Immigration

23 October 2007

Bureaucracy

colin and my last week in taiwan was ridiculously busy, filled with all those petty, time-consuming, bureaucratic little things one forgets about until the last minute. i had to pay money that i owed to my school and sign an 'end of contract agreement', i was supposed to file my last taxes (which i didnt bother to do) and cancel my ARC (which i also didnt bother to do). plus new tenants for our flat had to be found and all our recently bought furniture sold. this wasn't very difficult as we just sold all the furniture to the two girls that we finally managed to find to move into the flat. then we had to pay last minute bills and still try and pack in time. and i had to see dr dai and make sure i had all the relevant medical documentation (which is a story all of it's own!). above all this we were trying to say last good byes to people. but to be honest, by that stage i didnt really care, i just couldnt wait to see the ass-end of taiwan. and the experience of tuesday, october 23 just solidified my rampant desire to escape the mangy, little island.

we knew that because colin was illegal he would have to go and declare himself to the immigration office and pay a fine, before he would be allowed out of taiwan. the fine was 10 000nt$ (R2 000) and he would receive a stamp in his passport barring him from re-entering taiwan for a year. we didnt care about this as we had/have no plans to EVER return to taiwan. there are many foreigners who stay and work in taiwan illegally and we knew several who had paid the fine and left and some who had even come back after their year ban was over. so, in order to make sure the whole process went smoothly i phoned the immigration office, explained the situation and checked what colin would need to bring with him. the lady on the phone was very nice and i had every confidence that colin would have no trouble. colin was not so optimistic and was very nervous when he left for the immigration office on tuesday morning, all necessary papers in hand. he even took all my medical records to show the reason he had overstayed and he took a document to show that he had, in fact, tried to apply for an ARC (alien resident certificate) and then his old school had fucked it up.

i stayed at home whiling away the time, confident in the knowledge that 'all would be well'. the first phone call i got was about 2 hours later, colin asked that i photograph our lease agreement and our telephone bill and then email it to him as they needed copies. hmmm ... the lady on the phone hadn't told me about this. 30 minutes later i got another phone call, "they said they phoned your school and your school said you weren't sick!" i could hear the panic in colin's voice, but didnt understand why. "There is no way for them to know the phone number of my school. ask them what the phone number of my school is. they are lying." after about another hour colin called again. he was now 'in a state'. he explained to me that the man he had been dealing with had spoken perfect english to him for the first 30 minutes and then suddenly pretended he couldnt speak english and started calling for a translator. he must have been quite surprised to find out that colin could speak chinese (ruining his little 'mind game' or whatever he thought he was doing), but then his reaction was to ignore colin completely, only speaking to colin to ask for more and more irrelevant documentation, which of course colin didnt have and the documentation that colin did have he didnt even look at anyway!

colin had been at the immigration office for about 4 hours when he phoned, angry and extremely worried, to tell me that this little, taiwanese bureaucrat now demanded my presence at the immigration office. what on earth for?! he had all my medical documents proving that i existed and that i was sick. by law, i wasnt required to be there, but this was a well-practiced bureaucrat, an expert at being small, petty and MEAN. but more importantly, colin needed me there for help and moral support. but, shit, i had to phone a taxi and had no airtime on my phone. i was leaving the country in less than a week and hadnt thought it would be necessary - how wrong i was! i borrowed rose's phone to call the taxi and made the 30 minute drive to the immigration office. stopped to buy some airtime for my phone and strode in there, full of righteous indignation. and i had a plan ... no man wants to deal with a sick, crying woman and i could spasm like i was possessed. that little man didnt know what he was in for!

colin (who had now been there for almost 5 hours!) took me down to the basement/cave where this little man worked. my eyes were already rolling around in my head and i couldnt walk properly. my body was shaking like crazy and my head was spinning on my neck like a top (some of this was caused by the cab ride and stress, but i also know how to act ;-). i finally got to meet the man who had been torturing my usually calm, confident boyfriend. skinny and hunched over from punching at a computer day in and day out, his skin was a sickly yellow-green, his face pinched and reptilian. i was presented to him, he barely looked up. colin took me to 'the waiting room', or purgatory as i like to think of it. i was thrashing around in my chair and crying loudly about how we just wanted to go home. reptile-man slid in, started asking me random questions in english, then switched to chinese in an effort to confuse me. all his questions were understood and answered. he asked if i needed a doctor and started going on about calling 911?! but with NO human expression on his face. he was not surprised, disgusted or worried about my condition. this was NOT a human being we were dealing with.

i spent an hour in purgatory with colin watching reptile-man slithering past, ignoring us, expressionless, emotion-less, inhuman, comfortable in his underground domain. direct sunlight would probably have turned him to stone. wormtongue. gollum, without the latent innocence and humanity.

finally, we found his lao ban (manager) and begged with this man to show some human compassion. PLEASE, call off your minion, put him back in his cage, colin has admitted to his mistake and just wants to pay so we can leave your wretched little island, this armpit of asia. suddenly, things were processed and we were taken upstairs by the goblin of the underground, the reptile-man of the basement, lord of all that is petty and mean. his power over us was gone, but he still continued to bait me, "how did you live here without money? it is expensive."
"my parents helped us."
"but south africans dont have any money."

how would he know about south africans?! he never left his basement/cave?! i was stupid to answer his questions though, he asked me in chinese and just wanted to enjoy a final stab knowing that he couldnt torture us any longer. in retrospect, the best thing i could've done to him would've been to say "wo ting bu dong." (i dont understand) in perfect chinese. but i was angry, i couldnt believe that such sub-human, petty, little monsters actually existed and so i still answered him, falling into his web one last time.

suddenly we were upstairs, outside, in the sunlight, on our way to the clear air, clean water and sunny skies of south africa and reptile-man? we got to watch him scurry back to his underground lair with his little chair, his metal desk and his dirty computer screen knowing that he would have to deal with more foreigners like us whose time in the basement/cave would be short, who would soon be escaping purgatory and heading back to home, family and a full, happy life. how that must have grated poor little wormtongue's tail.