Tell me Your Immigration Bureaucracy Stories
A support group for people who have to deal with bureaucrats
Bureaucracy, where common sense goes to die… slowly.
Yes, we need bureaucracy, but does it need to be so backward, time-consuming, and sometimes racist and classist?
Some bureaucratic systems work better than others, and I believe we can improve bureaucracy with a collection of stories.
I hope this post brings writers together and encourages people to mention one another when writing about bureaucracy and immigration.
For now, this is only for immigration and travel bureaucracy. I understand many of the environmental regulations and human rights laws are thanks to the bureaucratic process. And even though the process rarely seems fair and efficient, the hierarchies, division of labour, formalized rules, and maintenance of records aren’t intrinsic to bureaucratic flaws.
People often refer to Singapore as one of the best bureaucratic systems in the world. The government has prioritized efficiency, placed a strong emphasis on meritocracy and talent development, policies are carefully implemented reducing ambiguity and allowing for efficient resource allocation, embraced technology and innovation, and streamlined regulations for business registration, permits and licenses, and government services.
This doesn’t sound like the bureaucracy I experienced after immigrating to Belgium, Canada, and Spain. It isn’t the bureaucracy I’ve read and heard about from interviewing people from around the world and researching the topic.
However, I understand that bureaucracy doesn’t need to suck. And bureaucrats don’t need to be lazy and borderline sadistic demons feasting on tax money.
Stories act like the DNA of a culture, and we storytellers can function as CRISPR (Obviously, I’m not a geneticist). We can get ideas from countries such as Singapore, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, and Switzerland, all of which vary drastically in many cultural dimensions, but have relatively well-functioning bureaucratic systems.
We don’t need to change how time-flexible, homogenous, or hierarchical a culture is because an efficient bureaucratic system can function in various cultures. We just need to insert the right idea into the right mind or organization.
And if we don’t pull it off, well, this ongoing and growing collection of stories can act like a support group for all of us nomads, expats, immigrants and refugees. I’m also hoping we can laugh and work through the pain and frustrations caused by bureaucracy during travel.
Share your bureaucratic story in the comments and Notes.
I encourage including links to your articles (paid or free), writing some flash nonfiction in the comments and then cross-posting it to notes, tagging other travel writers and thinkers, and sharing tips with anyone who is struggling. If you’d like to add this to a group chat, Notes thread, or have any other ideas, I’m all ears.
Here are some fellow Substackers I recommend checking out to get the ball rolling.
- who writes gave me the motivation to get this started when he commented the following on God’s Paperwork:
… Reminded me of the time I almost got deported from Zambia because my work permit was stolen. I was about to leave anyway and only needed a particular piece of paper to leave the country. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me I was supposed to have a stamp in my passport as evidence of my work permit’s existence. The immigration official who gave me the work permit must have forgotten to do this so led to three days of sitting in the Department for Immigration and arguing with various officials before they finally let me leave!
Cosmographia seeks to map the myriad corners of our planet, not through geographic outlines, but via travelogue, history, and the arts.
Old white women escape the US for Portugal, hoping to travel and learn from another culture.
- and from sold their house in Seattle in 2017 to travel the world as “digital nomads.” Their articles and stories are full of travel tips and inspiration.
Our digital nomad experience has already been featured in other media, on CNN and CBS Sunday Morning, and in Forbes and the New York Times.
Lloyd from
was born in born in a small town in Virginia, USA, but now divides his time between The Netherlands and Salento Italy.The writing grove also offers creative workshops centred in southern Italy centred around local culture. You can learn more here.
At
you’ll find some of the wildest travel stories in Somalia, Russia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and more.
Want to read some of the oddest true stories ever? Want a bunch of good reasons to stay safely home when your friends take adventurecations in Mogadishu or Vladivostok? Want to laugh at some guy who is never far from catastrophe?
- from shows you authentic, local experiences through his writing and photography.
I will bring you stories and photos from parts of the world few visit, but plenty of people live in. From cities and neighborhoods tourists ignore.
- who writes has creds and experience to prove she knows what she’s writing about. You’ll find navigator profiles, recipes, packing tips, and writing connecting you to the travel experience.
I first decided to start my quarterly print magazine, Yolo Journal, because I’m passionate about photography, travel, and collecting great ideas, and a forever lover of the printed page.
At
‘s , you’ll find many travel stories and the best hospitality information available.
Where will your career take you? Mine has taken me from basement-to-boardroom. It has taken me to over 60 countries and introduced me to people and events far beyond my wildest wishes and dreams.
- ’s is full of essays about digital nomads, remote work, and borderless living. Razavi also leads the Plumia mission to build an internet country for digital nomads.
I’ve lived and worked in 50+ countries as a digital nomad, and I was named a Top Global Remote Work Influencer by Remote.com for two years in a row.
Of course, you can’t judge a bureaucratic system and immigration process if you don’t take the time to understand the psychology of people in different cultures, increase your cultural competence, and try to learn a new language.
At
, and explore the mind, culture, ecology, psychology and soul.I also recommend checking out
. is the founder and President of DFA Intercultural Global Solutions, a global consulting company focused on providing cultural information for businesses and organizations working abroad.And since a world without bureaucratic woes is my kind of Utopia, this list wouldn’t be complete without the
who writes essays thinking through better capitalism, democracy, technology, and humanity in the .I’m also looking for Newsletters that aren’t written in English, so we don’t get an anglocentric view on all these matters.
Check out the comments for some of the work written by the writers mentioned in this article and myself.
A riddle: What has four walls, can’t move, but be in three different countries?
A house in Chernivtsi.
Half of my partner’s family is from Chernivtsi. Her grandmother’s home was part of Romania, The Soviet Union, and Ukraine, which gave her the right to request Romanian citizenship. Even though there is crippling racism towards Romanians in Spain and throughout Europe, it was still a better option for my partner to try and obtain her Romanian passport than to live with her Ukrainian one.
All she had to do was: Learn Romanian, pay for four lawyers (two from Romania, one from Ukraine, and one from Ukraine who became Romanian), fly to Bucharest and the consulate in Ukraine two times, and spend five years emailing back and forth with Romanian bureaucrats in Spain.
The original checklist included an official translation of her birth certificate, Spanish residency, and an invitation letter for the Romanian oath. However, they didn’t like the official translation (exact reasons still unknown), and by the time they told her they didn’t like the translation, several months had passed, and her residency card had expired. So, she had to start the whole process over again. But this was nothing compared to her mother, who, after going through a similar process, had her citizenship certificate ripped in front of her and everyone else there to give their oath. It turned out the bureaucrat didn’t find her dialect Romanian enough.
By dating a Ukrainian, I saw how systemic racism not only oppresses people of colour but those born in the “wrong” country as well. As a Ukrainian without a solid income, she’s been living a bureaucratic nightmare for the past five years. The Spanish funcionario’s work schedule—or lack of one—definitely played a role, but not as much as her birthplace... Continue reading https://open.substack.com/pub/bornwithoutborders/p/a-country-funded-by-an-insurance?r=1qf7m9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks Nolan, you made me famousish. And here, after all these years of thinking it was just me pushing my cart sideways through life and trying to hold two watermelons in one hand (thanks to my staff in Baku for those two descriptions of our in-house KGB informer), you are telling me the Vogons really did takeover earth’s bureaucracies?
Over at Switter’s World, I did a three part series on a few of the times I innocently, mostly, became an illegal immigrant. I also describe the time at Schipol airport when I decided to sit until the queue at departure gate security cleared. When I finally presented myself, an official asked why I was the last person in line. “Because it is the nature of a queue to have a beginning and end. I am that end person in the queue,” and thus began a Kafkaesque discussion of geometry that expanded to include a suspicious review of my itinerary to Amsterdam via Khartoum>Cairo>Damascus>Larnica. Why should that arouse any suspicion? They finally eased up when I lied and told them my mother-in-law chose my itinerary. I assumed that their sympathy arose out of personal experience. I don’t know; are Dutch mothers-in-law that bad? I did make my flight, but was existentially befuddled.
Or the Plumtree border crossing from Zimbabwe to Botswana where a banner behind the immigration counter advised “Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river.” Good advice, and free.
Once, after head-wagging assurances from a Syrian embassy official in some God-forsaken backwater that yes, it was indeed possible to get a visa at the Damascus airport, when I arrived at the Damascus airport, I was told I could only get a visa in town at immigration headquarters, but since I didn’t have a visa, I couldn’t get a visa. Everyone was surprisingly sympathetic and one kindhearted immigration officer said he would secure my visa for me, so off he went with my passport. Apparently there is a predictable lull in afternoon flights, so the immigration guys plopped themselves down on benches for naps and invited me to join them. When the kindhearted guy arrived three or four hours later, I felt unexpectedly refreshed and relaxed. For some reason, the universe almost always throws in with me.
I could go on, but it’s best not to get me started. I do have one final pro tip: if you need to get through Managua quickly, slip in behind a presidente motorcade. I can’t guarantee it will always work, but it did that one time.