You can tell a lot about a country by the nature of its officialdom, something I think about every time I pass through an airport. In the US, the cliche of the immigration officer is of a bullet-headed patriot snarling through shatterproof glass. In the UK, it is of a power-mad clerk, pinched with condescension. There is no sarcasm on earth as finely calibrated as that of the British official in his use of the word “madam”.
I have had cause to consider all this in the last few weeks as I’ve slogged through applications for British and American passports for my children. Passports aren’t just documents or even expressions of national identity, but something more personal and talismanic. We’re attached to our passports as if we have done something to earn them. You can see it in the arrivals queue; the holders of passports with red and blue covers looking on with pity at those whose passports are green and who will, almost certainly, be treated to extra interrogation when they get to the front.
For sheer freedom of movement, the British passport is ranked fourth in the world – one place ahead of the US – and behind only Sweden, Finland and Germany, with the ability to enter 174 countries without a visa. If you are applying for one on behalf of a child born abroad, you are subject to an extra level of scrutiny, one that exposes you to a side of British officialdom you might hitherto have had the good fortune to avoid.
What, HM Passport Office wants to know, is the depth of the child’s claim to be British? Were the maternal grandparents married? When were they married? Where were they born? Before now, I have taken my nationality entirely for granted and in the face of these questions find myself fighting the urge to ask: what’s it to you?
I also find myself, for the first time, somewhat anxious about my provenance. My mother was only British by naturalisation, an irregularity that, on top of the fact that my children were born in the US, adds up to two counts against them. (When I spent time, some years ago, in my mother’s native South Africa, the consulate in London suggested I apply for dual citizenship, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I grew up in an era and a household in which being a South African passport holder wasn’t something to aspire to but to run screaming from.)
I am thrilled by the novelty of my children’s blue, American passports, but it’s the red ones I wait for, to carry them home.
Credit where credit’s due
The summit of bureaucratic over-reach in the US is the credit score, something that can be the difference between living a successful life and being utterly doomed. It is so important to know and maintain this number that you can pay a monthly fee to various agencies to keep you apprised of your rating. Once you have good credit, it’s easy to improve it, but you have to have it in order to get it in the first place. Then, the best thing to do is run up a lot of debt. My bank emailed me this week with the glad tidings that, since taking out a jumbo mortgage, my credit score has dramatically improved. Something tells me this system isn’t stacked in our favour.
One rule for the rich
I wrote some weeks ago about the flap around school-zoning in my neighbourhood. This week, New York’s Department of Education has given up and decided to shelve the whole rezoning question. I’m not sorry: we remain zoned for the good school. But there is no doubt that lobbying by rich residents spooked officials into kicking the decision down the road. US government is no match for Manhattan residents protecting the value of their real estate.
