Visitor’s Visas and other immigration issues

January 15, 2011 by Jess in America, anti-immigration, immigration, South Africa | Leave a comment

This past month plus, I’ve been learning a lot about just how difficult it is for a young mixed-race woman from South Africa to get a visitor’s visa to the United States.

A year ago, I had a great idea. I’d use my miles on Delta to bring a young friend from Cape Town to the U.S. She’d see the world, enhance her understanding of life, and go home better educated and ready to tackle a career in public relations (which is her major at university). She comes from a mixed-race family (known as “colored” in South Africa) that struggles financially so this would be completely beyond her means if it wasn’t for the fact that I bought her a plane ticket and some friends in Masssachusetts agreed to help out financially while she is in the U.S.

She got all her paperwork together. We got letters of financial support, bank statements, etc. We got her a plane ticket. We turned in an application and she was called in for an interview at the Cape Town Consulate. And then she was denied. In fact, the official didn’t even ask her a single question. She was told she had “insufficient ties” to South Africa, meaning, “We think you’re going to try to immigrate to the U.S. so we won’t give you a visitor’s visa.”

We were all knocked off our socks, given the fact that my friend is going to university, has a boyfriend, and is part of a large extended family in Cape Town, and literally knows a handful of people in the U.S. Why in the world would she overstay her visa? Why in the world would she try to immigrate? And maybe she could have conveyed her ties to South Africa if the official had asked her any questions or offered her a proper interview or looked at any of the supporting documentation we put together. (When my friend tried to show the supporting documentation, the official refused to look at it). Outraged, we started calling our congressional representatives, trying to figure out what had happened and what we could do next.

Not a lot, it turns out. The process can be arbitrary. A lot of people get denied. According to politicians we spoke to, the U.S. has been denying so many student visas lately that other governments have turned the tables and started denying student visas to American students. Quid pro quo, I guess.

We can try again and hope for better luck next time. Maybe this time, the official won’t assume my friend is a flight risk and give her a visa. Maybe this time, the same thing will happen. We’re trying again, fingers crossed.

I do understand the problem. I understand it from both sides. According to my congressman’s office, there are 12 million people who have overstayed their visitor’s visas in the U.S. That’s a lot of people we’ve absorbed. The constiuent services representative who helped me said that in the week before my friend’s visa was denied, she had three people come in to her office, all who had overstayed their visas and all who now demanded that she help them become citizens.

A couple years ago, I was contacted by a South African who was fighting extradition from the U.S. She asked me to write a letter on her behalf. She had overstayed her visa, though she had her reasons. Certain members of her family belong to a rabidly white supremicist group known as the White Wolves. She had fled South Africa after family members had viciously attacked her on a public highway, disembowled her, and left her for dead. All this, because she adopted some black children in post-apartheid South Africa. Married to an American citizen now, she was hoping for amnesty in the U.S. She went through a trial and was denied amnesty. A year ago, her daughter told me she was now living in the Dominican Republic.

I can see why she wanted amnesty. I can also see why the U.S. is suspicious of amnesty cases. I can see why they are suspicious of my friend in Cape Town, who really does just want to come for a visit. I hope this time she’s approved. I’d really like to show her the United States of America, in all its tarnished glory.

Life Expectancy South Africa & Zimbabwe v. the United States

September 25, 2010 by Jess in Africa, AIDS/HIV, America, South Africa, Zimbabwe | Leave a comment

History and God’s Miracles

March 4, 2010 by Jess in Africa, America, children's literature, Christianity, Cultural categories, history, race, religion | 3 Comments

Because I’ve been reading a lot of biographical picture books lately, and because I’m working on one of my own, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship between history and our personal identities.

In January, I had a conversation with a gentleman who was reading a book called “God’s Miracles.” It was a collection of stories that revealed moments of American history when, according to the book, God performed a miracle that allowed the new nation to thrive. The story he presented during our conversation was how the people of Jamestown were literally getting into their boats to leave when ships from England arrived, “saving” them and “saving” Jamestown.

The idea that America’s destiny was maneuvered, manipulated, aided, and abetted by the Powerful Most High is always one that disturbs me. Was it a “miracle” from God that Jamestown survived….only for the obliteration of the Native American peoples in that area to occur? Ascribing God’s hand into the American Story gives a lot of people a sense of destiny, a belief that the American Way is God’s Way, but the flip side of that is the question: Was it therefore the destiny of the Native American peoples to be killed, herded onto reservations, and left to rot—all the way up to the present day? Is that, too, God’s Way?

As a historian, I’m aware that most of history is made up of questions, not answers; it is made up of perspectives, not facts. Those of us who are white and grow up in America see our founding fathers as heroes; that is our perspective because they built a society for us that enables and encourages us to succeed. But this perspective holds very little moral authority for me when I see how they built the country at the expense of so many people’s lives.

History ends up being very similar to religion. Like our religious heroes, our historical heroes give us a shared sense of destiny with people who have very little in common with us. We can all wave our flag of patriotism because “we” are Americans.

An American friend of mine, an African historian who lives in South Africa, recently told me, “Everybody recognizes South Africa’s history as a racist history. We don’t tell the American history as a racist history because whites are the majority people.” He’s right. Yet the story of America is a racist story—from the arrival of the Pilgrims, to slavery, to the notion of Manifest Destiny, to our attempts to colonize the Philippines, to our ongoing refusal to grant Puerto Ricans full citizenship (what’s up with that? They’re “American citizens” who can’t vote? Wait…WHAT?), to our recent building of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. It’s true that racism is only part of the American story—but it’s an enormous part, something we fail to see because we try so hard to build pride in our young folks. We teach “propaganda” and call it history, not even realizing that our unconscious goal is to instill patriotism, and we do so by telling lies.

How to balance all of this when writing a picture book for kids based on a historical figure? I’m not sure. I think it’s one reason why my first biographical picture book was about a relatively unknown dude—a blind artist, Mexican-American, who has a very rare form of blindness that he describes as a “constant LSD trip” and so he paints what he sees. That was a fun book to write, but it hasn’t sold yet. I’d like to write a biographical picture book about my father, not because he’s famous but because he’s a man I care about deeply. And I’m currently working on a biographical picture book about Nelson Mandela’s chef…the man who cooked meals for him the last 15 months he was in prison, when the apartheid government was negotiating with him and so he had a cushier life than the previous three decades he’d spent on Robben Island.

Am I contributing to South Africa’s ongoing myth-making by writing about one of their heroes at the moment he was released from prison? Perhaps. It’s not that I believe there are no heroes in history. It’s just that I believe our heroes lived messy lives, full of both courageous and horrific deeds, and we’re better off telling the truth, rather than trying vainly to instill pride in a false vision of what America is, who we are, and what our purpose is in the world.

Justice in an Unjust World

Last May, while I was traveling around South Africa, a relatively new Christian told me the story of his salvation. He knew God was real and God was good the day God gave him a beautiful house at a price that was substantially below market value; the person who was selling it cheap had fallen on hard times and needed to get rid of it pronto.

“Isn’t it screwed up that you’re thanking God that somebody else has fallen on hard times?” I asked.

I don’t think he understood my unstated point: that a gift from God for one person should not represent injustice or hard times for another person. Even if we assume that the person who had fallen on hard times made bad decisions about their finances, can we really give God credit for our ability to, vulture-like, swoop in when the pickin’ is good?

Such logic leads to genocide.

Such logic has led to genocide, many, many times in history.

***

The first book I remember reading by myself was a biography of Harriet Tubman, an African American slave who not only escaped slavery herself but became known as “Moses” because she returned to the South over a dozen times and helped over seventy slaves escape to freedom. I was absolutely captivated by the phrase, “the Underground Railroad.” I imagined a literal railroad carved out of rock, deep underneath the earth’s surface, with poor, tattered slaves creeping along in the dark, only a candle to light their way to freedom.

Perhaps because that book represented a pivotal turning point in my education—the ability to read by myself—it also shaped my political and social consciousness. The first novel I wrote as an 11-year-old was the story of a young woman trying to help a slave escape on the Underground Railroad. As an adult, I’ve spent years of my life in graduate school, studying African history. Justice for people of color worldwide has been one of my abiding political concerns. I am bitterly aware of the privilege of my white skin, just as I’m bitterly aware of the disadvantages I face due to my gender.

(As a caveat to the conservatives who read my blog: I don’t believe the government to be a panacea to the social ills of our time. But it is obvious to me that injustice is built into the very fabric of our society, and thus into the warp and weave of every bureaucratic and religious institution and every policy that our government espouses. As a result, I don’t think we can create a solution without addressing it from a political and religious standpoint. This doesn’t mean that I believe the solution should be top-down—government forcing the people to do something that’s not in their heart to do. God, no. I HATE INSTITUTIONS. Plus, I am a firm believer in grassroots movements for social change, from the people on up. But the very point of democracy, and of grassroots change, is that at some point, we must change institutional structures as well—from governments to churches to schools. Anyway, that was a little diversion to my main subject today….)

As I’ve grown older, my concept of justice has grown increasingly complicated. I’ve come to recognize that righting the wrongs of the past so that the future can be more equitable might mean that a lot of Americans—white people, wealthy people of all colors, and, ah yes, even the educated middle-class, which includes me—will have to give up things they currently enjoy. Yes. Among many other changes, justice will definitely mean that we in the U.S. will need to give up our boats, extra cars, and expensive vacations and spend more money on groceries, on housing, on other things.

My preference, of course, is that we could right the wrongs of the past without anybody currently living having to suffer. But I’m not sure that’s possible. It’s not exactly that I believe a lot of people must lower their standards of living in order for the very most poor to be able to raise their standards of living. But I don’t think it’s possible for those of us in western nations to continue to ignore the fact that our wealth is based on our power; and our power comes at the expense of other people’s power which, ultimately, leads to their poverty. A person in India or China or Mexico who is hungry and living in a cardboard shack on the side of the hill will not say, “I demand a fair, living wage.” No, they will take what they can get, and so we continue to pay millions of workers worldwide a non-livable wage so that we can get our cheap products. “It’s better than nothing” is the basic attitude that supports our ongoing economic oppression of the global south. Of course it’s better than nothing. But it’s not enough, and we who have too much need to take Jesus’s words to heart: “The worker is worthy of his wage.”

To right the global wrong of structural social and economic inequality will mean a dramatic decline in the material wealth of western, developed nations. Morally speaking, we cannot continue the system of demanding cheap labor that keeps millions poor around the world just so that we can enjoy cheap products. Morally speaking, I don’t see how middle-class whites in America can ignore the fact that every day, we still enjoy the benefits of slavery—and that millions of people of color still suffer because of it. Is it such a mystery that the worst schools in the nation are also in the ghettos, which were created by systematic racism that crowded people of color into small, crappy neighborhoods so white society could keep races segregated?

To stop oppressing people, we will have to give up some of our power and some of our wealth—and that will feel like suffering to a lot of people, even if it’s really not.

***

When I look at the global injustices, I quickly get bogged down with a what to do what to do panicky kind of feeling. The question I always ask is this: What is my individual responsibility to right global wrongs?

This morning, I received an email from a friend that had me asking another question about justice, one that represents a moral conundrum: What is my individual responsibility to right global wrongs when doing so may hurt another person?

In other words, where does justice begin and end?

My friend asked me whether she should sacrifice her career by staying silent about secrets she learned in the course of historical research, secrets that would shame an old woman and that woman’s children. Not revealing those secrets kills the basis of my friend’s argument in the monograph she’s writing. Revealing them allows her to explore important women’s issues within the context of religion. She wondered if she was serving the cause of justice by staying silent, in order to be merciful to this old woman and her children? Or was she furthering misogyny by staying silent? Which was it?

My friend is faced with a perplexing problem: two different definitions of justice, the personal (keeping somebody’s secret so that they can keep their dignity) vs. the global (advancing the cause of feminism). Which cause is more important? Many people would sacrifice one woman’s dignity in order to serve what they see as a greater cause, women’s issues or some other Big Cause. And okay, serving a Big Cause is important. But are we really serving a Big Cause if we sacrifice one person’s dignity in order to do it?

It reminds me of those old Life Boat Questions: Should we sacrifice one person’s life in order to save a million?

This is the logic of war, and it’s the logic of most political movements that advocate for one thing or another, but it’s a logic that leaves me cold. Its foundation is an either-or fallacy that fails to look for alternatives. Is it true that somebody must be sacrificed?

So I ask myself, Is it true that Americans must suffer a decline in living standards in order for developing nations to rise up out of the mire and muck of poverty? Or am I setting myself up with a political either-or fallacy?

My friend’s email went further. One of her friends had recently died in Zimbabwe because medicine for her cancer wasn’t available, and now my friend was wondering whether she was possibly serving the cause for justice if she spent most of her time making meals for her family, making sure they were cozy and warm with a fire at night, books, an apple pie for dessert.

She is not asking a simple question. On the surface, it may appear that she’s asking whether, instead of living a life of American comforts and domestic bliss, she shouldn’t be out there working 80-100 hours a week to get justice for Zimbabweans. And yes, she is asking that. But she’s asking so much more. The average American can’t link their daily life to the poverty of an African nation…but my friend can. Because she’s studied African history, I know she sees the many and varied links that connect the wealth of the westernized global north, including individuals like you and me, to the impoverishment of the global south, like her Zimbabwean friend who died of cancer because the medicine wasn’t available in her country.

So even more than asking whether she should be devoting her intellectual and creative career to the fight for justice, she’s wondering whether the very basis of her domestically blissful life is inherently flawed.

This is her question: If my good fortune comes at the expense of another, is it really good fortune?

If we Americans enjoy access to cheap medicine and cheap goods, and as a result, we have policies that destroy individuals, families, and nations around the world, resulting in a Zimbabwean woman’s inability to buy medicine for her cancer….can we really say we have good fortune?

I will not entertain the simplistic and foolhardy argument that Zimbabwe’s problems are Zimbabwe’s problems alone. Is Mugabe a maniac running his country into the ground? Yes. But are Zimbabwe’s problems a result of Mugabe alone? No. When you look at the history of that country, the political and other problems of Zimbabwe are directly related to colonial policies put in place first by Great Britain, then by the European settlers, and then, post-independence, exacerbated and compounded and made worse by World Bank and IMF policies. In fact, when you look at the history of every single impoverished country, they all have a symbiotic relationship with a wealthy country like ours, always to their detriment.

***

(P.S. This is becoming a book and I just meant to write a simple blog post on justice. Ha!)

***

And as to this question, “If my good fortune comes at the expense of another, is it really good fortune?”…well, I don’t have a simple answer to that either.

Back to my opening anecdote about the Christian who thanked God for his new house, even though it represented hardship for another person, and my statement that such logic has led to genocide….

When Americans thank God for the U.S., for the freedoms we enjoy, I wonder if we would still be so grateful if we thought about the millions of Native American who were killed so we could “get” this land? Or if we thought about the lives that are currently being destroyed because of Native American policies we created long ago, destructive policies that have never been rectified, but which were part of the very basis of our getting this land?

I’m not trying to make an argument of “poor noble savage” against “rich greedy white capitalists.” I’m simply pointing out that it was wrong to kill millions of Native Americans 200 years ago, and that it is wrong that we still have policies that continue to impoverish millions of Native Americans by offering inferior education on the reservations and allowing the cycle of welfare to keep generations in its grip. It was wrong to enslave Africans 200 years ago, and it was wrong to create race-based ghettos a hundred years ago, and it’s wrong that we make only half-hearted efforts to change the situation today.

Is it really God acting on our behalf to give us a cheap house, cheap goods, cheap food, cheap cars…when millions of people worldwide work hard 50 or 60 hours a week to give us those cheap goods and cheap food and cheap cars but yet they still live in shacks and fail to have enough money to feed themselves and their families?

I’m full-circle back to the either-or fallacy: to change the system, to bring justice to millions worldwide, means some of us who have never suffered will have to suffer.

The Old Testament disturbs me because it shows a God who would encourage his people, the Israelites, to commit genocide, and then “give them” the land they had just vacated through murder and mayhem.

I’ve never understood the logic of this kind of justice.

But.

This is the same God my friend was thanking when he said God had given him a cheap house.

This is the same God that Americans thank for giving them this land, despite the millions of lives that were sacrificed as a result.

This is the same God that Afrikaners thanked when they went to war to take land from Xhosas, Zulu, the Khoisan.

This is the same God that Mormons thanked when they came to Utah and massacred American-Indians and then took the land as theirs.

And is this the same God we continue to thank for our good fortune as Americans….? Is it really good fortune if it comes at the expense of millions of people worldwide? I would like to believe in a good and loving God but I can’t believe in the “good and loving” God that many American Christians define as being on their side and helping them get the things they both want and need….not when it comes at the expense of other people. Either that’s a fucked up God or those people are sadly, sadly mistaken—they call it “God” when it’s really injustice operating in their favor. (Ah, here we are, back to my either-or fallacy….Is there a third option?)

***

Daily, my emotional level is kept on a low simmer as I contemplate the multiple ways that American culture, lifestyle, and politics perpetuates poverty around the world. I feel overwhelmed every time I go to the grocery store and realize that, no matter what, shopping means that I’m participating in global oppression.

I realize I must eat, and that the grocery store is my only option as long as I live here….

Where does an individual begin, if he or she wants to right wrongs that exist on a global scale and that we all participate in?

And what does an individual like my friend do when they realize that it’s wrong to expose one woman’s shame in order to change a global injustice?

I wish I had an answer.

10 Moments in History I Wish I Could Experience

August 29, 2009 by Jess in Africa, America, history, Social Issues, South Africa, Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Last night as we watched a documentary on the history of street gangs, I suddenly realized I wished I could pick moments in the past and go back to experience them. History is full of great stories, important moments, and it would be great (and also scary) to actually experience them.

Chris and I came up with a partial list last night. These are not in any particular order. And also, there aren’t 10. That’s because we had to stop talking about it before we came up with 10 moments–you’ll see why.

#1 I’d like to be at the Boston Tea Party. Imagine the fear and excitement sweating out of people’s pores as they got carried away in their anger against taxation without representation. Imagine the harbor turning black with tea leaves. Imagine the stolid Puritans dressed like Indians and hooting in indignation, “Nyah to you, old King George” and ”Take that, Great Britain.”

#2 I’d definitely want to be in South Africa in 1994, on the day Nelson Mandela won the first democratic elections in the history of the country and was voted in as the first black president of South Africa. I’d like to see the lines of elderly black people who suffered under apartheid for fifty years waiting to vote. I’d want to get carried away, joining the women ululating and dancing the toyi-toyi in jubilation.

#3 Chris said he’d like to see Nero playing his violin and watching Rome burn down to the ground. (This website says there were no violins in Rome at the time. But the image is a striking one. )

#4 I said I’d like to be in Jerusalem during the 3 days after Jesus died. “Just to see what really happened,” I said.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I’d be standing in front of that tomb on the third day. You couldn’t drag me away from it.”

#5 Both of us wanted to be there for the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the day President Lincoln declared that American slaves had been set free.

#6 Chris said he’d like to be with WWII troops as they liberated people from the concentration camps in Germany at the end of World War II.

“Can you imagine?” I said. “No matter what you’d heard about it, nothing could prepare you for the sight of these starving people wearing smocks in 3 feet of snow. The gas chambers. The bodies piled up.”

“That’s why some of the troops went crazy and just lined up the Nazi soldiers and executed them on the spot,” Chris said. “They recognized that what the Nazis had done was totally insane and inhumane and they said to themselves, ‘You don’t deserve to live.’”

“Don’t you think some of the things going on since then are just as bad?” I asked. “I mean, Rwanda. Saddam Hussein.”

“Maybe, but the Nazis experimented on people. I mean, they made lampshades out of human skin. Who the **** does that?” Chris asked.

The conversation quickly deteriorated into a depressing discussion of human cruelty and what our responsibility is to stop these kind of inhumane acts. And that is why we never made it past #6 on the list. The human lampshades did it.

Still, I’d like to hear from others. What are 10 moments in history you’d like to witness? Or what’s your top moment, the one historic moment you wouldn’t want to miss if you could be there?

Livin’ in Livermore

June 30, 2009 by Jess in America, Bay Area, Cultural categories, homeless | Leave a comment

Right before I left for my research in South Africa, Chris and I bought a house in Livermore, California. Livermore is the farthest east community in the Bay Area–almost “country,” no longer completely urban the way San Bruno is. It’s the land of big trucks, big backyards, two and three car garages, boats, friendly neighbors, safe neighborhoods, and, sadly, people who voted “Yes” on Prop 8. (We’ll reverse it one of these days, hopefully soon.)

The more I live here, the more I like it. It takes ten minutes to walk to the inviting downtown, with its fountains, benches, cafes, bars, and donut shops. It’s another ten minute walk to make copies, send faxes, or mail books. Ten minutes to the downtown Catholic church, if I ever decide to go, and two minutes to an Episcopalian church, if I ever decide to go. We’ve got a Montesorri school half a mile away and the public school system here is at least acceptable. It’s a leeetle white bread for me, but that again depends on the neighborhood. Thankfully, Chris and I have plenty of Spanish speaking neighbors.

Chris has something of a commute from here, and he doesn’t like the traffic that starts at 6 a.m., so he’s started going to the gym at about 3 in the morning and leaving here by 5. This morning, he came back into the bedroom and woke me up.

“There’s some homeless dude sleeping on the sidewalk in front of our house.” Read More

Culture Shock and the Writing Life

The thing that is both wonderful and terrible about immersing yourself in another culture is how quickly you find yourself humbled by your own flawed expectations about how the world should work.

When I first arrived, I stayed with a Zimbabwean immigrant family on the outskirts of Johannesburg. They run a small local paper, employ Malwaian immigrant workers, and live lives riddled by the contradictions of Zimbabwe/South Africa border politics. Currently, I’m staying with a white South African and her American husband in Pretoria, who have introduced me to local and national politics, the internal world of the ANC, and liberal white culture in South Africa. Read More

Favorite Quote of the Day

December 9, 2008 by Jess in America, education | Leave a comment

“College socializes you, so you learn to present even trite ideas well. –Elyse Graham, in Chris Hedge’s latest article “The Best and the Brightest Led America Over a Cliff”

America

Visitor’s Visas and other immigration issues

Life Expectancy South Africa & Zimbabwe v. the United States

History and God’s Miracles

Livin’ in Livermore

Favorite Quote of the Day

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