Trip to the Foreign Police

Bratislava, Tuesday 6 October

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.

Having given our paperwork over to the nice facilitators at E.R.I. on Friday morning, Monday was the big day when we were to visit the Foreign Police to submit them and have our bio-metric data recorded. This should be easy, right? Hand in the paperwork and have our fingerprints taken.

Nooooo way! What an ordeal! I think Suzanne has more scars from this experience than I do, but even I found it to be at the same time eye-opening, dehumanizing, and immensely frustrating. It was a little like a miniature of what Ellis Island must have been like, except that we had a wonderful, English-speaking chaperon Beáta to lead us (sometimes literally by the hand) through the process. Her livelihood is taking foreigners to the Foreign Police office the three days a week that they are open, and she is very good at it. Very simply, there is no possible way that we could have gotten through this process without her.

It started for us at 7:15, when we arrived at the Foreign Police office in Petržalka, the rather frumpy district of Bratislava where the university is located, across the Danube from the old city. The office is a dumpy, low building of socialist vintage, crumbling in places but, I guess, ultimately functional. The morning started much earlier for Beáta's family; her son got in line for us (and for Tony, another American they were representing on Monday) sometime before 5am. But the "line" worked in mysterious ways. Most of the time, it was more of a crowd with no obvious order. The office nominally opens at 7:30, but no one was actually processed until at least 8:30 or 9:00. Some time about 7:30, Beáta and her counterparts from other similar companies went to the front of the line and were allowed inside the building. I can only speculate on what happened during the next hour, but I suspect there was a lot of horse-trading as the various chaperons negotiated their positions. At about 8:10, Suzanne got a phone call from Beáta inside saying that they were going to issue 19 numbers today to the much-longer-than-that queue of customers. We didn't know whether to be worried or not.

Some time around 8:30, people started going in, crowding the door to the point that we were being squeezed between those behind and those in front. The police allowed about 15 people in and then one of them put his hand across the door to prevent further entry ... just as we got to the door. Beáta was inside signaling frantically to us to come in and even came to take Suzanne's hand to pull her in. So we ducked under the policeman's arm-barrier and scooted into the room, with the policeman shouting at us in Slovak (which we could honestly ignore because we didn't understand it). We took tickets from the machine: 323 and 324, and they were starting at 301. It looked like we were out of luck if they were only taking 19 numbers: we would have to start over on Wednesday.

But we stood with Tony in the crowded anteroom filled with hopeful temporary immigrants for about 30 minutes. There seemed to be no one going into the inner chambers where the actual business was (or, actually, was not) being transacted. Suddenly the number board above the door flashed into action: 301! At that point, around 9:00, Beáta raced across the room, swooped us both up by the arms, and led us into the inner sanctum. Whatever happened in the anteroom between 7:30 and 8:30, she ended up with the first number and was using it to get first us, then Tony, through the process.

There were three windows in the office staffed by three pleasant-looking young female police officers, plus one window on the side that occasionally opened for what seemed like quick transactions and was run by a rather grumpy-looking older male officer. Beáta was camped in front of the first window with our massive file of documentation. Suzanne and I sat helplessly on the only two chairs in the room, about five feet from her on the back wall. We understood absolutely nothing of what went on in the next hour and half. The officer handling our case asked many, many questions. Beáta answered them and, periodically, raced across the room to the man's station to discuss something with him. We heard the name "Fulbright" mentioned numerous times, but understood nothing else except her occasional "Ano" or Nie" (yes or no).

At one point, Beáta came to us and commented that they were suspicious of the authenticity of Suzanne's visa stamp. I guess the Danish need to re-ink their stamp pads more often! The processing of our application was no doubt delayed by the fact that the officer handling our case was training a new officer, and had to explain every step of the process to her as well as doing the processing herself. Even with the training delays, I really, really can't imagine how it could take 90 minutes to accept our application materials. They must have checked the spelling on every word of the translations, cross-checked every birth date, etc. Maybe they even tried to call our siblings and children using the information on the form. (Did any of you get a call in the middle of the night on Monday?) Or maybe they were trying to contact our deceased parents.

About 9:15 Beáta asked Suzanne "Are you also a teacher or are you here to take care of the family?" She had coached us on this point and that Suzanne was to say "family," which she dutifully did. About 9:30 Beáta called me to the desk to sign my application form. Then back to the seat. Finally, around 10:00, after an hour of sitting in the hot little office worrying, she signaled for me to come to the little kiosk off of the main room to have my bio-metric identification information taken. The young woman there spoke good enough English and expeditiously took my photo, fingerprints, and signature. Then I was dismissed with Beáta's admonition to send Tony in to replace me. I waited in the anteroom for another 20 minutes or so until Suzanne finally emerged at about 10:30, ending one of the least enjoyable three hours we ever remember. I cannot imagine how Beáta can fight this fight (with the same pleasant-looking young and grumpy-looking old officers) every day. I hope that she is well paid.

We are so thankful for Beáta and that the Fulbright Commission arranged for her to facilitate this process. Had we showed up at the Foreign Police office, not speaking much Slovak and not having someone to arrange for us to be at or near the front of the line, we would never have gotten inside. And if we ever managed to get inside, we would never have been able to respond to the unintelligible inquisition that Beáta managed effectively on our behalf.

Of course, the process is not over. This was just the submission of our application, not the approval. If it took two hours of scrutiny just to verify that we could apply, how many days of debate will it take before they actually make a decision? The Foreign Police now have 30 days to decide whether to grant us a residency permit. If they decide in the affirmative, then we have to bring in all of our medical forms, indicating that we have been tested for lots of diseases and vaccinated against others, plus the forms showing that we are covered by medical insurance while in Slovakia. If all of that is in order, then perhaps we will actually receive the coveted residency permits, which will allow us to stay in Slovakia another couple of months past the automatic 90-day tourist visas.

It's tempting, and might be true, to say that the Slovak authorities learned to complicate bureaucratic procedures under Communist central planning. Wherever they learned them, it is clearly something they do brilliantly well. If one were cynical (and if one listened long enough to the bellicose rhetoric with which Prime Minister Robert Fico denounces the possibility of accepting Syrian refugees) one might be tempted to conclude that they make the process of residency deliberately impossible in order to discourage immigration. It's a process that I would not ever want to go through again.

As you can probably tell, we have reached the stage in our stay where "Oh, that's different and interesting" has started to give way to "Why in the world would they do it like that?" but we have not yet arrived at "Well, Slovakia is just different and now we're used to it." I imagine that we will get to that final stage eventually. But perhaps with the culture as well as with our Slovak language skills, we'll just be starting to get comfortable about the time that we head home in February. And yes, Bratislava has its charms, but it's not (yet) home.