Patiently Waiting?

I’ve been spending a lot of time in lines recently. Not lines at stores but in lines and waiting rooms accompanying young adults trying to help them bureaucratically argue why they should be regularized.

Inside a Prefecture

You look at the time on your cell phone; put it away. You slouch on the hard bench; you stare at television news that repeats every five minutes. You look at the time on your cell phone; put it away. You look at the other people in the room until they return your glance. The waiting-order numbers screen was rolling for a minute there but now hasn’t blinked in more than five minutes. You look at the time on your cell phone; put it away. The swelling stress of the administrative encounter leaves you less and less prepared to actually articulate what you are doing there.

I felt a bit relieved to see a paper about why standing in line drives you mad. Being anxious makes waits feel longer. Being alone makes them worse than being with someone. Not knowing how long you have to wait makes them seem longer.  But the more valuable the service, the longer people are willing to wait.  [Not on this list is being forced to wait in terrible conditions! This morning asylum-seekers waited outside in the sub-zero gusts as the police barked directions in French. Outside of Paris people sleep outside in order to be received the following day.]

Outside the Prefecture of Bobigny

So for immigrant kids in high school or solo adult workers in need of official paperwork, they are willing to stay anxiety-ridden awaiting the verdict on their future in administrative Prefectures around the country. People double and triple check their photocopies of photocopies that they already checked before leaving their apartment. You might miss your turn if you decide to go to the bathroom, better hold it.

Will you be one of the selected? You’re not so sure after the counter clerk barked a command at you and whispered under her breath.  They call out your name…

In France, some 30,000 people a year (since 2005) come out at the other end of the tunnel with French residence cards.

In the US, the undocumented stay waiting. And the waiting room is impatiently filling up. 

MLK Day Prize: Education Without Borders Network

I just got back from the national meeting of the Education Without Borders Network in pretty Amiens, France (most famous for its marvelous cathedral). The marvel is really the existence of the network and the work it does protecting undocumented students and their families. These citizens would make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., proud. (Happy birthday, MLK!)

Their logo above explains a lot of how they see things. The police are taking children out of classrooms, putting them in handcuffs, and deporting them. Legal protection of children is taken seriously here, and deportation evokes World War II trains heading to concentration camps to the east. So, when Sarkozy took over as Minister of the Interior in 2004 (again) and introduced new overzealous immigration measures, a mass of teachers, parents, unions,and other organizations came together to form the Network.

Who can imagine a classmate shackled and led to a plane while the other students in the class recite the national motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?

So the network came together by 2004, and a most quintessential action took place in the neighborhood where I do my field work, in the spring of 2007. Three police cars arrive to take away a grandfather who was waiting for his grandson to come out of elementary school (this was a policy put in place with Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior). As you can see in the video, a crowd crystallizes instantly, and forms a barrier to prevent the police from leaving with the grandpa. They have whistles, and even lay out in the street to prevent the police cars from taking off. There are a few videocameras filming and you can watch the episode here and here.  The resistance to the police tactics is effective in the end, and the grandpa is released.     

An Undocumented Youth= A Stolen Youth

Teachers and parents of the network are active in schools, give advice to kids and their families. They 'godparent' students and families in the municipal halls. Entire schools mobilize to support a single undocumented student! They travel together to the courtroom or to the police headquarters in an extraordinary show of solidarity. And this apprenticeship into citizenship is didactic, providing real-life experiences of how democracy works. On a more personal level, I also hear from kids about how they feel included, how the stigma recedes, and how they are inspired to become French.   

Who’s to say to these kids they are not integrated, when they have the community in the streets on their behalf? 

Thanks to Amiens for having us and to the Lukowskis for the hospitality! 

13th century Cathedral of Amiens

A Better Life

Vacation is over, retour au boulot! On the flight back to Paris I willed my eyelids open and watched the opening of a movie called A Better Life. It said it was about a gardener in East LA. Sounded good to fall asleep to.


From almost the opening credits, the story pulled me in with its completely believable, if romanticized, depiction of immigrant family life. A Better Life is really about a father-son relationship. The father, Carlos Galindo (played by Demian Bichir), works long hours as a landscaper in rich seaside mansions. He makes enough to support him and his son, 14 year old Luis (Jose Julian) though as an undocumented worker, Carlos has no job protection. This precariousness makes it more difficult to raise his son how he'd like to. When his need to provide for his son faces this vulnerability, the movie takes off.

The acting is not terrible, though the real gem is to see all the ways not having legal status degrades your ability to make good on family obligations, how the sacrifice of parents is heightened, how the children seek to redeem this sacrifice, and how the US system does not support families with US citizen children. I won't give away the ending! Out on DVD now. Tell me what moral lessons you get from it after you watch!


Trailer


Who should have rights in the US? And how does it affect us when some people among us don't?