The Yearly Ritual

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
Jack Parr

Here I am, with my immigration form,
It’s big enough to keep me warm when a cold wind’s blowing.
Graham Nash, “Immigration Man”

Once a year, ever since we moved to Panamá, nearly five years ago, my wife and I embark on a short journey to the Bella Vista sector of the capital to stand before the metal grate doors of the neo-art-deco building that once housed the regional offices of the Nestle Corporation, and today is Panamá’s Department of Immigration.

This is a ritual that makes most American ex-pats cringe. Latin American bureaucracies can be—even compared to those of the United States—nightmarish labyrinths of inefficiency where documents easily are lost and where, year after year, a person is required to submit, time and time again, notarized proof of one’s existence and, what’s more, the acceptable form of proof can change from one week to the next.

Invariably, my wife and I also have to submit a new set of mug shots, even though our appearances have changed little over the past twelve months. (By now, Panamá’s Department of Immigration has more photographs of me than my own mother; and I cannot help but imagine that my face is tacked onto a board in a smoke-filled room where Immigration officials play darts during their breaks.)

Fortunately, my wife and I always have the expert guidance of our immigration attorney, a service far more affordable in Panamá than in the States. For the past three years, we’ve hired the same hardworking young man who navigates the confounding maze in our stead; otherwise, we’d be trapped like ghosts in the neo-art-deco building for weeks, trying to get a straight answer with regard to which would be the next step.

Our attorney takes care of everything—at last calling us when it's time to show up to sign the necessary paperwork and have our pictures taken for the Resident photo identification (the equivalent of a U.S. green card) that proves that we’re legal residents of Panamá for yet another year.

On each visit to Immigration we can count on spending a couple of hours in a large hall, sitting alongside dozens of other foreigners who also make Panamá their home. We arrive early, before Immigration opens (although the offices open at 7:30, for some strange reason, beyond my comprehension, applicants prefer to arrive between 9 and 10, which guarantees that they’ll spend the entire day waiting for their turn), and we wait patiently in the company of our attorney for our names to be called.

Admittedly, the process is tedious—but a good book and an Ipod helps time move swiftly.

And in spite of circumstances that can be highly exasperating, my wife and I accept this yearly ritual as part of the price we must pay for choosing to live in a country other than our own. And it’s a small price because my wife and I love that we are free to make Panamá our home. We’ve come to treasure this land and its people as if they were our own.

That’s why, when our names are finally called, and the fellow behind the camera asks me to I stare at the red dot near the lens of the Polaroid ID Machine, in the resulting picture, I’m always wearing a big smile.