Observaciones sobre Guadalajara No. 5

“You can’t bribe anyone at the Migration Office anymore,” says the director of the institute where I hope to obtain gainful (read: legal) employment as a teacher, if I ever successfully navigate the bureaucracy of the Migration Office. “Used to be that you had to pay a little something to pass through every step of the process, 200 pesos here, 100 pesos there. Now it’s just paperwork – lots and lots of paperwork.” But if there is any trace of wistfulness in his heavily accented English, I don’t catch it.

Only a few days before, chatting with a friend of a friend at a party, I had shared my consternation about the latest roadblock in my long and winding course through the government office I’ve come to dread. On this particular occasion, I had climbed the 6 floors (the elevator has been in service only 3 or 4 out of the 10 times I’ve gone) to the drab brown headquarters, presumably to receive notification that my application had, finally, been tentatively approved pending successfully completion of a long list of vague and mysterious requirements, which I’d be informed of at the appropriate juncture. Don’t get me wrong, I bore no illusions that I would be receiving positive news – I’d learned better. But still, I must admit that I was surprised when they told me they couldn’t continue to process my application until my perspective employer updated their tax documents and licensure status with the Migration Office. I knew what the director of the institute would say before I told him about the hitch, “but I know they have the current records on file, they aren’t supposed to expire until June.” Well, of course. And so he promised to look into it, and he did, and the Migration Office told him everything appeared to be in order and they didn’t see any reason that I would have received this notification and that they would be happy to continue to process my application just as soon as I came back in with the proper documentation that I had been approved to continue the process, which I couldn’t conceivably be in possession of, now could I?

“And that’s exactly when you should have reached for your wallet,” this friend of a friend I was talking to said, and then he launched into a lesson on basic bribing skills. He said it’s the fastest way to get things done, swore that he’s got out of countless traffic violations and even through the line at the DMV, and that it is the only way to process paperwork. “You got to remember,” he said, “it’s not like these workers are making enough income to get by – basically, it’s their salary you’re paying. You just act really worried and desperate, but calm, and say ‘Isn’t there any way we can resolve this now?’” I really can’t imagine myself being cool and/or firm enough to pull this off over the narrow partitions at the Migration Office. “What if they’re offended that I would try to bribe them? What if they deny my visa application all together, and red flag my name in the system or something?” I asked. He shrugged, apparently it had never come up. I started to seriously consider that it may be my only hope of living here legally.

I was just shy of practicing in the mirror a few times, summoning up my flair for the dramatic, and marching up those stairs, when a casual conversation with the director about Mexican bureaucracy put an end to my mounting anxiety. A long time resident and fluent in the art of paying “miscellaneous fees,” he knew better than anyone that the winds of reform had blown through the Migration Office. “No,” he said, “now you just have to jump through all the hoops, stick with it, and hope for the best.” Fine by me – cutting through red tape is just too stressful.

Posted by Megan Smith at May 27, 2006 06:04 PM