Global Exit
It seems that my Global Entry status is up for renewal. I went through the rigmarole of filling out my application online for a renewal and then went through a two-week wait for preliminary approval. I will assume that it did not take two weeks due to any difficulty in clearing me (I am as pure as the driven snow…at least in terms of being a national security risk), but rather because this is the first go-around for Global Entry renewals and there is most likely a large backlog. After preliminary approval, I was required to schedule an appointment for a personal appearance. This is, needless to say, not made logistically easy since one has to go to them in the border patrol and the border is generally in inconvenient places for most of us. This is complicated by my moving status over the next few months (given that I am straddling New York and San Diego, two important Global Entry venues). The decision on where I would interview became a function of how long the wait time was for an interview. Since the earliest was in February, I chose to do it in San Diego since I know I return to San Diego on February 4th.
The location in San Diego for such an interview is not the San Diego International Airport, but rather a border location just across from Tecate, Mexico. With a Hispanic surname like Marin (I regularly get Spanish-speaking spam and asked to opt-in as a member of the Hispanic-American community), I imagine I will fit right in. As it turns out, my father was a naturalized American citizen who immigrated from Venezuela in 1958 with my mother under what was called The War Brides Act, meant to assist returning servicemen who dragged back a foreign woman with them. My father was only a Venezuelan for a quick second as he had immigrated there with his family from Italy in the great fascist replanting towards the end of WWII. Nonetheless, Marin is demarcated to be a Hispanic surname so here I am, looking nothing like a Mexican immigrant, but on paper a potential wetback to some ICE officer at the border.
While I am looking forward to renewing my Global Entry application interview, I just got an email suggesting that the immigration people have decided to make the whole renewal process easier by offering to do on-the-spot interviews for people returning from foreign travel. I have no foreign travel planned at the moment until next July, so I think I will just stick with my border interview in February. I’m not sure Global Entry saves me enough time and trouble to be worth all this nonsense, but having it makes me feel like the worldly citizen I like to consider myself. I have lived outside the United States for eleven of my sixty-six years on earth (about 17% of my life). I have lived in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Italy and Canada. I have traveled extensively through South America (including Central America and the Caribbean), Canada, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Northern Asia and Australia/New Zealand. There are certainly places I haven’t visited (Myanmar, Mongolia, Papua Mew Guinea, Afghanistan and Iran to name a few), but I am sure that I am better travelled than 99.9% of the world’s population. I have no idea what that’s worth, but I am proud of it nonetheless.
The world is having a moment when it is more popular to pull in your horns than to be a globalist. The United Kingdom is having a revitalized such moment with its focus on Boris Johnson and Brexit. They want out of the European Union in the worst way (pun intended). Boris seems to think that he will get a better trade deal from Donald Trump than he can get from his Continental European brethren. Good luck with that, Boris. I hope you remember that he spied you giggling with Trudeau and Macron at the recent NATO gathering. Donald is not known for letting such affronts roll off his back. The fact that you specifically requested him to not show his face or support before your recent election is also not lost on him. I can’t wait to see your needs being prioritized against his bloodlust for U.S. nationalism in a setting of his bruised ego.
Yesterday I was asked yet again what I would do if Donald Trump wins re-election in 2020. It is one of my least favorite questions. It is an outcome I cannot fathom and prefer to ignore. It makes me consider the desirability of living in a state that might secede from the Union as well as my willingness to forgo my beloved American citizenship in favor of taking up some foreign nationality. That is something very sad and serious to me and simply too much to rationally contemplate. It makes my angst over moving from the East Coast to the West Coast seem like child’s play. For some, a simple tax advantage could prompt such consideration, but for a man who grew up as an expat longing for repatriation, it is very hard. I would sooner join some local Red Dawn group to fight off the invading Trumpian hordes.
So, I will go to the border in February and stand in line for my right to glide through immigration on my next trip abroad. I will treasure my status as a recognized and “bonded” traveler. My mother came back to the United States from Venezuela specifically to allow me to be born in the United States (in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1954). I will not take that effort and trivialize it by wondering if I might choose to give up my citizenship. I only know myself as an American. I am as American as anyone I know, and I mean that in the most positive definition of the term. Tomorrow I will start my trek across the United States. I will start in New York and then drive through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and finally, California. That is 2,818 miles and 13 of the 48 continental states (27% by count) and it represents four dark blue, three light blue, and six red states. I think that qualifies as a trip across the full breadth of America as we currently know it.
I don’t believe I have the time over the next four days to do much polling, but I will make a point of observing what I can about the political climate across the country as it makes itself evident. I am expecting to still find the fundamental goodness of America I believe exists at its core. I think the people rallying and demonstrating represent the fringes, but the people who go to work, smile and lend a helping hand are far more prevalent. They are also people who need me to stand with them and make this a better place rather than to take the easy path of taking a global exit for my own convenience.
