Immigration

I was among the foreign masses washed up on the shores of Malaysia. In this case the ‘shores of Malaysia’ were represented by counter 24 of the Immigration office in Kuala Lumpur.

But masses there certainly were. The office that we were contained within was packed to capacity. 

There were other offices. For those that wished, like my beloved wife, to renew their passports there was another, considerably less crowded, office.

Another office was for the renewal of Foreign Worker Permit Renewal—mostly for maids and construction workers, it seems.

There is a lot of construction going on around us.

There are rules posted around the walls and behind most of the Immigration Officer’s desks. These rules concern the type of dress code that is expected when you visit this Government establishment. There was also, I noted, a poster at the main entrance with a similar form of pictorial description of the sort of clothes that one should not wear.

Of course, once you get there it is now a bit late to go home and change, is it not?

Consequently there were several young ladies (I saw no men wearing short skirts or sleeveless tops) that might be regarded as being inappropriately dressed.

But what is their alternative? They usually leave coming for their visa renewal or application at the last minute so turning around and going home to change is not a real option.

I did note that the attention of several men was upon a couple of those young ladies—especially the couple that were, how shall we say, a shade more buxom than the others. Some of the men hid behind their mobile ‘phones to look, others used newspapers but all were certain that they did not want their wives to notice that their attention was straying. You can imagine the conversation on the way home would be a little… sensitive?

Some people brought children. Children? Here? Did they not believe that the little ones might become bored?

A few of these children were supplied with sugary treats to try and purchase their good graces. This fails on two counts.

Firstly, the child does not understand blackmail or enticement. It only understands ‘want, gimme, got, more—now’. If some treat was available then there must be more available now. NOW!

Secondly, the child is now in the valuable possession of what is called a ‘sugar rush’. This leads to even more excitable and physical behaviour. The wild antics of the child will soon degenerate into the well-known ‘tantrum’ that can only be assuaged by the application of even more sugary treats.

I wonder if they have a dental plan!

A guy in front of us started coughing. I had visions of Beloved and I spending time under medication three days hence. We moved. The guy behind me had gas. It was rank. We moved again.

They shut the office for lunch. It is impossible to blame the staff. Rather than closing down some counters and keeping the flow going they had a plan to shut everything down, turn off the lights and lock the doors. After looking at a succession of sad faces and endless sob-stories they had had enough. Close up and go for a meal.

Good plan.

We went to the restaurant downstairs. The food was ‘done’ rather than ‘cooked’. But it was food. It was also a respite from the packed odours of the office upstairs. The level of noise hardly abated but it was not so odiferous and the space between people was rather more distant.

An hour later the doors burst open and we poured, like a glutinous stream of human detritus, back into the office to await, once more, our turn to see an official.

As usual the one we saw was polite, kind, helpful. How do they do it? By this time of day, having been subjected to this torrent of anguish for several hours, I should have been willing to leap over the counter and pummel the applicant into the ground.

We left.

Freedom.

We have to go back in the next few weeks but, for now, we are out in the sunshine. We are not pressed up against some foreign person who has yet to be instructed in the use of toilet arrangements in this, civilised, World.

Next time you see a photo of an idyllic, sun-drenched beach in a tropical paradise and yearn to lie on it in your retirement remember that it is not all sunshine and roses.

Sometimes it is diseased foreigners and screaming children.