When Rules Don’t Apply
“Expats” Working Abroad
I worked illegally in a formerly colonized country. The job description said the organization would take care of securing proper work permits for me. “Great,” I said to myself, “that’s settled.” When I arrived, I purchased a tourist visa. My organization said they could not apply for my residency permit until after I was in the country. Okay, first step — check. Several weeks later, they told me that they were going to apply for a research permit for me because that would be easier to get. Okay…I did not love that idea, but at least it was a step in the direction away from “tourist.” Another few weeks passed and before returning to the US on holiday, I raised my concerns with my American-based supervisor. Her response was, “Yeah, it’s been getting harder and harder to secure work visas in this country,” as though the country were the one at fault.
When I returned from my break, I checked in again. I had assumed that my original application would still be in process. The answer? “Oh, we aren’t submitting an application this time. If we did, you wouldn’t qualify and then you would have to leave the country.” Oh. So I’m just supposed to have no problem continuing working illegally? Yes, is the short answer I got from HR. They were aware of the issue and looking into legal counsel. I took this to imply that they were not rethinking their model in order to legally comply with their host country’s immigration requirements. They were not engaged in the hard conversations — Do we hire someone from the host country for this position? Do we change our model and eliminate this position in this country? I suspect the organization did not want to ask itself these questions because if they decided on “no,” that would leave them with the option of closing the program, and I knew they would never consider that as an alternative.
We like to call it neocolonialism, which is somehow easier to swallow than plain old “colonialism” or “plundering” or “white supremacy,” but the attitude is the same as the colonizers who came (not all that many) decades ago.
This organization was only six months into having resumed its operations at this site after a temporary shutdown. They had held on to the location and enough local staff to maintain it for about five years. When I asked myself why this organization had either not considered the challenge of securing proper work permits for its employees, or had considered that it could be a problem and had decided it did not care if it was a problem, the answer I came up with was — white supremacy. We like to call it neocolonialism, which is somehow easier to swallow than plain old “colonialism” or “plundering” or “white supremacy,” but the attitude is the same as the colonizers who came (not all that many) decades ago.
I can do whatever I want here because I’m white and therefore I’m right. Laws do not apply to me because I am doing something good for humanity. We can’t employ local people because they would have absolutely no idea how to do this job (so instead we will only entrust them with the most menial jobs and enslave them and trap them in poverty because we are not willing to give up any of our economic dominance).
The plundering of colonialism and this lingering attitude that Western foreigners are above immigration laws and thus abuse them, is what has led many formerly colonized countries to crack down on granting work permits in recent years. When the US limits work visas for foreigners it is protecting our economy, but when other countries limit visas for foreigners it’s a roll of the eyes and uncalled for because we’re only helping and providing the country with (menial) jobs.
