confrontation at the immigration office
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
I was at the immigration office getting my spousal visa renewed when another foreigner at the counter had a meltdown. I intervened.
I'm always a bit twitchy when dealing with immigration. I suck at filling in forms and I have a bit of a history of difficulty with visa matters. I don't know if it's just me, but I find that having been deported once leaves me decidedly twitchy. Compounding this is the unfailing incidence of someone throwing a fit at the immigration counter. It's bad enough that a friend recently opined that Japan would be better off without immigrants because we gaijin are damaging the good-natured tone of the country.
I'd secured my new visa and was awaiting my turn at the counter to get a re-entry stamp (it turned out that I hadn't properly completed the right form) when sure enough a gentlemen with a fist full of Korean passports started bellowing at the woman behind the counter. I don't know what he was saying but his tone, volume, and hand gestures were abusive. It was bad enough that several of the guys from the back office came out to the front.
Not that they did anything, though. They just stood there and let the woman at the counter weather it. At first I was angry at that but then I recognized my hypocrisy—I was standing two or three meters away from the guy doing nothing as he got louder.
Whoever he was, he rated a flunky who apart from looking agitated and squirming did nothing. Then it got bad enough that the flunky scurried away from the scene. The angry man was making angry stabbing hand gestures and had pulled down his face mask to better spray the woman with angry spit.
Exchanging an unhappy glance with a South-Asian fellow who was in the midst of filling in his form, I humphed and stepped up to the man. Lightly placing a hand on his shoulder, I quietly told him, "She's only doing her job, mate."
He didn't turn to look at me. He was quiet for a moment, then quietly got to doing what the woman had asked him to do. Clean up his forms. I guess he and his guys where no better at than I am. From that point on he never again raised his voice and in a couple of minutes quietly left.
The woman who pulled my number was seated right next to the one who'd just received the abusive tirade. She beamed at me and took care of me in record time despite the fact that I'd walked up without having done the more involved application form at all. When I was through with bumbling about, I leaned over the counter and told the still stony-faced neighbor, "すみません。がんばって下さい。" That's pretty hard to translate, but it's a term of support.
She cracked a smile and told me it was nothing. And it wasn't really. Nor was it any of my goddamn business, actually. But I guess I was on a bit of an endorphin thing myself having come down from my own dread that I'd wind up with some protracted difficulty again.
Next up: permanent residency application.