Passport Racism

In the Bulgarian city of Varna, I met three different foreigners on a single day.

The first was an Indian Gujarati couple who owned an Indian grocery store. Familiar smells of Indian spices pulled me into the shop. You see such shops in London, to see one in Bulgaria was a surprise.

“We’re trying to cultivate a taste for Indian food among Bulgarians.” Said Mr Shah, the shop owner. “This country has very few Indians, only some students. Bulgarians have little knowledge about Indian spices or masalas.” Mr Shah was born in Kenya. In the 19^th century, thousands of Indian workers were taken to Africa. They were called “indentured labourers”, a euphemism for slaves. Over the next two centuries, many of their hard working successors prospered, and moved to Europe in search of a better civilisation. Mr Shah has his parents and brothers in the UK.

“We like Bulgaria. We are settled here for the past ten years.” He said. “It was easy for us, with our British passports, to move here once Bulgaria joined the European Union.”

*****

Two hours later, we were inside a bookshop “Shakespeare and friends”. The store stocked books in Bulgarian, Russian, English, and French. Diana, who owns this charming little place, is an elderly and energetic American from Seattle. In the 1990’s, she used to live and work in Moscow, as a journalist for the Moscow Times, Russia’s authentic English language newspaper. We were thrilled to learn she and I were in Moscow at the same time for almost ten years. Diana later moved to London, and ten years ago, decided to move to Bulgaria for good.

“After Moscow,” she said to me, “I didn’t like living in London at all. The West doesn’t have the charm of Eastern Europe. I love Bulgaria - a quiet, nice place. And people here are warm.”

*****

Bulgaria may be Europe’s poorest country. But it is culturally rich. In terms of historical heritage, the three richest countries are Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. The cities of Sofia and Plovdiv are built around well maintained ancient archaeological sites. Each Bulgarian city offers a “free walking tour” led by professional guides, who as a rule are young but experienced history graduates. On one such tour, I met an Italian gentleman, probably in his sixties. We walked together in Varna, and bumped into each other in Sofia.

He explained his tour of Bulgarian cities. “I’m exploring the country because I wish to settle here. I’ve a pension of 2000 Euros in Italy. And a disgusting percentage of that is grabbed by the Italian government as tax. Bulgaria has no tax on pension. I’ll soon move to Varna, probably rent a place in the beginning. Even if I fly to Italy every weekend, I would still save a lot more money than if I were to live in Italy.” he smiled.

*****

 The Gujarati grocer from the UK, the American bookshop owner and the Italian pensioner have made or will make Bulgaria home for their own benefit. Neither Indian spices nor English novels are a burning need in Bulgarian society. On the other hand, Bulgaria faces a huge labour shortage both in agriculture and industry. Bulgarians call themselves lazy, sometimes proudly.

Milena, the Plovdiv shop owner I mentioned in an earlier diary is a non-smoker. She hates employees smoking while attending to customers, or leaving the shop for a smoke-break (which is often). She said she tried for years to recruit non-smoking workers. That proved impossible. She asked the workers not to smoke during working hours. A customer enters the store and finds nobody, because the person supposed to serve him is outside, smoking.

“Finally I resigned.” She said. “If I don’t give up on my principles, I’ll have to shut all my shops.”

A Bulgarian farm owner told me his hectares remain uncultivated because he can’t get people to work on his farms or drive tractors.

*****

Fertile Bulgarian farms are short of workers. In my Indian state of Maharashtra, hundreds of farmers commit suicides every month. Is there any logical solution to these two problems?

The co-existence of unoccupied houses and homeless people, uncultivated lands and unemployed farmers, wasted food and hunger deaths is the tragedy of the world we live in. The chief reason for such contradictions is the restriction on free movement of people.

Philosophically speaking, each human being, each of us, exists on this planet and not in any particular country. An astronaut tried to locate his country from his spaceship. But all he could see was this beautiful mass of earth without boundaries, without countries. Countries and borders are a political fiction created by mankind. 

The European Union defines four fundamental freedoms for the union’s citizens: freedom of movement for capital, goods, services and people. Anyone from the 28 EU countries can travel to, work, reside or settle in any of the remaining 27 countries. That is the reason an Italian pensioner can so easily decide to migrate to Bulgaria.

What has happened inside the EU needs to happen on a worldwide basis. Russia, with 17% land in the world has only 2% of the world’s population. India with 17% of world’s population has only 2% of world’s land. Wouldn’t sending a few million Indian workers to Russia benefit both the countries? If European workers are not interested in working on Bulgarian farms, shouldn’t Bulgaria employ farm workers from Bangladesh or India? I am an advocate of a borderless world, not as an Indian, but as a student of economics. Open market and free competition should match the demand and supply curves; not fences, walls and visas.

The main objections to removing borders are that terrorists, refugees and other unwanted people of all kinds will enter the civilised world and spoil it. A poor man migrating to a rich country is a burden on that society.

Each argument has a flaw. Determined terrorists usually find the means to enter another country if they must. NATO countries indiscriminately bomb countries like Syria, and then complain about Syrian refugees entering them. This is absurd. Stop the wars, and you don’t need to worry about refugees.

An honest immigrant is not a burden if he is contributing to the country. He has a mouth to feed, but also a brain and two hands to work.

The major worry for Europe and America is migrant workers working longer and harder for less pay. In England, shopping hours were heavily regulated in the past. Trading on Sundays was illegal. But South Asian migrants were willing to operate the ‘mom and dad’ shops seven days a week, keeping long hours every day. That pressure ultimately forced the UK parliament to allow Sunday shopping. Over the years, the shop hours have become longer as well. Germany was worse. I remember walking hungrily on the streets of Frankfurt on a Sunday evening, with nothing - not even McDonalds - open. Throughout Europe, immigrant food workers have solved the weekend hunger problem.

Securing borders, building walls were measures to keep wages high, working hours short and protect the local population from competition. Protectionism made rich countries richer and poor countries poorer. The wages in those groups presented such a contrast that manufacturing was finally outsourced. Since you couldn’t get people from Bangladesh to the UK, you sent machinery from UK to Bangladesh to make things. In the 1990s, I could still buy running shoes made in the UK, now they are made exclusively in Bangladesh or Vietnam. This was followed by the internet revolution. Rich countries outsourced their back offices and call centres to poor countries. People who think a borderless world is a fantasy should look at Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg has revolutionised the world. Facebook has no borders.

Though free movement of people is still restricted, free movement of labour (in the form of outsourcing) is the norm of the 21^st century. Anything that can be outsourced from a high wages to a low wages area will be outsourced. Competition increasingly happens on a global, rather than on a national, scale.

*****

My main objection to protectionism is that it is on racial lines. An illiterate, uncultured Romanian can move freely in Western Europe, work anywhere, live anywhere. An educated Indian or African struggles to get a tourist visa which, if given, comes with conditions and a defined short term. All people from a single country are lumped together. I call this passport racism. I will end this week’s rambling with the story of a bizarre job interview I faced in 1995.

*****

At the beginning of 1995, a head hunter called me up out of the blue. I was living in Moscow and employed with BAT, a British multinational company. The expat network in Moscow was strong and active. It’s possible someone had given my name to this head-hunter. An American company was searching for a person to run its office in Russia. The office would be responsible for all former republics of USSR. The jobholder needed to be fluent in Russian, have a good understanding of finance and marketing, previous experience of travelling around Soviet republics for work. The head hunter, after talking to me for an hour, said I fit the bill. Would I mind meeting an American delegation at Hotel Baltschug Kempinski for dinner?

I said I didn’t mind. (A free dinner is always welcome). I met three American men over dinner the following week. They were probing but pleasant. We moved to a conference room after dinner. Our talk must have lasted three hours or so. They talked about the package, which was quite good. (Fortunately, they didn’t ask me what I was getting. British companies offer better perks, American companies give more cash).

“We would like you to attend one final interview in New York.” One of them said. “We will arrange for a business class ticket and a hotel close to our Manhattan office. The earlier date you can give us the better.”

“Thanks.” I said. “I’ll need some time. I don’t know how much time it’ll take for me to get an American visa.”

“Visa? What visa?” One of the gentlemen asked.

“I’m an Indian. I can’t travel to the USA without a visa.”

“Oh, I... we.... thought you were a British citizen. You work for BAT.”

I said that was not the case, sorry.

“All right, we’ll get back to you.” The head of the delegation said. All three cordially shook hands with me. I never heard from them again. My sense of dignity prevented me from contacting them or the head hunter. But I wondered why their faces fell on hearing I was an Indian rather than a British citizen. They seemed willing to employ me, a non-American, along with my skin colour, accent, and manners. But only as long as I had a respectable passport. After that job interview, I had coined the phrase ‘passport racism”.

 Ravi