France and China...who'd'a thunk?

Yup, here comes another pseudo-theory about French people. This one was inspired by discussions around Harvard admissions: very few French students are accepted to Harvard, closely related to the education system where a student’s direction in life is decided very early and the lack of an extracurricular culture. For the same reasons, it is difficult for Chinese students to be accepted to Harvard: schools don’t really have extra-curriculars, and students specialize before they take the big college entrance exam. Are they not ready for a liberal arts education at a large research institution? The numbers coming from each country’s local high schools (as opposed to international schools) are in the single digits every year.

Over the course of my last few months here, I’ve also sensed similar attitudes towards religion and aristocracy in France and China, linked to a general rejection of tradition (or at least old tradition). It was in Britain that I really realized how differently France treats its history: in a country that still has a queen and royal army, aristocracy and ties to the Church of England are integral parts of the culture that you can’t miss. On the other hand, France is a country whose current government stems from a revolution where nobles (and many others) were beheaded by mobs, and who is threatened by the public and religiously symbolic nature of head scarves.

A professor even made the comparison that France is to Britain what China is to Japan. (And, really, you should click on those links.) Granted, France and China have very different histories and cultures. For example, the nature of religion in China is influenced by laws that restrict the practice of religion to be very open, even as things are somewhat changing, not the dogma of the Catholic Church over the State. But I do see similarities in the lack of religiosity and suspicion (?) of religion. The Cultural Revolution and the French Revolution have their parallels, not to mention the relationship between socialism and communism. In addition, the modern histories of France and China have created a culture of defeat: Americans love to make jokes about how the French always lose, and the Chinese mentality is also influenced by the memory of series of crushing defeats. For related reasons, you see both countries having a sort of identity crisis, where you have rejected much of old without creating much of the new for yourself, though that’s happening everywhere these days.

I’m afraid I’ve treated a very serious subject very lightly, since this could easily become a thesis, but there you go. Another pseudo-theory, do what you will with it. One of these days I may blog about my actual research topic!

I am an immigrant worker

I feel like more of an immigrant here in Paris than I ever was in America. Going to class, looking for a job, in daily interactions, I’m acutely aware of how competent I am in English. (Have you ever used a cappuccino machine before? No, only simple coffee machines, but I’m sure I could learn. I’m a hard worker. Non, jamais.)

Despite feeling in over my head applying to a job where I would speak French all the time (Why would they want to hire me??), I neglect to realize how many are forced to do that all over the world. So I stopped worrying about applying to French jobs, even though it still surprised me that French restaurants would consider me at all. That’s when I realized I had passed from tourist to immigrant.

Yet I’m still a First World immigrant—I have English to revert to (and use as an asset) when French does not work, an international language that most speak at least a little of. People will always see me, an American in Paris, as more of a tourist than an immigrant. Interesting how the term “expat” itself tends to refer to a certain class of immigrants.

And I’m of course also just not an immigrant. A boy I babysit for actually told me I was French, since he didn’t understand I was leaving soon to return to the US. Having tried to not be a bum on and off for a month now, I have resigned myself to retiring back into my bubble of expat privilege, though the application process was an eye-opening experience.

Moral of the story is…don’t be mean to immigrants.

Word.

Bartending in Paris (aka the first blog about Paris)

…is not so easy. Not that I can say that I’ve tried too hard. After hearing from a friend that bartending at an expat hangout was a relatively ideal job for an Anglophone student in Paris, I started out asking at two bars near me if they were hiring, one of which had actually advertised in the expat magazine Fusac. Two weeks more of continuing to sit around feeling sorry for my broke self, I found out I didn’t get the job.

That somewhat propelled me to launch Phase Two (or, really, Serious Phase One) of the job search. Fortunately this time I had recommendations from a friend of trendy bars in Paris that tended to hire Americans. Trying to get a job at one of them took a hilarious three hours of my life today. I started out at one, which got me an interview at another member of the chain, where I had to wait an hour for the boss to arrive. At least I got to explore the République neighborhood a little?

Casual, unacademic cultural comparison time:

1. General Trends. French are infamous for bad (or complete lack of) customer service. America, on the other hand, is based on a service economy, where we have Q&A for shampoo, IBM will replace defective batteries free of charge, and clothing can be returned fairly easily. Mentalities regarding who owes who are very different.

2. Specific Manifestation of a Social Phenomenon. Trying to work in French and expat establishments has showed me a little bit of what different cultures expect from their servers. Experience seems to matter more than personality in French establishments—they don’t need you to chat it up with all the customers, make friends with regulars, etc. One French café even warned me that waitressing would be more difficult in France because you’re assigned to 20 tables, not five like in the US (supposedly).

We’ll see if this point of view changes, especially because interacting with customers is the main reason I enjoy waitressing. If I do end up getting a job, they’ll want 28 hours a week from me…a good chunk of my time I’m not sure I’m ready for, but the 200 – 300 euros a week that I can make is certainly very tempting. (Especially with the depressing exchange rate!) For the next few days at least, I’m back to sitting on my butt feeling sorry about how much money I don’t have.

Maybe I should just go babysit Parisian kids.

PS Happy birthday to me. :)

Women of the civil rights movement

A very thoughtful oped on the role of women during the Civil Rights Movement was published in the New York Times today, written by Gail Collins. Take a look.

“We’ve learned, with some pain, to celebrate all our national heroes through clear eyes, as people whose great hearts and minds still did not take the dream of freedom and equality past their own immediate cause.”

Lost religion

I’ve visited several temples in China in the last couple of years, and it has always been an uncomfortable experience. It doesn’t seem right that they charge entrance fees, tourists outnumber practitioners 10 to 1, and local people only seem to visit when they are praying for a good test score. Temples seem to be historical artifacts more than they are religious centers.

Much of what is going is probably due to China’s recent history. Though no longer to be abolished, religion is still tightly controlled in China, so there are few practitioners. If temples didn’t charge entrance fees, donations would not be enough to support them. The current culture in China is too economically competitive to foster a culture of charity, as prosperity is still a new concept that only members of the youngest generation are used to.

People find China fascinating for many different reasons. For me, it is observing the phenomena today that play out like social experiments no one would ever dare implement: What happens when a country is so overpopulated that it limits the number of children per family? What happens when you try to erase your entire history, then try to go back and claim it? And, the principal question here, What happens when you deprive an entire country of religion? If you look at a religious map of the world, China is a big black hole. Though one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, it is still searching for an identity.

It was during my trip to Korea that I realized that religion may not have been erased from just recent memory, but from China’s entire history. Religious symbols can be seen on old Korean buildings and artifacts, a Korean folk museum’s food section displayed Buddhist food, casual signs of a religious people that I never remember seeing in China. It is as if rulers were not religious, or that religion wasn’t a central force in their lives. Does China have such a different history, or has history been rewritten? It may be the former, but I never thought to even ask this question before, even as the CCP still controls freedom of information in China.

At least in terms of temples, going to Korea helped me resolve some of these feelings. Most of the population is religious (mostly Christian and Buddhist), and temples offer religious services on a regular basis, since they actually have congregations. Jogyesa was a bustling center when I visited. Stores sell Buddhist items as more than souvenirs, including jewelry with religious symbolism. Funny how much I didn’t notice when I was used to religion in modern China. I wonder what it’s like to grow up in an “atheist” nation your entire life?

A slow socialization

Heels. Check.
Pierced ear(s). Check.
Makeup. Check.

I think I’m becoming a woman. At least, what our society has defined to be a woman.

Ew.

Society has finally gotten to me. After 19 years of bombardment from advertisements, movies, books, toys, authority figures, aka everything I’ve had contact with, I have given in to society’s demands of anyone with an XX chromosome.

Am I to enjoy this new-found “femininity”? Modern feminists certainly seem to think it’s ok. It’s all about choice now—gender equality means that women can choose to be “girly” or butch, stay home or have a job, not that they have to be one way or the other. After all, that uniformity is what the patriarchy has forced upon women, etc., etc., and it’s only divisive for women to criticize each other, e.g. deciding that certain women or certain clothing deserve the label “slut.” That logic has been applied to what we may call traditionally feminine behavior.

Too bad I’m of the old-school, bra-burning, “down with the patriarchy” variety. I’m stuck with this “I have given in” kind of guilt. All I can do is hold on to the fact that I have never gotten a manicure, never brush my hair, have no desire to go to spas, refuse to change my physical appearance for anyone but myself, and, more substantively, try to force myself into traditionally male realms. Is that denial, stubbornness, or actual resistance? I don’t think I want to know.

Is socialization inevitable? Maybe it is in the professional sphere, where traditional gender roles are felt very acutely. Just look at business attire for men and women. It was cute for me to wear a tie in high school debate, but now that would be butch. Anytime outside of formal events, anyone can just wear jeans and a t-shirt without the same problems, but traditional gender roles are still stubbornly preserved in the formal sphere.

Of course, I’ve been talking about very shallow differences in socialized roles that still exist. It’s a big leap that I even have a job, am involved in politics, am not married off yet, have citizenship, am allowed to immigrate, and even own property at all. Thank you, patriarchy.

A Colorblind Constitution?

“What appalls me is the premature, wishful thinking that posits the notion of colorblind. Because it’s not only a lie, it’s a willed ignorance.” --Eric Wideman

That basically sums up how I feel about the Supreme Court’s recent decision against race-conscious programs in Seattle and Louisville. Justice Roberts said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Yes and no. The majority opinion’s idea of ending “discriminating on the basis of race” seems more like ignoring discrimination than stopping any sort of injustice. And that won’t make racism go away.

Our neighborhoods are segregated as a result of centuries of complicated history involving slavery, racism, Jim Crow and other racist laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, voting rights violations, etc., including resegregation today. As someone who has seen the successes (and frustrations) of the METCO program in Boston, I believe that schools must continue with desegregation efforts. It’s one of the few ways we can affect people early enough in their lives to make a difference in life achievement.

Seattle and Louisville schools were “limiting transfers on the basis of race or using race as a “tiebreaker” for admission to particular schools.” While the decision applies to specific integration programs that were particularly problematic, the wider implications are disturbing. What speaks volumes to me is Justice Kennedy’s criticism of the “all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account.”

Again I return to the idea of a willed ignorance. There is an attitude that race is not supposed to matter in any broad number of situations, in particular when the government is involved. It’s a slippery slope from this decision to challenging conscious efforts to diversify the face of government. What do we make of college admissions that take into account all sorts of life factors, including race? (That’s already been under plenty of fire.) Or even associations like the Congressional Black Caucus?

Because race is a very real social division, we must treat it as such. Ignoring racism does not make anyone’s life better off. While legal decisions are supposed to be very technical, focused on interpretation of law more than promoting certain values, the way we understand race profoundly impacts our conception of what is rational or constitutional in situations like these. Justices fighting for the principles set forth in Brown v. Board of Education are coming to different conclusions with equal conviction.

Also remember that, at the end of the day, we’re talking about kindergarteners.

It's only getting worse

Recent news:
US Citizen Illegally Deported from Jail Is Missing in Mexico
Database Is Tool in Deporting Fugitives
Raids in New Haven
Hajbeh celebrates freedom after 4 years of immigration detention
Paris Hilton Moved Back to Original Jail

I don’t want to say that undocumented immigrants should not be deported (under current law). Enforcement of our laws a basic necessity that allows our country to be as safe and prosperous as it is today. But when raids do not happen until now, as a backlash scare tactic more than any security effort, entire families are detained, and the deportation craze causes a US citizen to be wrongfully deported, that’s wrong.

I’m really proud that some state and local officials are standing up to the federal ridiculousness. New Haven, for example, has decided to issue ID cards for illegal immigrants that will provide them with at least some sort of documentation. Mayor Potter spoke out against raids in Portland, Oregon, saying that "Immigrants provide more than mere labor in our community. They have long enriched our history, our culture and our city." He also stressed that "In this morning's raid, no Portland police officers participated.”

As Montgomery police Chief J. Thomas Manger put it, "It's very important for the local police department to develop strong relationships with the community…That trust is being jeopardized."

When comprehensive immigration reform fails at the national level, and local authorities are being forced to break trust within their communities, a serious conflict of interest arises. This is one thing I’ve noticed working on the Hill: members of Congress are really removed from their constituents. They are making profound changes to our laws while living away from their constituent bases, and relying on a team of staffers who are so busy that they spend 12 hours a day in the same building. Thankfully, they get phone calls and emails from constituents, but they tend to be the usual crowd. In the immigration debate, anti-immigration constituents have been the loudest, while public polls show that most are in favor of things like legalization.

There’s been a lot of criticism of the legislative process, so I won’t get into that. But it looks like the Senate is giving comprehensive immigration reform another shot this year. They say a deal was just struck in the Senate, and that bill S. 1348 has been revived. We may see passage very soon, after which the House has its shot at it.

Many had been saying that if Republicans agreed to move the bill forward, Democrats would have to make more compromises. Well, there have already been plenty. S. 1348 is only going to look worse and worse, so it’s probably best to just give up now. And yet it’s so hard to let go of comprehensive immigration reform for good for at least a few years. People are hoping that amendments will be passed, that the House will fix the bill, that if we re-state our core values of human rights and family unity, that the Senate will finally listen. But when does hope start hurting us?

What we have to sacrifice

It is a sad day when a tradeoff has to be made between human rights and family unity.

Few people really expected Senate bill S. 1348 on comprehensive immigration reform to look the way it did. It has left people on both ends of the political spectrum unhappy: Conservatives have made sure that there are strict border security policies and penalties for a host of different things. And though it legalizes the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US today, there are thousands of dollars in fines that many will not be able to afford, strict requirements, and the process will take many years. It's certainly not amnesty, but ultimately it would still offer a path to permanent status in this country.

Ultimately, the "grand bargain" seems to have been: legalization of the 12 million undocumented for cuts to family immigration. Reunification has been central to our immigration system: two thirds of green cards a year are received through a family tie. US citizens can currently petition for parents, children, spouses, and siblings; legal permanent residents for children and spouses. Family unity is vital to the stability of communities. In the extreme case, you have the bachelor towns of the 19th century where Chinese men had no stake in society without their families, whom they weren't allowed to bring to the US due to discriminatory immigration laws, and the Chinese population was literally dying off as a population as they aged.

While we are not facing a situation so dire, under the new bill, adult children and siblings would have to go through the merit system, which rewards only 10 points out of 100 for familial ties. They, in addition to parents of US citizens who will be capped for entry (currently uncapped), totaled 190,000 in 2006, or one fourth of our family-based immigration system. Proportions are even higher for certain regions of the world, e.g. 35% of all immigrants from Asia--not just family sponsorship--are entering through family categories that will disappear under the new system. Women will also be disadvantaged by the point system, since education level is a main criterion, and many countries around the world limit access to education for women and girls. Did anyone think about that when drafting this bill? Let's not pretend there's a level playing field out there. Suffice it to say, the demographics of immigrants coming to the US would change quite dramatically.

All of this is supposed to benefit our economy. The merit-based points system (college admissions, anyone?) admits immigrants based on how they will contribute to our economy, i.e. as labor. Points are awarded for education level, occupation, family ties, English proficiency, age, and a few other factors. While many countries have successfully used point systems with similar parameters to admit immigrants to their countries, family reunification is not sacrificed for economic priorities. For example, Canada allows citizens and permanent residents to petition for even grandparents (real “extended family”). Unfortunately for us, we can only have both family-based immigration as is and the point system if there are more visas given out overall, something many Senators are dead-set against. So because we are not allowing the number of green cards to increase, family visas have to be “freed up” for the point system.

More conservative Republicans might have allowed one "family amendment" to pass in exchange for an amendment that would require the undocumented to return to their countries of origin before receiving legal status. So…human rights or family unity? (We don’t have to call it human rights. Words have created much controversy in this discussion--"Restrictionists are calling this 'amnesty', but they were going to slap that label on anything this side of mass deportation." Let’s call it humane policy reform.)

Much of this is moot by now. Surprisingly enough, the Lieberman amendment (Safe and Secure Detention Act), passed Wednesday night in the Senate, while the Menendez-Hagel amendment did not. The Menendez amendment concerned the 800,000 people petitioning for family reunification that would be thrown out of line, so to speak, when their applications were declared null and void under the current bill, which sets May 2005 as the cutoff date. It was the most likely family amendment to pass, since it would only change the cutoff date from May 2005 to January 2007. Even conservatives recognized that this was only fair. Symbolically speaking, it did win a majority vote (53-44), but Senator Kyl made sure 60 would be needed for it to pass.

We'll have to wait to see what happens in the next few days, especially after Reid's cloture vote yesterday may have killed the debate. While there are serious pros and cons to passing the bill (leaning more and more to the cons), consequences for not passing the bill are not light, either. A chance for comprehensive immigration reform like this will not come again for several years, while passing it means that there is at least some hope for better reform from the House. In the meantime, millions of undocumented immigrants will continue to live in the shadows, subject to raids and deportation. Would they rather have hope for legalization, even if it is an expensive and difficult process, or wait a few more years for more sympathetic and comprehensive reform? Can we really sacrifice the reunification of 100,000s of family members in comprehensive immigration reform?

In the end, it’s going to be a tough decision for every organization, every Senator, and every American.

The First Blog

After some encouragement from a good friend, I went ahead and created my own blog. Hopefully I'll actually post to it regularly...we'll see!

My life in the next year:
DC lobbying for immigrant rights
Shanghai
Seoul
home (all of one week)
Paris
back to Hahvahd

Should make for some good times.