The world consists of two groups of people: us, and them.
On Tuesday morning I went to the Immigration and Naturalization Service Center in Flushing to get fingerprinted. The center is located on Rooselvelt Avenue, under the rails of the 7 train, inside a plain, grayish and old one-story building, adjoined by a 99-cent store on the right and a florist on the left. It has one glass door openning onto the street. Inside the glass door is a small foyer, where a large paper box contains a stack of application forms. Applicants are to fill out the form before admission, apparently to expedite the transactions.
My appointment was at 9 o'clock in the morning. I arrived twenty minutes early, and there was already a long line outside on the street. Every twenty minutes or so, a guard would open the front door and let in a group of people. I waited for a good hour and a half before moving close to the front of the line. As the guard let the next group in, I thought I was going in with them, but he gestured me to stop, without a word. The guard looked sulky, and used no words but only gestures to direct the visitors. I thought: either he did not speak English, or he assumed that all immigrants did not speak English, and either way there seemed to him no means of verbal communication.
Finally, the guard opened the door again, and gestured me to proceed into the office area. Behind a second glass door was a spacious lobby, furnished with a few dozens of chairs, with just handful of vistors inside. I was beckoned to the counter, where a Chinese woman, in Chinese, directed me to the back office to have my fingerprints taken.
Like all great things in life, the excitement is in the waiting. I waited for one hour and a half to be fingerprinted in less than five minutes. The Immigration Service certainly knows how to thrill the aspiring immigrants. My 9 o'clock appointment seemed to be for mere reference. Also, standing on the street probably heightened the sense of anticipation, an effect that would have been lost should the applicants have been allowed to wait sitting in the lobby. Sadly, I went on a sunny morning of early winter. Wait until the first snow storm hits New York, and that will give the immigrants a more awe-inspiring experience.
I could not help noticing that nearly all the workers in the Immigration Service Center, like in many other government agencies in New York, are immigrants themselves. Had they not gone through the same irrespectful treatment themselves? Why, sharing once our indignition, do they choose to repeat the same disrespect on us?
Because once they were us; but now they think of us as "them".
Fifteen years ago, when I was in high school in Chong Qing, every spring break, I would take the train to go to my parents' city. In those years, the transportation system in China was severely undercapacitied, and spring spelt disasterous congestion for home-goers. The train was completely packed. If all the passengers in the train had taken off their shoes and laid them side by side on the floor, there would not have been enough room. I stood for hours on the train, pressed from all sides by people who were in turn pressed from all sides. Yet more people tried to get on the train. The doors were closed. So people started to clamber through the windows. As the train approached the stations, passengers frantically closed the windows. A window left open would surely invite an attack from the platform.
Unfortunately one open window close to where I was standing was neglected. Before the train could come to a full stop, a desperate home-goer started to climb into the window. The passengers on the train fought back. Someone tried to pry the man's hands off the window, another pushed down the man's head. It looked like a struggle of life and death. Neither side was willing to give up. With incredible tenacity, the desperate home-goer managed to clamber into the car, despite extensive bruises inflicted by the passengers on the train. I expected a real fight to break out in the car.
What happened next, though, was utterly unbelievable. As soon as the man entered the car, instead of giving a good beating of the ones on the train who beat him so hard to keep him off the train, he turned outside and started to push the next window-climber off the train. The man, just a moment ago in alliance with the home-goers on the platform, had switched side.
Before the man got on the train, other men on the platform were "us"; once he was on the train, they became "them".
The pain, once it is no longer one's own, is simply gone.
On Tuesday morning I went to the Immigration and Naturalization Service Center in Flushing to get fingerprinted. The center is located on Rooselvelt Avenue, under the rails of the 7 train, inside a plain, grayish and old one-story building, adjoined by a 99-cent store on the right and a florist on the left. It has one glass door openning onto the street. Inside the glass door is a small foyer, where a large paper box contains a stack of application forms. Applicants are to fill out the form before admission, apparently to expedite the transactions.
My appointment was at 9 o'clock in the morning. I arrived twenty minutes early, and there was already a long line outside on the street. Every twenty minutes or so, a guard would open the front door and let in a group of people. I waited for a good hour and a half before moving close to the front of the line. As the guard let the next group in, I thought I was going in with them, but he gestured me to stop, without a word. The guard looked sulky, and used no words but only gestures to direct the visitors. I thought: either he did not speak English, or he assumed that all immigrants did not speak English, and either way there seemed to him no means of verbal communication.
Finally, the guard opened the door again, and gestured me to proceed into the office area. Behind a second glass door was a spacious lobby, furnished with a few dozens of chairs, with just handful of vistors inside. I was beckoned to the counter, where a Chinese woman, in Chinese, directed me to the back office to have my fingerprints taken.
Like all great things in life, the excitement is in the waiting. I waited for one hour and a half to be fingerprinted in less than five minutes. The Immigration Service certainly knows how to thrill the aspiring immigrants. My 9 o'clock appointment seemed to be for mere reference. Also, standing on the street probably heightened the sense of anticipation, an effect that would have been lost should the applicants have been allowed to wait sitting in the lobby. Sadly, I went on a sunny morning of early winter. Wait until the first snow storm hits New York, and that will give the immigrants a more awe-inspiring experience.
I could not help noticing that nearly all the workers in the Immigration Service Center, like in many other government agencies in New York, are immigrants themselves. Had they not gone through the same irrespectful treatment themselves? Why, sharing once our indignition, do they choose to repeat the same disrespect on us?
Because once they were us; but now they think of us as "them".
Fifteen years ago, when I was in high school in Chong Qing, every spring break, I would take the train to go to my parents' city. In those years, the transportation system in China was severely undercapacitied, and spring spelt disasterous congestion for home-goers. The train was completely packed. If all the passengers in the train had taken off their shoes and laid them side by side on the floor, there would not have been enough room. I stood for hours on the train, pressed from all sides by people who were in turn pressed from all sides. Yet more people tried to get on the train. The doors were closed. So people started to clamber through the windows. As the train approached the stations, passengers frantically closed the windows. A window left open would surely invite an attack from the platform.
Unfortunately one open window close to where I was standing was neglected. Before the train could come to a full stop, a desperate home-goer started to climb into the window. The passengers on the train fought back. Someone tried to pry the man's hands off the window, another pushed down the man's head. It looked like a struggle of life and death. Neither side was willing to give up. With incredible tenacity, the desperate home-goer managed to clamber into the car, despite extensive bruises inflicted by the passengers on the train. I expected a real fight to break out in the car.
What happened next, though, was utterly unbelievable. As soon as the man entered the car, instead of giving a good beating of the ones on the train who beat him so hard to keep him off the train, he turned outside and started to push the next window-climber off the train. The man, just a moment ago in alliance with the home-goers on the platform, had switched side.
Before the man got on the train, other men on the platform were "us"; once he was on the train, they became "them".
The pain, once it is no longer one's own, is simply gone.
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