Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Blame Iton Paris
- Copyright Notice
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Book One
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Book Two
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
I blinked and tried to keep my tone friendly. “I just wanted to see if there’s some kind of language misunderstanding, because it’s not clear.”
“Ma’am, I told you, I have already talked to him, and I don’t see what you have to do with it. We don’t process any foreign nationals’ tax identification number requests if they don’t have a visa.”
“He does have a visa.” I opened his passport and showed it to her.
“Yes, he showed me that, but he has to have a visa.”
“This is a visa.” I pointed at it, trying to draw her eyes down to the green slip.
She lifted her head high and refused to look at it. “Ma’am, I’m getting tired of this conversation. To process his application from here we need a visa, and that’s all there is to it.”
“This is a visa. An I-94 visa, which is listed on your own forms as an acceptable visa.” I drew out the forms one of her coworkers had given us on the first visit and pointed to the line. “I don’t understand what you need, if this isn’t it.”
“Ma’am, I am sick of this conversation; you are wasting my time. I told him, and now I’m telling you, even though it isn’t any of your business, that he needs a visa for us to process his application. I don’t see what use it is for you to make me repeat it a thousand times.”
“But it is a visa! Will you at least look at it?”
“Ma’am, now you’re getting downright rude. I don’t have anything more to say to you.”
I drew a deep breath. “Ma’am, can I have your name, please, and the name of your supervisor.”
The fact that she gave both of them correctly scared the hell out of my vision of American bureaucracy. It meant the whole past conversation had been perfectly correct from the point of view of her governmental agency and that of her supervisors.
I nevertheless called her supervisor in Raleigh. “Ma’am”—I thought I’d start the conversation off right—“I am calling on behalf of my fiancé who is trying to apply for a tax ID number here in your office in Durham. Now, I don’t know if it would be appropriate to make accusations about discrimination against foreign nationals, and I don’t know exactly how high it would be appropriate to start making those accusations; but your office won’t let him file his application.”
“Ma’am!” exclaimed the woman on the other end of the line. I was getting very sick of that word. “We handle thousands of applications from foreign nationals. We deal with foreign nationals every day. In no way are we prejudiced against them. What did she say was the problem?”