The Pieces of Paper that Define Where We Can Live and Who We Can Love

Twenty-nine years ago, my biological being came into existence and I was issued with a birth certificate – my first official piece of paper to say that I existed. I became a British citizen by being born to British parents in the UK. I did not choose for this to happen, but now that it has happened, I am freely permitted to live on pieces of land that cover 241,930 km – approximately 0.0474% of the world’s surface, or 0.1624% of the world’s land mass. To put that into perspective, I cannot freely choose to live on 99.8376% of the world’s land area without getting permission first. [Note: I have excluded Europe from the figures where considering where I can live due to the upsetting turmoil regarding Brexit that is currently occuring.]

A few years after I became a statistic, another biological being came into existence. Sadly her papers were issued on the opposite side of the Atlantic ocean. What this means is that these two members of the same species are separated by invisible walls and thus, are not able to live in the same part of the planet without first getting permission. Which turns out to be very difficult. In order to be together, we have lived in Turkey, South Korea, and Australia, as well as visiting tens of other countries in between. And in the hope of continuing to be together, I have spent tens of hours compiling hundreds of pieces of paper to apply for a visa that will cost around £3,500.

How does it happen that we live on a planet where we separate ourselves with imaginary walls, defined by the pieces of paper that we have? We sit in our houses watching the bad news and think of bad people and how they should be stopped. Over the past five years I have probably hitchhiked more than 500 rides in thirty or so countries – and every single person I met had something good about them. No matter their race, wealth, religion, education, nationality, or anything else you can separate people by, they were all human beings. And we were able to connect because we minimised our preconceptions of one another – I was someone on the side of the road, asking for a ride, and they were someone who was kind enough to give me a lift.

I have heard some funny things on the news recently, despite trying to avoid it. One American gentleman – who has the potential to become very powerful – recently said, “I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me –and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” It troubles me that humans have become so divided that there are people who think like this. I am aware of many issues that arise when a country experiences heavy immigration – but where is the humanity in such a view? Because of our pieces of paper, we write off people who have different pieces of paper and we dehumanise them. Every single human on this planet has a story, has hopes and fears, and many of them try to make the best of their life. If we were to take the time to listen to other people’s stories, we would see how much good there is in the world and its people. There are many people who do bad things to other people, but these are not the majority – yet these terrible acts make us afraid of each other.

A few years ago I was in Istanbul during the riots around Taksim Square. I was walking through the debris of burnt police vans, smashed buses, and paving ripped from the streets, talking to my Syrian friend. I thought what was happening was pretty mad (and quite exciting), but my friend was unfazed and he said to me, ‘Jamie, this is nothing. At home there are bullets and people are dying.’ He had left Syria to get away from that. If we were to turn off the news and meet the people we have preconceptions about, we would realise that every other person on this planet is a human being, just like us. How can we deny other humans the right to escape adversity and try for a better life, purely because of the pieces of paper that define who they are?

We are nothing but ghosts driving meat covered skeletons made of stardust, riding a rock floating through space. But sometimes we forget.

Update (21st November 2016): I may have found a solution…

By | 2016-11-21T17:57:30+00:00 July 31st, 2016|Thoughts and Inspiration|6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. tony 07/09/2016 at 16:27 - Reply

    Like a Dutch song about the situation in former Germany: only the birds fly from East to West- berlin, because sometimes they prefer being in the west, other times they’d rather be in East-Berlin

    • Jamie 09/09/2016 at 09:36 - Reply

      If only we had the same freedom.

  2. Aurore 29/08/2016 at 22:11 - Reply

    What you wrote is so true. It is hard for me to understand that there are “borders” “nationalities” “countries”, I prefer to talk about “places” “people” and “cultures”. We have all the advantages of our country but all the disavantages of being a stranger in other countries. The world is beautiful, the world is big and we are all citizens of this world. I would like everybody to be able to move freely as they want on this planet. I am myself Belgian and my boyfriend is Australian and I know how it is to get over all that problems of visas, paying more when you don’t study in your country, government’s rules and try to be with each other as much as we can. I wish you good luck with Leah but you proved as much as so many other people already that loves has no borders and wherever we are couples like you and me are loving each other with thousands of kilometres of distance.

    • Jamie 01/09/2016 at 07:10 - Reply

      I hear you, Aurore. And thank you – I wish you luck with your partner as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if our ID simply said ‘human’ instead of a nationality, helping to promote the idea that we are one and the same?

  3. kim 08/08/2016 at 20:15 - Reply

    Good luck with the application proces, and I hope you guys get to live together where you want. <3

    • Jamie 26/08/2016 at 01:32 - Reply

      Thank you, Kim. Sadly due to recent developments, it seems we will be unable to reside in the UK for the time being. Off to somewhere new again then!

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