You can't take me anywhere

When traveling and living abroad, I live by one maxim: Don't be that asshole.

It's worked out pretty well for me, except for when it comes to the paperwork needed to become a legal resident. I hate paperwork. I hate bureaucracy. Anything that cuts down on it, I support. You won't find me criticizing illegal aliens in the United States because have any of you ever emigrated to another country? That shit is hard.

I'm all for opening the borders and letting people in with just a video store member card as proof of identity. The US didn't collapse after processing -- without the use of RFID-chipped passports and fingerprint scanning -- all those Irish drunks and criminals at Ellis Island, like my great-grandfather, and now we dress in green, drink beer and act like idiots one day a year to honor them. Cultural exchange is a good thing.

When I entered Brazil with a student visa rather than with my tourist visa, I needed to register as a resident foreigner within 30 days or face possible arrest and deportation or a daily fine. But it's Brazil, you know?

At that time, the Federal Police were on a work slowdown. That meant Brazilians wanting to renew their passports faced 14-hour waits, if they were lucky, and foreigners wanting to register as residents, well, I think we all went to O'Malleys to drink and complain and figure out a way around it. Like those assholes.

I never ended up registering because the potential fine was less than the time and money I'd invest in becoming legal, and with the slowdowns and strikes, the RNE card probably would have arrived around the time I expected to leave. At the airport, no one noticed I was a bad girl and I left without any punishment, smug in the knowledge that I could play the jeito game too.

Moving to Hong Kong was much smoother. My husband's company took care of all the paperwork, and within a couple of months of arriving, I had my residency card, which allows me to move in and out of Hong Kong freely -- without ever having to step through customs.

Once you've got your resident ID, you can breeze through e-channels at the airport and at the Macau ferry terminal. I can't see the US ever introducing something similar for American citizens and residents. As it is, I'm treated like a suspected terrorist whenever I reenter the US: "Where did you go? How long did you stay? What were you doing there? Did you meet any swarthy men who worship Allah?" I can't imagine what non-citizens go through, with the fingerprinting, photographing and stool samples.



Then it came time to renew my visa, and through a series of events that involved my admitted scatterbraindedness and my husband traveling outside the area on business (I needed to bring his passport with me), I missed the deadline.

When I went to apply for the now-late renewal, instead of strip-searching me, putting me in jail and banning me from reentry for life, or whatever it is the US generally does to visa scofflaws, the immigration officer handed me a piece of paper and said, "Here, write why you were late. Address it to 'Dear Immigration Officer' and say you're very sorry. Then sign it and return it with your application."

So, like a child, I wrote an essay to Dear Immigration Officer, apologized profusely, promised that it would never, ever happen again, and signed it, "That Asshole." That was it. About 20 minutes later, they returned my documents and gave me a sheet of paper that told me when to pick up my new visa.

Not long after and not thinking much of it (or not thinking at all), I agreed to go to Macau with my husband and one of his co-workers who was visiting from the US. Macau is a special administrative region, like Hong Kong, and it has its own entry requirements.

I did ponder if my smart card would work on the e-channel leaving Hong Kong since I didn't have the new visa yet, but I figured it was worth a try. My card worked, but when I put my thumb on the scanner, the little hourglass figure kept loading and loading...

An immigration officer came over to me, let me through the exit door and took my documents to examine. He noticed that I had an expired visa and said I needed to go with him. TO THE BACK ROOM.

I've always been kind of curious to know what happens when you're taken to the back room. In movies and on TV shows, it sounds so dramatic, like you're being led to your execution or to a very sound beating. It was rather anti-climactic, then, when I was led to a well-lit room in plain sight of the immigration checkpoint. They even let my husband and his co-worker come with me.

At that point, my husband was mumbling under his breath that he couldn't take me anywhere and that I was embarrassing him, but his co-worker seemed to be enjoying the adventure. Maybe she was expecting me to get knocked around with telephone books. That would have been a great story for her to spread around his old office.

When the immigration officer returned, sans telephone book, he told me I needed to pay for a one-day visa, so I could properly exit and return to Hong Kong. I paid and figured I'd be on my way, except my ticket to Macau, which had been in my passport, was missing.

I asked the officer if he knew where the ticket was, perhaps he'd taken it out and placed it somewhere when he scanned my passport. He and his partner went to look for it, but returned empty-handed.

"Miss, are you sure you didn't drop it outside the checkpoint? Do you want to go look for it? We'll let you out."

No, I told him, I had the ticket when I entered the e-channel.

"Are you sure?"

Quite.

He started to look nervous.

Don't worry about it, I told him, I'm just going to head back home, and they'll go to Macau without me. No problem. But the boat is leaving in a few minutes, and they really need to get going.

"No, no, miss. Are you SURE you don't want to look for it more? It must be around here somewhere. Come on, let's look."

No, really, it's fine. It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. Do I look like the kind of person who cares about Russian hookers and Wheel of Fortune slots anyway?

He looked genuinely upset, like he had totally ruined my day and I'd never forget the cruelty of it all and I'd one day go insane with rage and kill a bunch of Hong Kongers and turn them into dim sum, even though it was my own ignorance that started the chain of events.

"Follow me," he said, and he led us down to the ferry boarding area. He spoke to one of the agents in Cantonese and got me on the boat without a ticket. I thanked him and then spent the day in Macau, racing go-karts, watching awful Eastern European "dancers" at the Sands, and coming to the realization that sometimes it does pay to be that asshole.