There are immigrants and immigrants

It’s curious being an immigrant again.

Queuing to get into Valencia

I mean, it’s not the first time. That’s not counting my childhood in Rome, where I wasn’t an immigrant but an expat. If you don’t think that’s an important distinction, think again. Expats are people who never really belong. They’re usually in the country for a relatively short time, maybe on a limited contract, often with an embassy or a research institution or some kind of international organisation.

They tend to congregate with others of their kind, talking their own language, and have the sense that they’ll be gone within a while anyway, once their tour of duty is up. They tend to talk about the local people with a definite article, as in “the Italians do such-and-such”, where such-and-such is usually something that the person talking about it doesn’t like much.

The first time I was a real immigrant was when I moved to France in the late nineties. I was on a French contract with a company incorporated in French law. In fact, when it all fell through, it was great to have French law to fall back on with its generous approach to unemployment benefit. A lot more generous than, say, Britain’s. You can actually live on French unemployment pay.

Still. France was a bit special. As the husband of a Frenchwoman, I had a right to French nationality. Once I’d started work again, I set about securing it as quickly as I could. When it came through, I wasn’t an immigrant any more, but in my home country. My second home country, indeed, but a home country nonetheless.

But then we moved just across the border – a short car drive from the superb eastern French city of Strasbourg – into Germany. There we were truly immigrants once more, and it was fun. Discovering how things were done. Struggling, in my case (Danielle is a fluent German speaker), with a different language. Learning to enjoy different foods and pastimes. A great experience.

And now we’ve started all over again. Immigrants to Spain. Without Spanish citizenship or any right to claim it. Truly foreigners making a new home for ourselves in a different country.

It’s proving just as enjoyable as Germany. It helps, I suspect, that though our Spanish is execrable, we let ourselves go and speak it anyway. Far from reacting with horror at the way we’re massacring their language, they seem pleased, relieved even at not having to struggle with English to communicate with us.

So they just talk Spanish at us and, if we only understand two words in three, it doesn’t matter because they’re more than happy to explain what they meant. Making friends has proved surprisingly easy and, even among those who haven’t become friends, we’ve found people gratifyingly friendly.

There have naturally been a few problems. Civil servants tend to be a pain. Some of them take a perverse delight in telling you that you haven’t got the right document and need to come back in six weeks’ time when you’ve got it. However, in some cases we’ve found that even those can become quite pleasant if we persevere, trying to talk Spanish, until smiles eventually replace the frowns and rudeness.

We’ve also discovered that there’s no point thinking you can do anything in a single meeting. It will always take two or even three. The first may be where they tell you’ve gone to the wrong place. But even if that isn’t the case, it’s where they tell you that you don’t have the right documents. Generally, though, when you get there for the final meeting, having booked the appointment correctly, with the right papers, it all goes smoothly and even cordially

Nor is it only in the public sector that it all takes so long. Any big institution seems hopelessly sclerotic with bureaucracy. The banks, for instance, as well as ministries or local councils. Most organisations here have websites these days, and online procedures for doing administrative jobs. But again and again, you get to the final stage, when you’ve filled in page after page of information and uploaded half a dozen scanned documents, and you press the ‘Submit’ button, only to get an error message that tells you helpfully that ‘there is an error with your application’.

The only solution seems to be to go to the place in person, because they certainly don’t answer emails or return calls in response to voicemail. That’s what I generally do these days, without even attempting the online route. It may take a little longer but, in the end, you get smiles and your case dealt with – even the people in the bank are charming if you go and see them yourself – and that was the aim of the exercise, wasn’t it?

So we’re enjoying our status as immigrants.

Still, I know we’re immigrants who get an easy ride. We’re not Muslim or dark in skin colour. We’re not the ones who get told to go back home. I can’t begin to compare my achievements with those of Ilhan Omar, who has risen from refugee roots to become a US Congresswoman. That only makes it all the more shocking that she has been the target of racist attacks from her president.

And think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps one of the most impressive performers in the US House of Representatives, agree with her or not, also called on to go back home – though she isn’t an immigrant at all, but US born and bred.

The 'squad' of awkward women of colour in Congress, attacked by Trump
Ilhan Omar is speaking. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is next to her in black

No. There are immigrants and immigrants. Some are treated gently. Others are the butts of aggression from people who draw encouragement from such as Trump. They face attack even if they are merely descended from immigrants (and how many of us aren’t?) and only distinguished by the colour of their skin or their faith.

We’ve seen that there can be joy in being an immigrant. Oh, how I wish we lived in a world where that was true for all of us.