13 June 2007
Money Day
After all the miles, yesterday was the Money Day. I was in my suit, and prepared to go to work. That was going to be a bit of a trick, since I have no map, except for the one I was able to conjure up on the computer, and though I dutifully copied down the direction, I had no particular confidence that I could execute them.
This involved rush hour, a rental car, and the Wrong Side of the road, where every instinct you have is wrong, and everything natural must be examined.
Australia is a great country, filled with great people. The history of Great Britain’s white colonies- not my term, and of which I must include the Good Ole United States- is one of the remarkable stories in the history of human migration. It is on the verge of turning into something else, and the people in charge understandably want to manage it.
In the synthesis of these societies will come vibrancy from plurality, if they are not overwhelmed. Even Rome managed to assimilate for centuries, bringing the barbarians within the tent.
This is not a treatise on the end of empires. It is about a consulting job to help modernize and streamline immigration procedures. It is about the reliability of the Visa system, and the confidence that the people who are admitted are actually the people you think they are.
It is a tough problem, though the events of the day and the task at hand force me to confront the end of one, against the backdrop of two others in uneasy rise and decline. I am here to be pragmatic about how to deal with now, since what is to come will not happen in my life, at any rate, or will coincide with the end of it.
I managed to find the Ministry out in Bellconnen, one of the suburbs of the capital. Who would have guessed that there was a “Chan” Street immediately adjacent to “Chandler?”
Certainly not a bureaucrat on foot. The commute is something over eight kilometers. Too far to walk, no convenient cab service on the distant end, and that leaves me with the bus or a rental car as an option.
I was thinking about the Kennedy Brothers as I stood with my briefcase in the chill of the morning, wondering which of the anonymous buildings might be the Ministry I sought. I wish they had not been so instrumental in changing the American immigration laws, back in the day, and that the only remaining one is still blathering on, not acknowledging the fundamental change the opening of the golden door has wrought.
It does not appear that we will not overhaul the law this year, nor any time soon. Presidential politics will overcome any move next year, and so we are stuck with the broken system and the porous borders and twenty million illegal residents.
The European English-speaking component of North America now is just a plurality, first among the minorities. Canada has found strength and weakness in diversity. America is becoming a bi-lingual nation. The Children of Britain’s most loyal immigrants are bombing its trains. Australia and New Zealand, island states in the far southern ocean, look to the north and see billions of people not at all like themselves.
I was standing in the lobby of the Ministry at precisely the right time. My contact found me through the picture I had posted on the company web page, and I entered into a series of meetings with the right people. Security first, of course, since I could be permitted access only under constant escort until all the right papers had been signed.
That is a little embarrassing, like having to raise your hand in elementary school to be permitted to go to the lavatory. I resigned myself to a day of dull discomfort, and took extensive notes.
The Dalai Lama was in Canberra, starting his schedule just about the same time. All his papers were in order. He was playing the diplomatic game to tease the Chinese conquerors of his nation, and enlist the support of the increasingly irresolute West. He does not have much choice, and the Australian government had to squirm a bit at the stern line from the Chinese embassy about the consequences of meeting Prime Minister Howard.
It was easier for the opposition leader, but in the end they both met with the cheery Tibetan, and the Chinese were predictably stern in their press release. Their spokesman did not deign to speak English. It was something to think about.
Starting with the US, and including Britain itself, all of them have followed a welcoming policy toward immigrants. Following the catastrophe of World War One, the Empire was finished. There was enough vitality and grit for the English-speaking peoples to prevail against global fascism, but the life blood of the Mother of Empires had been spent on the battlefield of the Somme, and thereafter it was the bitter realization that the Americans, who paid so little in blood, had passed Britain by on the way to global dominion.
The dissolution of the Empire, starting with the liberation of the jewel in the Diadem in 1948, was a race to divest the colonies, convert to the hopeful model of Commonwealth, and be done with it.
Still, the special relationship between the white colonies continues. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States have generally stood together, and still do.
With the exception of plucky little New Zealand, whose Kiwis have always gone their own way. They told the Americans and their nuclear weapons to pound sand, though they continued to support the same US Navy whose ships it scorned, and its successors, with a staging base for exploration in the Antarctic.
The Australians and the Americans have had a special relationship that rose with the fall of Singapore, and the end of the Empire in the east.
That is the long and the short of it, as best I can tell, and it is why I was seated in my little cubical at the Ministry, with unlimited internet access. One more stamp from the Visa people, whose offices are conveniently located elsewhere, and I would be permitted to go to the restroom all by myself.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com