given a number, directions to the correct desk and miraculously did not have to wait at all to talk with someone. From that point, it only took about an hour to have my passport processed and to receive my extension. I don't know what type of processing was required. I think the transaction probably could have taken place more quickly, but the clerks were taking their time and after texting on their cell phones, drinking mate, and talking about potential plans for the weekend, they realized I was waiting somewhat patiently and decided to take care of my request. When my last name was called, I jumped up excitedly, grabbed my passport and looked at the page that showed the extension. Mission accomplished. Chalk one up for the cheap guy. Two visits and 100 pesos later, I had my extension. Mission accomplished. Es asi (or it's like that) in Argentina. You have to know the rules of the game in order to get things done. It's a beuracratic pain in the butt. The right attitude to approach it is as if it is all a game, a challenge. Luckily, I will not have to play it my entire life...