During a recent lunch in Brazil I had a conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl about traveling to the United States. She’s worldly, smart, mature for her age, speaks a few languages, has travelled to many countries, yet this particular trip comes with intimidation—she will be the only English speaker in her group and is charged with helping them to pass through immigration. Even though the trip is months away, the potential for misunderstanding while facing a cruel immigration officer has already triggered anxiety.
Frontiers are liminal zones, thresholds, doorways, spots where you wait once you’ve left one country but haven’t quite reached the next country—and where you’re not, crucially, provided the rights that are guaranteed by either. I’ve seen angry and helpful border guards, just as I’ve seen indifferent and inquisitive border guards, though you never really know until the conversation begins. Land crossings do, I believe, come with more precariousness, especially when you cross in a remote spot, as opposed to the more perfunctory and usually quicker crossings that occur in an airport. If you’re in the countryside and the crossing involves a small and rusted hut, then you’re at the mercy of your guard’s recent coffee intake and particular whims. Having grown up a short drive from an international crossing, it is easy for me to remember that, for the most part, that whim decides the nature and length of your stay in limbo. And a border guard has the potential to express every possible temperament except one: rushed. So you will wait, comforted by neither the laws of the country you’re leaving nor the laws of the country you’re attempting to enter, yet you’re still responsible, in this case, for answering in English a series of questions about both the adults and children around you.
Now you could divide those events in life that arrive without warning with those that are visible on the horizon. The abrupt, unexpected argument doesn’t permit any preparation, while the difficult conversation that you’ve been obsessing about often arrives because it’s on the schedule. Childhood, it seems, is filled with those latter experiences—waiting to talk with the teacher after class, waiting to talk with the parent, waiting to talk with an enemy. All day long spent in rumination, submerged in the grandiose sensations that are intrinsic to life—swimming, really, in those sensations of dread. Agonizing, diagramming how the person that you’re soon to engage will respond, until your mind starts to overheat like a computer that’s running too many processes.
So I can certainly sympathize with her dilemma, even though she’s perfectly capable and prepared and has nothing to hide, as she’s responsible for a larger group and most likely has envisioned the questions countless times—Where was everyone born? Where are you going? What is the purpose? Where are you staying? When are you leaving? She’s crossed enough borders to know the general parameters. But the imagination is nothing if not a diabolical creative director. I wonder, in her mind, how the scene appears. What does the faceless border guard look like?
If you’re in a similar situation and attempting to strategize your approach, language is, of course, at the forefront. Unless you plan on smuggling—which requires an entirely different essay—all of your thoughts about crossing a frontier involve thoughts about language. What should you say? How should you enunciate your words? What words must you use? At the border, sure, it is more important that your papers are in order and that your bags only contain what’s permitted—but what you say and how you say it, your comportment, is the focus. For those who are able to shape clear and coherent sentences in the language of the country, for those who are practiced at looking into a listener’s eyes while speaking, there’s certainly an advantage. For the young Brazilian girl who will soon cross an American border, books are a treat, she can read in multiple languages, she has an expansive vocabulary, but can the right words, in the right moment, be found?
One dramatic change in my life has been the decision to relish these moments. It was an intellectual decision, consciously taken years ago, that has redounded to an emotional reaction. And it came long after I passed thirteen years old—so it would be unfair to compare my current temperament as an adult with how someone much younger would experience a situation. It also required a bit of work, some backtracking, and a few years worth of floundering, as I used to be more desirous of comfort, more of a perfectionist, less interested in the existential moments that make life so intriguing. In this young girl’s position, I would have planned my sentences, considered all alternatives, and taken my spot before the immigration booth as an actor, primed with all the right words—which, incidentally, I wouldn’t recommend as smart unless you happen to be an extremely proficient line reader. Somewhere along the way, however, I decided or perhaps learned that the most interesting moments in life occur amid uncertainty, or even in those existential moments when you stumble, when it is hard, when the words are unclear or wrong or awkward. In many ways I feel absolutely alive in those vertiginous moments: they last just an instant, hardly a breath, but they are the moments when nobody can predict what comes next.
Just this week, in fact, I was having what I’ll call a grave conversation when I said a few words that, well, weren’t ideal. As the words left my mouth and floated into the air I wanted to reach forward and grab them before they hit my conversation partner’s ears. Interestingly, perhaps, I noticed that I was aware of the calamity, of how my words would be received, before the words were even heard, and that moment triggered a surge of adrenaline, a lift of my pulse, and then, almost instantly, a smile: well, let’s see what happens now, spoke my next thought. This isn’t to diminish the seriousness of the moment, or to diminish my utterly disastrous moment of stupidity, but simply to express the tendency that I’ve tried to cultivate during these existential moments of life.
So even on the days when my own foolishness is the cause of strain, I attempt, as best as I can, to relish the moment, the moment when the muck and awkwardness and peculiarity of our strange existence seems most alive. It is easier because I do know that I’m always trying my best, however insufficient that best might appear. There’s a part of me, too, that likes a little awkwardness, the stutters and uncertainties that feel imperfect but that might be the most real. To be imperfect is to be human, and I prefer to embrace the messiness of life right as it arrives. If you can develop this habit, I strongly recommend it, as it will make the worst moments of your life much more bearable, although I wouldn’t expect it to be thrust into your mind at a young age while you stand before a border guard.
The American customs are the meanest!
At the lunch where this conversation took place, it was agreed, by a larger group, that these words were true. American border guards are the worst. Incapable of smiles. Predictably gruff. Habitually unwelcoming. And it is worth noticing that the accuracy of these opinions are inconsequential, as believing that they are accurate makes them automatically true. I couldn’t help but wonder—while listening to this group of seasoned travelers, the girl, her brother, their mother, laugh at the ridiculousness of American border guards—that this is both a fatuous and costly quality to broadcast to the world.
And this, too, is simply about language, communication, comportment, but rather than the language of the person who is attempting to cross a frontier, it is the language of the person who holds a stamp above a passport like a judge with a gavel. The clichés about how a frontier is like the entryway to a home, a handshake greeting, or the first impression that’s sure to linger, are tricky to avoid. What’s convenient about these clichés is also convenient about border crossings—there’s no cost to acting in a manner that’s correct. You don’t lose any time or incur any downside by giving a warm first impression, and you certainly accrue plenty of benefits, without even considering the ethical necessity of politeness; an environment where border guards treat arrivals with the same care doesn’t require any additional labor beyond a slight change in behavior and language, and the longterm benefit in goodwill—with tourists, with business travelers—almost certainly makes it productive. Even if you’re a cold and calculating nationalist, you could probably claim that a more receptive attitude would be more effective when it comes to preventing unwanted crossings and smuggled goods, but that doesn’t have to be true for it to be worthwhile.
And I did spend a short time wondering about this policy. Wondering about its needlessness. Wondering about what it would take to implement some commonsense and beneficial changes. A few smiles, a little less harshness, some basic decency. Something more akin to thanking a guest for bringing wine when they arrive at your home than insulting the quality of their wine—with wine, in this analogy, an example of business labor and tourist dollars. Yet it soon occurred to me that the American immigration system isn’t accidentally bureaucratic, having outgrown its budget and lost in a convoluted state. I realize that when I’ve seen border guards yell at large crowds like teenage lifeguards—Turn off your phones! Booth 15! Step behind the line!—that it isn’t actually a symptom of institutional rot, the institution hasn’t been corrupted, splintering into these perverse, ineffectual outcomes. That was the wrong way to view both what I’ve seen and the common stereotype. Because the language is too consistent. The behavior is too widespread. The decision on how to interact, the words that are used, the tone that people hear when they arrive—for the border guard, these interactions are in the planned, foreseen category of life conversations, with the sentences and language more meticulously prepared than you might at first assume. And once you consider the consistency of the results at crossing after crossing, at the truth that experience after experience matches the global reputation, you begin to realize that the decision to use language that’s stiff, callous, even cruel, is exactly the point.
"At the lunch where this conversation took place, it was agreed, by a larger group, that these words were true. American border guards are the worst."
This reminds me of when I had some issues at the London Gatwick airport, I basically didn't have the entry papers prepared, and a flustered border guard snapped, "How do you not know this, you're American, you have the most onerous border entry process in the world!" to which I smiled and said, "Well yeah, I'm American, so I don't really have to deal with it." I could tell that took him back just s little bit but anyway then we finished the paperwork and I passed through.
I hope the young lady has a positive experience on her trip. As for the border representatives, can’t say I’ve experienced them other than international airports, where I had no issues. Disappointing, though, if they are as you describe. I wonder what that is a reflection of? Hubris? Low quality candidates to hire? Fatigue? Institutional culture of negativity? It would be interesting to interview someone in the organization about this unfriendly demeanor and hear what they have to say.