Paper Chasers

The word paper is fairly neutral. When we were children, we scribbled on it. We used it to paint, to draw and to create art, with varying degrees of success. I was rubbish at art but I loved paper as there was nothing quite like a clean sheaf on which to scribble my ten year old thoughts. As we grew older, the word paper was adulterated to become synonymous with the cold hard face of currency. Today, the plural form of the word takes on a special significance in the vocabulary of the immigrant. Papers are a whole new currency- it is a hot commodity representing a passport to the right to reside in the developed world. The value of this currency never fluctuates.

There are paper chasers on the streets of Paris: the processions of sans –papiers of Cameroonian men and Ivory Coast women in Barbes-Rochechouart fill the churches of Saint Denis to pray to a God who would wash away old lives and give them new documented ones, in the same way that they fill the bank accounts of unscrupulous avocats who promise every year, next year they will have the legal right to reside and to remain. There are paper chasers in London- Nigerian men and Jamaican women who have overstayed the duration of their permits, armed with either a false British passport or a fake residence permit, or both. They work cash in-hand in hairdressers’ salons in Peckham and on construction sites in Hackney. There are thousands of paper chasers in Brooklyn, New York- Grenadian men and Guyanese women who have literally given up solid, reasonably well paid jobs in the Caribbean or brighter prospects at home, to become one of Patterson’s invisibles- they babysit in New Jersey literally cleaning up the shit after affluent slave-owners employers, they try to fleet in and out unnoticed in Caribbean hair shops and nail shops and takeaways. They make us believe that all is okay with their combination of Baby Phat, lace front weaves, Clarks and Timberlands or all of the above.

Paper chasing has its own rules, its own honour code of conduct and regulations, which vary according to the host country’s norms and mores. I quickly learnt that in the United States, a sophisticated money marriage system exists and it is rare to find a paper marriage for free. When it comes to marriage, there appears to be an irrefutable presumption of illegitimacy. I explained to a friend that someone I knew got married. The immediate question was “Papers?” Wedding photos on Facebook are gossiped and whispered about. More often than not, citizens are paid for their time and trouble, often to sums topping $5000- $10,000. This is presumably to represent the cost of the hassle- mere green card holders do not have permanent rights to reside, so often these arranged marriages subsist for over 7 years to ensure that the deal is seen through to completion. The United States’ Citizenship and Immigration Services is often swiftly on the heels- they require photos showing evidence of long marital life, and I have heard, anecdotally, that the questions they ask require intimate knowledge- what colour is your husband’s toothbrush, what was the colour of the dress you wore on your wedding day? A marriage for papers therefore requires forward planning- an easy familiarity with spouse’s family members and background- it is not for the faint hearted. However, many are unperturbed. I know of citizens who have married three times over to allow spouses to obtain rights to reside. I have heard of couples who plan to migrate and each to marry US citizens to obtain that elusive green card, and then to marry each other after the ordeal. I hope it is worth it and it lasts.

In the UK, there is a more covert, laissez faire approach to paper marriages. There is almost always the ruse of love, and even in cases where there is no ruse- overstayers use the criteria of citizenship to filter out any potential marriage applicants. It is the ultimate economic cost-benefit analysis. What good is it falling in love with someone who cannot help? Older women are often targeted. Lots of Eastern Europeans in economically strained circumstances consent to these marriages and contract them for sums as low as £1,000.

Nothing really surprises me about green card marriages in the US anymore except for the profile of those who overstay and who seek to undertake them. I probably expect them of persons who are unemployed in their home countries or those who really have nothing to lose. College graduates really should know better. Is at home so bad? The bourgeois set from the Caribbean/Africa whose parents sent them abroad every summer. Surely during their many sojourns proper research could have been undertaken as to the myriad ways to enter and to remain legally in the West. Up to two years ago, the UK offered working holiday visas and nanny visas to Caribbean nationals, yet thousands still chose to come through the system illegally. Is it the thrill of the chase or is it pure ignorance, the failure to question and to be informed, accepting this indignity of crouching low in another man’s country as the only way? Papers are ascribed an almost mythical significance- "she ehn fix up yet". Someone I know referred to a mutual friend with a  BA, MA and PhD as "not having shit" on the basis that she did not yet have the permanent right to reside. This, to me, is incredulous.

Many who migrate do not tell us the real story, they present a skewed picture of what they romantically term the “hustle”. They do not tell the truth- that the hustle is really a sale. It is a trade in peace of mind for economic gain, without which many of our families would probably not have advanced, but this does not make the choice any more viable or sane. They do not say that the wheel of the hustle is notoriously difficult to climb atop because there are thousands, if not millions of hustlers running along for that chance, to do the job for longer hours than they would, at a pay vastly cheaper than they would, and yes, probably better than they would. They keep quiet the fact that not many employers would take the risk so that for every yes there are maybe one hundred no’s. That to pay bills and to keep on top of rent and demands at home, the hustle becomes two and three and even four hustles, with no time for rest. They keep it on the down low that they are often paid less than permanent residents for doing the very same job. That unscrupulous rich families in the East side would try to hold on to their passports and make them work for more than their contracted hours because they knew that they do not have a choice. That every hustler knows of at least one mother or father whose sons or daughters died whilst they were abroad and that he/she could not come home to bury their own children. And that yes there are no taxes, but undocumented there is also no NHS, no insurance, no services if you happen fall sick. That the hustle may also involve having sex with a man you do not like or love. That very often you learn to love the man you are having sex with, because only that offers a way out.

I do not judge our paper chasers. I envy their audacity and their resilience. I could not do it. I have too much pride to eat at the crumbs that fall of the table of another man’s country whilst its citizens dine Michelin-style. I judge instead the failure of our own countries to harness the skills of its citizens, to create employment opportunities, to encourage initiative among our people so that it won’t be necessary for us to leave. If all the “hustlers” hustled at the same rate in the same way in their home countries, the Third World would be buzzing with vibrance and economic actitivy. I judge the developed West with its McFoods and McJobs and McEducation that lure us with McPromises. And I hope, that by the Grace of God, I would never be placed in a position where all I feel I can do is to paper chase. No one should.

(Pic from www.paperchase.co.uk. All rights reserved. Paper Chase has nothing to do with paper chasing or illegal immigration).

Flatbush, New York

It's like a jungle, out here
So much struggle, out here

And my dream's still unphased....

Alicia Keys, Empire State of Mind Part II

Dedicated to Deslyn Franklyn

The mother of one of my closest friends died last week. In a Brooklyn brownstone, she drew her last breath, a heart weary from the pain of over-love of children so far away, feet tired of walking to the subway to between Lexington and 33rd street, blood congealed by a never ending winter, soul burdened by the harsh realities of New York life. She was not the first to die, and she will not be the only one. Many have died weeks, months, years, before and drift the streets of Flatbush like corpses, haunting barbershops, rotishops, hairshops- the meaning of their lives flat and empty, snuffed out prematurely.

The almond toned Guyanese girl, with legs to die for and a killer smile, had her dreams of being a model slaughtered almost instantaneously. She was informed by her boyfriend that she had to earn her keep; she now contents herself to practicing "fierce" ANTM shots with her Blackberry camera and posting them on Facebook, in purple, yellow, and orange technicolour clothing combinations, defying her aspiration's bereavement. Her red carpet is the small area of the weave shop where she works, advising customers on the right type of hair to channel Nicki Minaj.

A Grenadian ex army corporal is being all he can be in a shoestore south of Utica, his vision of serving in the UK marines lying as flat on the floor as the gangsters he once made lay prostrate. The Trinidadian teacher who migrated for a better life has not fully sacrificed her degree- she practises "early childcare training" in her job as a babysitter to New York's Jewish elite in Manhattan. O'Levels and A'Levels don't count. Its Hustle and Flow or Crash. Young Jamaican girls who came seeking college degrees have hearts that are now stone cold and eyes that are already deceased- they wrap immobile bodies and lives around poles that had seen better days in frosty Harlem to pay bills and to buy formula for kids they did not necessarily want, but who prove to be their salvation. The currency of these living dead is papers- a green card- to be traded and bargained and wheeled and dealed, the cost of the American dream.

West Indians have long migrated to New York for a better life. They think that they pack their struggle away by packing an empty suitcase and boarding a flight to JFK but they soon learn that a suitcase is not enough to hold a dream of a better tomorrow, enhanced education prospects, enough money for a house and a plot of land in the pregnant Caribbean plus Boysie’s school fees, plenty toys for the baby, and requests every month for money and school books and a barrel and some tablets for the rheumatism please. Some leave their children behind in the care of neighbours, family and friends, hoping to win in the lottery of the American dream, inspired by the macabre vestiges of gold-chain, gold-ring, costume jewellery, brightly coloured clothes and ten dollar shoes that those who manage to return flaunt as evidence of the largesse of the after-life. Their children grow not to know these absent parents, these cracking cackling voices at the other end of the telephone, who seem like Santa Clause except they do not even come once a year.

Their tiny apartments remain unkempt while they clean the houses of their employers to perfection, their own children roam the streets of the Caribbean while they tuck the children of their providers to sleep. The cockroaches that infiltrate the city sleep better than they do. They are far from home and hearth because they do not know that their very same employers have left Brooklyn to move to Jersey because of their influx. If they know, they do not care. They balance weekly cheques like they used to balance buckets on their heads from the standpipes- precariously. Rent, electric, gas, cable, credit card, store card, Western Union.

Some live in limbo- not knowing whether they are going or coming. They have no papers. They do not exist on Governor Paterson’s books. Like spirits in prison, they are in America but cannot enter it. Funerals, weddings, christenings, baptisms, births and deaths of sometimes their own children pass them by - afraid to venture outwards back home lest they are not allowed back in. Those who do not have medical aid pray not to be ill and when they are ill, they pray that their persistent, hacking coughs will go away. They remember the youthful days when armed with a ten dollar bill, you went to see Dr Varma for every ailment no matter how minor.

Parents and children back home wait on dreams that never come true. The pre-cut house is still not fixed, the side verandah and the second bedroom still has gaping holes that leak in the night and there is a new TV but the old sofa has no stuffing. They will send for you next year. There is yet no bathroom inside the house. Promises of a better tomorrow are broken but each time reinstated, parents and children back home know that you have not forgetten them- that you will send it next month please God, after the damn super get off your back about the increase in last month's rent, and after you collect the sou-sou hand from Leo.

Parents and children back home eagerly anticipate a barrel for Christmas filled with tins and packets and bottles of samples of your good American life. They pass pictures of you and your new baby to friends and family, a photo that hides that Errol beating you and this time go be the last time he put he fucking hand on you because he think you don't know he sleeping with that nasty red-skin Jamaican bitch, and oh gosh you can't afford for this curry mutton to stain the top because you have to bring it back to Macy's tomorrow because God knows you can't afford it but you have to buy things and bring it back because Grenadians mouth too bad and they will say you seeing trouble especially as you see Melo wife on the Q train almost every day, and that's why you don't want them in you place at all or even know where you staying because they will badtalk you and tell people you living in a basement. Them bitches.

Yes, Flatbush has many corpses. They congregate to create another Caribbean, this time one purified by snow. They celebrate last suppers over jerk chicken, pelau and rice and peas. They have processions for their Via Dolorosa at Secrets or The Island where they genuflect to the gods of bacchanalia, confessing to sadness beyond their years in weekly vestments purchased from Strawberrys. The crosses they bear are sometimes too much to carry, and they often falter.

Yes, my friend’s mother died last week and she left many corpses behind.

Image from forgotten ny.com- all rights reserved.