Saturday 2 May 2015

Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

Over Easter I applied for a new British passport. As I left the post office I suddenly realised that it had been almost ten years to the day when I had become a British national. As rites of passage go this passport renovation felt like one of the more important ones of my adult life.


My very own rite of passage

However my path into British citizenship started five years before 2005. In May 2000 I cast my vote in the London mayoral race and a year later I did the same in the country’s general election. I won’t tell you which party made me mark my ballot paper with an X (a cursory glance through my blog will give you the answer) but what I can assure you is that this simple act of electoral democracy had deep, philosophical repercussions on me.

I have written before about my experience as an immigrant in the UK but the recent combination of passport renewal and a looming general election on 7th May have made me nostalgic somewhat. I have been reflecting on the hard-to-fathom euphoria I saw in April 1997 when I first visited Britain. Strangers talking to each other on the tube, on buses, in parks and other public spaces about Blair's New Labour vs John Major's Tories. A country, which according to my lectures at uni still had the “stiff upper lip” label attached to it, revealed a side of itself so surprising that, when I spoke about this phenomenon with my Cuban friends back in Havana, it left puzzled looks on their faces.

An immigrant’s life is a life of post-it notes. Both for those who stayed behind and for the friendships you form in your host nation. In my case these post-it notes have carried incomplete snippets of information. People here know that my mother and father still live in Cuba. They might know their professions. They might even know that I have a cousin who is more like a sister to me, the sister I never had. But they do not know about my best friend and his late mother, his late mother who was a great woman and who always had a kind word for me, for my children and my wife. My friends here might not know that one of the reasons why I became an English teacher was to avoid the draft at seventeen and thus the real danger of being shipped to Angola where the war was still raging on during my college years and where many of my young peers were getting killed. Likewise, the people I left behind in Havana might not know that I am about to take part in a life-changing event in a few days. They might think that all elections are the same and indeed they are in my country of birth. After all, I always knew who was going to be in power when I lived there. Forever and ever and ever and ever. But, right now, even allowing for apathy and for dodgy politicians and for posturing and mud-throwing and all the other inconveniences, I have hope. That, too, is part of my citizenship rite of passage. It was fifteen years ago in 2000 and it continues today.

There is gain and there is loss in an immigrant’s decision to up sticks and relocate.  I have discussed here before the challenge of moving to a country in which one has no past, only a future but still working on the present. The past, the reference-filled past, is a chimera for the immigrant. It is unattainable even with post-it notes. Yes, I can talk about Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses because I have seen these two sit-coms. But I was not here when they were first broadcast. An immigrant lives a second-hand-experience life whilst forging a first-one.

Immigrants are all different, which is the same as saying there are no bad or good immigrants, just immigrants. When politicians, like Nigel Farage, lay into us, they lay into what they see as a homogeneous, too-hard-to-parse group whose nuances escape the narrow confines of race, origin and language, to mention but three elements that define us. The back-of-the-lorry immigrant has post-it notes that might be almost unintelligible. They would be, wouldn't they, if they escaped war and poverty, if they saw their children perish in the Mediterranean, if they themselves were trafficked or if they were labelled "cockroaches" by some half-brained, faux-columnist in a tabloid newspaper? The visa-carrying immigrant coming out of the airport pushing their trolley with their luggage on, legitimate status validated by a stamp on arrival, might have pockets stuffed with post-in notes neatly typed up. But in both cases the post-it notes, like mine, will be incomplete. Most of us also share another common feature: after a while the word "home" denotes both the country we left behind and the one in which we live now. Try to figure that one out, reader!

I fell in love with a British woman and here I am. On 7th May I will cast my vote and at some point in the next few days or weeks my new passport will be pushed through the letterbox. Any sense of loss that I have felt so far (and there has been some) has been offset by a life in which I have been able to scribble, sometimes regularly and some other times less so, my own, incomplete, bullet-pointed, post-in notes. It is part of my rite of passage. It is part of being an immigrant.



© 2015

Next Post: “Urban Dictionary”, to be published on Wednesday 6th May at 11:59pm (GMT)

21 comments:

  1. It must be sad in many ways to leave your home country behind but love can take us anywhere in the world, can't it? I could feel the wistful and mixed emotions in your words, reading this post. It's hard to say goodbye to people and things we love, but sometimes it's the best choice overall. And life IS all about choices and new roads, isn't it?

    Have a wonderful weekend, G

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  2. I live in a country where most of us, and certainly those in power, are immigrants. Something I wish more of us were aware of. In my own family I am the first to be born here. So my roots are here - and elsewhere. I too have a lot of post-it notes. And gaps.

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  3. I have never relocated to another city or country, but I know people who have (from other countries to here in Canada), and they are very happy.

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  4. You never know where love will take you. know many who immigrated here. They seem happy at least

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  5. Even though individual freedoms are diminishing in the United States, I am not aware of any other nation which has them to the degree found here. Personal liberty as it exists here is not to be found even in other Western democracies and, for that reason, I could never become a citizen of another country. I can live in other nations for months or even for a few years, but not permanently.

    I have often thought in context of my ancestors who left Europe never to return to "home" and to family left behind. Reading about your experience has been interesting and enjoyable, CiL.

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  6. I hope you feel welcome here. As one who travels I share a nanodrop of your feelings about what you mean by 'home' - but I have met with kindness all over the world, even when I only have a small room in a hostel to go back to. It troubles me that those who come to this country in need of safety or asylum are met with the sort of rhetoric that makes me ashamed to live alongside some people.

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  7. Con el tiempo te vas a sentir mas británico que cubano, pero no obstante tus raíces te atan siempre al país de origen y allí tus sueños van a volver.
    Un abrazo.

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  8. I truly hope you feel welcome here, too. This current climate makes me feel uneasy, to put it mildly. Even being British myself, travelling in various parts of the UK makes me feel noticeably unwelcome. One June day last year, while touring Northumbria, I received the comment "Southern trash! Go back to where you came from!". And this is by no means an isolated incident.
    So if this is how I am treated, then I dread to think how awful it must be for legal immigrants.
    Oh if only we could all begin to see others as just "people", rather than judging them by their place of origin, colour or religion...then maybe, just maybe...we could create a better world for our children and grandchildren...

    Hope your Sunday is a good one.:))

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  9. On the whole the English welcome immigrants but, and this is understandable, we only have so much room for all these people. That's why we hear grumblings around us, even though our hearts are filled with sadness about the reason they want to leave their own shores. I am glad you fell in love with an English woman ... we're the best, after all .... smiling now :O)

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  10. I loved reading all about your take as a person in a new country, I love visiting new places and sometimes feel unwelcome some places.

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  11. Many thanks for your kind comments. If there is one thing I feel I have in common with Brits - and other fellow immigrants - is that we just "get on with it". :-)

    Greetings from London.

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  12. Interesting post. I loved in Malawi for two years, but always knew it was only a temporary situation and I would return to the UK.

    I think the coming election is going to be a very interesting one with likely some chaotic repercussions

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  13. Your posts are always interesting and this one is no exception. I have tried to think and put myself in the shoes of an immigrant. Thanks for taking us there.

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  14. A thought provoking and very interesting post. The idea of post-it notes is fascinating, I shall be thinking about that.

    I have often felt I would not be happy as an immigrant - but then I have always been happy to be English. I am finding the current election weird and unpleasant - the crazy offer of a referendum on Europe is probably what worries me most. I do feel that if the government can't manage to deal with the other people in Europe they are hardly likely to be able to deal with wars and terrorists.

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  15. an issue I only partly know. I have family that are immigrants but I´m not :)

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  16. I have a lot of respect for people who have the courage to be an immigrant. To leave all that is familiar and known to venture into the unknown to start all over again takes a huge leap of faith.

    One thing surprised me. You were able to vote before you became a citizen? Interesting. You... and other immigrants there... probably appreciate the freedom of voting more than those who were "born to it."

    Cheers!

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  17. I am the child of immigrants to the U.S., one from Eastern Europe and one from Germany. My parents came here at the tail end of WW II and made a good life here for themselves and their children because they worked hard, never accepted handouts, played by the rules, and assimilated into American society. Perhaps there is a problem of perception on both sides. Most immigrants want (understandably) to have a safe place to work, worship (or not), and perhaps raise a family. Most societies that accept them wouldn't deny them those opportunities as long as their jobs, religion, or families aren't being threatened by a sudden flood of immigrants, many of whom don't share the same values or ethics and quite possibly would never want to share them. I think ultimately both sides (immigrants and citizens of host countries) want to be treated with respect, but it must be mutual. There must be give and take on both sides. I appreciate your gentle, respectful approach to this subject, ACIL, and for sharing your firsthand experience as an immigrant.

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  18. I am the child of immigrants to the U.S., one from Eastern Europe and one from Germany. My parents came here at the tail end of WW II and made a good life here for themselves and their children because they worked hard, never accepted handouts, played by the rules, and assimilated into American society. Perhaps there is a problem of perception on both sides. Most immigrants want (understandably) to have a safe place to work, worship (or not), and perhaps raise a family. Most societies that accept them wouldn't deny them those opportunities as long as their jobs, religion, or families aren't being threatened by a sudden flood of immigrants, many of whom don't share the same values or ethics and quite possibly would never want to share them. I think ultimately both sides (immigrants and citizens of host countries) want to be treated with respect, but it must be mutual. There must be give and take on both sides. I appreciate your gentle, respectful approach to this subject, ACIL, and for sharing your firsthand experience as an immigrant.

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  19. oh my goodness don't tell me I've lost my comment again, I said, in the order of thank you Cubano, you write eloquently, aptly, beautifully, and that they say home is where your heart is, I added in my case, my heart is not at my home, but then my children are and they are my sweethearts

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  20. This a fabulous description of the immigrant experience. My grandparents came to the US from Italy in the early part of the 20th Century. I cannot imagine what that was like. My grandfather made shoes by hand in Italy, but when he came to the States, he could only get work as a shoe repairman because shoes were being mass-produced. My aunt tells me that my grandmother never wanted to move to America and missed Italy very much. Plane travel was virtually unheard of back then, so they had to live on letters from home and memories. "Home" must have meant two different places to them as well.

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  21. Thought this was a great post! I've lived abroad several times and considered moving permanently, but always made the decision to go back home. I also teach English to international students, so I see people changing their lives, identities all the time every day.

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