Why are there so many shady people in this world? And I mean, mindless shadiness. Where there's no benefit to the shady person to be shady but he's shady anyway. It's worse than the law of the jungle - eat or be eaten - because even this simple axiom has the benefit of life preservation.
I hate to rag on Pakistanis in particular, but this is one قوم that will choose the illegal way to do something even when the legal way is just as convenient. I have been told ہم کاغذات بنوادینگے and ان کو کیا معلوم and other such nonsense so many times that I've lost tolerance for it. It's like people don't understand that I'm not going to lose my license just because they're too stupid to understand what I'm telling them.
I seen a social security card with the ink spelling "Valid for DHS work authorization only" literally scraped off the blue paper (apparently some Nigerian guy in Prince George's county performs this service for the modest fee of $300). What's the point in doing this? You're illegal anyway. You got no visa, no status, just a doctored SS card. Your old SS card would have been fine to work with. You get no added benefit by doctoring it. Brilliant!
Another time I seen a guy with an arrival/departure card with a date of departure of 3 months before (because he had "friends"). Then he tells me I'm gonna go get a new stamp on my passport from my friends and I'll be back to see you in 2 weeks and you can file for my visa. Nope!
Once a couple comes in to my office saying they wanted to get married and the husband wanted to sponsor the wife for a green card, and my secretary asks the "husband" what his "wife's" name is, since she apparently didn't speak English, and the "husband" asks her, in English, "What's your name?" Come on!
And these people are so pushy, they try so hard to persuade me to further their shady enterprises. But I always remember the example of Manlin Chee, a Greensboro immigration lawyer - and strong supporter of the Muslim community - whose career was cut short by an FBI sting operation in which two undercover agents threw lots of money and sob stories to Ms. Chee to persuade her to file fake marriage-based green card cases. Now personally, if a Muslim guy comes in and throws me a $20,000 retainer for a job that's worth $2,000 max, I will know something is wrong, cos our boys never like to pay their lawyers (but that's a separate blog entry altogether) but - in the end, Ms. Chee fell for it, and the agents were wired, and they dismantled her career in just a few months.
So I try to use my best judgment to stay away from shady people, but let me be the first to tell you, a Muslim lawyer with a largely Muslim clientele is hard pressed to avoid shadiness, and I think that's pathetic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
i had an editor ar the gazette who was liberian, and we would joke about which was a more corrupt country, pakistan or liberia.
but we agreed that either could only have second place, because nigeria left everyone in the dust...
and, "I seen"? i let the first one go, coulda been a typo, but twice?
because i see grammar as a suggestion rather than a rule...
ar har... take a look at this site that baji just blogged about...
OK I now can understand what shadiness is more clearly than before and scam still evades me
I am sorrybut I would not like to see your frustrations in the blogs. Pakistanis have xcelled in shadiness yes but there may be some reasons for that in the history but I am going to write my own impression see my blog later
So true. And when you live in pakistan, you get pushed around from clerk to clerk - the ghareeb sadah admi/aurat just gets shoved around because they don't have sifarish or rishvat. It's like you can't get by if you're not willing to play ball. Here, at least you can use the law to get away from these folks. There, the law's on their side. (Unless you pay more).
like, what's the point of having a blog if you don't blog?
yeah, ayesha, man. ain veen taking up blog space ...
But as an excessively prolific blogger, I say celebrate your freedom - blog or do not blog as you WISH. Hai azadi. mujhe blog kumbel hogaya hai.
Post a Comment