As an expat, you’ll undoubtedly engage in the ritual pilgrimage to visit family back NOB. Even those who don’t retire out of the country face the challenge of juggling multiple family work and vacation schedules, holidays, birthdays, and special events to gather as a family. For expats there are the additional complications of extended air travel, customs and immigration, and the ever-so-difficult question of how to spend scarce quality time with family.
Grandpa’s 90th birthday with our daughters, sons-in-law & grandkids.
Even an expat with unlimited means is going to be forced by the rigors of travel to limit the number and length of visits back NOB. Then you arrive, jet-lagged and dehydrated from 30,000 ft, and the visit countdown clock starts ticking away! Do you take a nap and recover, or catch up on life with your daughter? The next morning, do you complete morning prayers or play video games with your grandson? Tick, tick,tick…
There is a powerful impulse to “do” things, accomplish something, since how often will a family gather? And there are family activities which all (or at least most) can join in, so why not? Yet there is also great value in just being present, listening and talking and remembering as only a family can do. Hearing Dad tell that same joke for the thousandth time, for example. Tick, tick, tick…
The Queen city
at the sign museum
and the aquarium
It is not a challenge unique to expats, but one of the human condition, exacerbated by modern technology. Parents working outside the home face it as they end a busy day and pick up children from day care. Those crowds of teens sitting-together-alone, glued to screens, are trying desperately to avoid it. Long ago, when a family member emigrated to America, the farewell took on the airs of a funeral, since the parting was most likely forever. Tick, tick,tick…
Not only do we all have a limited time on this Earth, we don’t know how limited it is. We can self-medicate with social media or a nice drink, chasing the demons out of sight for a while, but the big hand keeps sweeping. We can be fully present in the moment and enjoy the best parts of the best relationships, yet the aftertaste remains bittersweet, because . . . tick, tick, tick.
While it is a good thing to be mindful of that constantly ticking clock, it is counterproductive to dwell on it. Time is meant to be spent together with the ones we love. You can’t make up for lost moments, only savor those we have. Me, I’m savoring some family time!
We’re getting ready to go traveling, so I thought I would give some flying tips as a Public Service Announcement. Travel back to the States is a staple of expat life: even Canadians often have to through-transit the US on the way home, although I know some who go to great lengths to never experience US airports again. Let’s see if we can make those experiences a little less challenging, shall we?
I’ll assume the basics: you have a Passport. I know there are special circumstances where a passport is not needed, but they are truly exceptional, so we’ll ignore them here. At the first place you land in the States, you’ll need to pass through two screens: immigration and customs. The first is to establish your right to enter the country. The second is to determine whether what you are bringing in with you is permissible. These two things are unrelated, by the way.
As a US citizen with a valid passport, you have the right to return to the United States. So the normal process at immigration is to get in line with all the other “US persons” (citizens, resident aliens and the like), wait your turn, hand over your passport, answer (sometimes) a perfunctory question like “how long were you gone?”, get your passport stamped and move along.
There are several ways to go faster. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the US government agency responsible for border crossing. One program they have is called Automated Passport Control (all the titles are hyperlinks for additional information). It is essentially a kiosk in the secure arrivals part of the airport where you scan your passport, answer questions on a touchscreen, take a photo, get a printout and go to the CBP officer to have it all checked. People with the same home address in the States can process together. This program is free but only available in the 50 largest airports. You still get in line, but your data will be correct and easily reviewed.
Another CBP program is called Mobile Passport. Mobile Passport is a free app that automates the forms and questions you encounter entering the States. You download it and enter your personal data, and when your plane lands, you send the arrival data securely to CBP, who returns a receipt to you. You get to use different lanes at the arrival area in the airport, so the lines are shorter (big plus). There is a $15 annual upgrade called Mobile Passport Plus, which also stores your passport data and automates the data entry. Mobile Passport is available at 26 major airports and three cruise ports.
The gold standard of CBP programs is Global Entry. It is, in effect, an honors program for re-entering the US. Global Entry costs $100 for five years, but note this: the $100 is an application fee, so if you are denied, you are out the money. Global Entry requires a background check AND an interview,which can be scheduled at CBP offices or in airports. There is a questionnaire (used to start the background check, and of course you’ll face more questions in the interview. With Global Entry, you access a different sets of kiosks (available at 75 US airports and 16 international ones), which again automate the answering of those same CBP questions. You scan your passport and get a receipt, then go to a separate CBP officer who checks your receipt and moves you along. One additional benefit to Global Entry is a separate line for the post baggage-pickup customs check.
The what? Everything I mentioned above is part of immigration, and happens before you get your checked bags. Customs can do a final check after that, but there is no set rule: sometimes they have an inspection, oftentimes they don’t. If they are inspecting, long lines can form, and Global Entry lets you (literally) walk to the front of the line and go first. It is one of those benefits you may never need, but when you do, it is a real game-changer.
The main reason NOT to apply for Global Entry is if you are fairly certain you’ll be denied (remember, you lose the application fee). Reasons for denial include a history of felonies, drug convictions, or anything related to smuggling or illegal border crossing. Otherwise, you should be approved.
What about Pre✓® and Clear? Pre-Check is a TSA program. The Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is just responsible for the safety of the traveler at ports (air and sea). TSA Pre-Check cost $85 for five years, and it requires an online application, a background check, and a short interview. Pre-Check allows you to access less rigorous screening at 200 airports, but it has nothing to do with immigration or customs. Global Entry member ship gives you complimentary TSA Pre-Check membership. So the extra $15 dollars for Global Entry is a bargain over Pre-Check, if you travel more than once outside the US every five years. However, many credit cards and travel groups will reimburse your TSA Pre-check fee (not so for Global Entry).
Clear is a private. bio-metric program done in conjunction with airline security. It is available in over 20 airports (and some stadiums) and costs $179 annually. Once you give Clear your fingerprints and retinal scan, they store it. At the airport, the first TSA check you face is for your ID and boarding pass. With Clear, you go straight to the Clear station, which lets you skip the long lines that form for the boarding pass/ID check, although you still go through the TSA physical inspection. Given the cost, Clear is mainly for seasoned road warriors who also use either Pre-Check or Global Entry.
There are a host of other CBP Trusted Traveler Programs which cover driving or walking across the border. I won’t cover them here, but just say that if you routinely drive across the US border with Mexico or Canada, one or more of these programs will get you out of the long lines and into a secure, fast transit: check them out! Sometimes they cross-apply, as Global Entry does with TSA Pre✓®.
What about our Canadian, Mexican, and other foreign friends? Each of the programs above have different criteria for eligibility of non-US citizens. However, Global Entry benefits are available to Canadians who have NEXUS (another program) and Mexicans are eligible for Global Entry, along with Indian, UK, German, Dutch, Korean, Swiss, Panamanian, Singaporean, Colombian and Argentine nationals. Expats in Mexico should also know that Mexico has a Global Entry equivalent program called Viajero Confiable. I can’t tell if there is a cost associated with application, and the kiosks are only available at Cancun, Mexico City, and Los Cabos (Guadalajara has had a “coming soon” banner for two years, so mañana!).
Finally (yes there is an end here somewhere), whatever program you choose, remember that crossing the border at an airport may seem routine to you, but it is a deadly serious affair. All kinds of people try to use international air travel for all the wrong reasons (terror, drug-trafficking, human trafficking, illegal immigration). So treat the exercise with an adult, business-like demeanor. Security lines are not an appropriate place for humor. Long before 9/11, I tried to make a joke about a security sign saying it was illegal to bring marijuana into the US, and I barely avoided a body-cavity search!
Smile but don’t initiate small talk. Answer questions with yes or no or the minimum number of facts: no “in the beginning” type stories. This may seem obvious, but never lie or dissemble. You may have a right to enter the US, but under current law, the CBP officers have the authority to detain you for questioning (sorry about that connecting flight) and to search everything you bring, including your media devices, even your beloved iphone (yes, they can ask you for your password; if you refuse they can retain your device for “processing” for several days)!
The most common problems for travelers are bringing in prohibited goods, or goods beyond the customs limits (hence taxable). Duty-free shops at the airport just mean nontaxable at the source: Absinthe may be legal in the US, but only certain types may be brought in legally. That fruit they give you on the airplane is considered from a foreign source; don’t forget to consume it before leaving the plane. And you can bring in Cuban cigars for personal use (defined as 50 or less). Forget about ivory souvenirs, animal skins, and almost any form of meat. There is an up-to-date CBP website to help you determine what you can bring in legally.
Which is not to say you don’t know someone (not not you, a friend, of course) who has brought in a turtle, or cannabis brownies, or whatever prohibited item. Most of the customs work is aimed at detecting smugglers, not the otherwise law-abiding travelers who happen to bring in something. Such people rarely get caught. But they do incur a risk: the closest thing to a permanent record anyone has is the file kept by the various Department of Homeland Security agencies (TSA, ICE, CBP, USCG, USSS, CIS and CISA). Get on the list and it may take years to get back off (if you know anyone whose name appeared on the No-fly list, ask them how long the nightmare lasted, even if they were quite obviously not a threat). Much of airport and customs security is random (which is why the old lady in the wheelchair gets searched…her number came up). You never know who’s next. So even though you won’t get caught, just don’t (do it).
Lastly, a processional from Jimi. Why Jimi? “goin’ way down south…way down to Mexico!”
I began this post with the title “College is broken,” which is more definitive and alarming. I amended it after a dose of humility (I know, I need more) and the realization several family and friends work in academe, and perhaps they would chime in to a more inclusive invitation.
Don’t even get me started on “student-athletes”!
My concerns about the university system in the United States go all the way back to my daughters’ experience. Both of my daughters attended public universities, graduated in four years with some (but not extensive) debt, learned a lot, enjoyed their college years, and departed with good jobs. My wife and I paid for some of the expenses, but insisted each daughter incur some combination of scholarship/work-study/student loans (skin in the game). So what’s not to like?
It started with the application process. I distinctly recall a high school guidance counselor explaining how she could only write a letter of recommendation to one school for early admission (or was it early acceptance? Early enrollment? It doesn’t matter). When I asked why, since each university is independent (and would not know) and a student could only attend one, she told me they share information, and if she was found to be writing more than one letter, the schools would “blackball” her or the high school! “And no one has sued them for this behavior?” I asked. “Sure, you could, but your daughter won’t get into any decent school while the suit runs,” she told me.
This was my introduction to the organized crime of university admissions. Perhaps you have heard of the lawsuits which have followed, demonstrating collusion in the Ivy League admissions process, and of course the more recent pay-to-attend scandal among wealthy parents nationwide (no surprise to me).
But there was more. Early on for each of my daughters, they were advised by admissions counselors that they really needed to strongly consider taking five years to graduate. We strongly advised them to really consider graduating in four years, because the universities they were attending had to offer four-year degrees in the majors they were attempting. Our daughters made the right choice.
All of that just goes to my personal bias that something was rotten at the university of Denmark, to paraphrase Marcellus in Hamlet. So I began to research it (here comes trouble). Among my findings:
I think everyone knows there is a strong statistical relationship between attending/graduating college and lifetime earnings (the more of the former, the more of the latter). Many people have come to believe this is a credentialing phenomenon: it doesn’t matter what happens at college, you just get the sheepskin, you make mo’ money. The strongest correlation is between education and earnings. Those who have a passion for some topic and the requisite skills to address it do very well, either rounding our their knowledge (classical liberal arts) or specializing (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM). Those who either lack or mis-match passion and skills do poorly, diploma-be-damned. Which means college is not for everyone, or certainty not for everyone graduating high school; some may be far better served doing something else at that point!
What about the “free universal college” movement? If the students can attend for free, there is no risk in terms of debt, and maybe they will discover their talents and passion while at university? Setting aside the issue of cost (for the moment), creating a broad new entitlement in the hope of something good happening for some subset of the attendees is a poor gambit. There are unintended consequences lurking about: how many otherwise strong students will be lured away from academics by the party atmosphere of a multitude of “student-attendees?” It is like prescribing antibiotics for every cough: what could go wrong, until we experience antibiotic resistant diseases?
Other countries seem to do it well (free university education), why not the US? There are examples of countries which do it well, but none has a system amenable to the US. Some control the overall cost by simply limiting the number of universities (reduced demand equals limited cost). Others track students: in Germany, a test determines which high-school track you attend, which then determines your tertiary education opportunities. I would not want to attend the school board meeting in the United States where such a system was proposed.
But perhaps the rigorous nature of the university system and its selfless commitment to professional education will affect that wave of “student-attendees.” It is to laugh (cue Johnny Carson)! Sometime in the last thirty years, the academy became big business. Average college tuition is up 260% over that time as enrollments sky-rocketed (supply and demand still rules). The one-hundred richest universities have endowments above one-billion dollars (Harvard tops the list at $36b USD). The federal government abetted this wealth, first by guaranteeing student loan debt, then by directly providing the loans, and then by raising the amounts students could borrow. And since the federal government has no profit motive, even sham schools and non-productive majors (those would be value judgments, tsk-tsk) are eligible.
How bad did it get? A recent NYT article outlines the for-profit Art Academy University in San Francisco charging $100k tuition for a Masters in something called “design and applied arts.” Surely this is just a for-profit phenomenon? No, most everybody does it, and don’t call me Shirley. USC has an online Masters in Social Work that comes in at a cool $110k in tuition. Pure profit, baby! Since I have social workers in the family (wife and niece), here’s a little joke: how long does it take a social worker to earn enough to pay back such student debt? Never, a social worker doesn’t earn enough to eat, let alone pay back student debt! Check out the article for more astounding examples.
Worse still, once the cash-cow of new students started flooding into the university system, academe responded not by strengthening standards and tightening requirements, but rather by catering to the masses. I have to admit that I have nothing but envy for the culinary experiences I witnessed at my daughters’ schools: for college, I was “institutionalized” at a place that serve boiled beef. I hold no grudge for the air conditioning, drone-provided snacks, or comfort animals of today’s university system, but the catering extended to the curriculum! Out went mandatory classes in the classics (dead white men, after all). Core curricula became less core and more a la carte: you could replace Western History with, say, “Film, Fiction, and Female in Israel” (University of Michigan course catalog). Not to pick on UM: go to your favorite university or alma mater and you’ll find an equally valid example. Even ten years ago, when I was interviewing new hires, I noticed an increasingly apparent lack of historical knowledge, and this was in the national security field, one which assumes employees have a basic historical knowledge-base!
Now the disclaimer: the US university system is still a global standard. Any list of the best universities in the world is dominated by the usual suspects from the US. Which is to say that some students attending these institutions and getting an excellent education. However, the combination of a huge increase in demand for college, the unlimited supply of debt resources, and the tendency to treat students as customers to be satisfied has resulted in a large number of drop-outs and graduates with huge debt and little education. Worse still, it created a huge disconnect: young people who had been told attendance is as rewarded as performance, and that truth can be personal rather than absolute, now find themselves unprepared in a harsh world, where little matters beyond the bottom line.
I invite others with recent experience in higher education to chime in: crisis or not? Are these problems real, or am I just the guy yelling “get off my grass” on the quad?
Anyone who has traveled and spent more than a few days in a foreign culture can confirm that one of the things that does not translate easily is humor. Our experiences as expats in Mexico only confirm this suspicion, although I think there are positive lessons to be learned from other cultures when it comes to humor.
Comedy NOB has become–as so much else–heavily politicized. You can laugh at the outrageous behavior on one side, but there are *crickets* on the other side. Meanwhile, a growing list of things once considered humorous are now off-limits: officially (and sometimes criminally) liable, offensive, and unforgivable.
Not so much in Mexico. Mexican humor is generally much sharper, politically incorrect, and fatalistic. There are a few topics which are off-limits to Mexican humor: national symbols (the flag, the anthem), some historical figures (La Guadalupana, Los Niños Heroes), and always, always, ¡SIEMPRE! anybody’s mother. There us nothing in Mexico equivalent to “the dozens” up north. Most everything else is available for ridicule.
Start with nickknames, or apodos. I am not talking about those which come with your given name, like men named Jesús being called Chuy, but rather the ones given you by your friends or family, and often due to a physical characteristic. So you might call your friend gordo because he is/was fat (or maybe very thin), chapo (shorty), tartajas (stutterer). Yes, the characteristics can be somewhat crude by NOB standards, but are not meant or taken that way in Mexico. Knowing someone’s nickname and using it is a sign of inclusion and affection, even though the names might not always sound that nice.
Joking about sex is becoming more common, if only among the younger and less cultured. However many Mexicans enjoy the double-entendre, or albures. These word-plays can be subtle or blatant, and may involve food. Be careful if you are ever asked how you like your eggs (huevos) or chiles. If your answer elicits smiles, you might be the accidental victim of an albur.
Death or tragedy is definitely on-sides for humor. Our Spanish teacher told us about a young Mexican entrepreneur who launched a video game about saving those trapped Chilean miners…while they were still trapped! As he explained, it wasn’t because they were Chilean…he would have done the same if they were Mexican! If you follow this reddit link, you’ll see a video of a float in a Mexican parade. The float is for the local search and rescue team, who stand (on the float) in a simulated demolished building. Watch closely, and you’ll see a bloody arm waving from under the rubble! This is, after all, the culture that brought the world calaveras, (literally skulls), short poems predicting the amusing, ironic, or poetically just way someone (at times rich or famous) will die.
Calaverita about a suegra (mother-in-law); do you really need it translated?
And of course, there is the famous story of the Mexican fans chanting “ehhhh, puto” at the World Cup. This vulgar chant (I wont give you a translation, just take my word for it) is very common in the Liga México, but FIFA threatened and then fined Mexico because its fans would not stop chanting it during every goal-kick. Despite pleas from the team and the government, the chant only grew louder, and continued. Eventually, FIFA gave up.
Clearly the whole crowd…
and the Mexican commercial which followed, when FIFA gave up trying!
Most Mexicans insist that while the word has several–all vulgar–meanings, the chant is in jest, and therefore permitted. Look at any YouTube video, and you’ll see this in play, which illustrates the Mexican view: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Said with a smile, even a slur becomes nothing more than joke between friends.
This is a universal principle. Even in English, we understand the difference tone, non-verbal cues, and context make. If a man greets a woman-friend with a simple “That’s a nice dress!” it would probably be taken as just a compliment. Change the response to “That’s a NICE dress!” with an eye-roll on NICE and you have a coded insult. Change it to “That’s a nice dreeeeeesssss!” with a leer on the last word and you have a harassment case. “That’s a nice dress?” with a verbal uptick on the end and you have an implied difference of opinion on the very concept. The words remain the same, the message varies greatly.
Mexico applies this same concept to humor. NOB, certain terms have become so politically incorrect that they are forever banned. Perhaps this reduces the frequency and hurt of offensive statements, perhaps not. It certainly makes people more wary. I will bet somebody reading the last paragraph thought “why should a man even be commenting on a woman’s dress?” Point made!
The need for humor to grease human interactions is eternal; words come and go. “Gay” was a slur before it became the title of Pride Marches. Irishmen calling each other “shanty” or “lace-curtain” was the beginning of many a fatal brawl, once upon a time. And don’t even begin to delve into the never-ending debate on the rules concerning use of the “N-word” within, and outside, the African-American community. Even the word “gringo” which simply derives from the concept of someone you can’t understand, falls into this category.
Words can hurt, no doubt. Yet they have only as much power as we give them. And no one wants to live in a humorless world. Just remember, “smile when you say that!”
