Current Nationality

So I’m on the plane to Mexico, and we’re all busily filling out those little visa forms, where you need to confirm that you have never single-handedly attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, or at least that if you did you now regret it. I’ve been travelling for about 24 hours at this point, which included a 6 hour stopover in Washington Dulles Airport (Dulles by name…), and I’m tired, grumpy and generally not in the mood to be trapped in a steel cylinder 32,000 feet above the Earth with a bunch of overweight Americans.

You see, that’s the problem. Not the Mexicans returning home to their families after a brief business trip to Washington, or the travellers in beads hoping to find themselves in the land of the Aztecs, but the fat, pasty middle-Americans determined to go down to Mexico for some sun, booze and free dentistry. The kind of guys who see a neighbour with severe political, social and economic problems as a bonus, since at least the local mamasitas will be impressed by their dollar bills.

I work my way down the form, ticking the relevant boxes and trying to print my block capitals neatly. And then I hear this shrieking from behind me:

“Current nationality? What does that mean? I mean, what’s my current nationality?”

“I think it just means your nationality”

“Well then why the heck don’t they say that? Gosh… these Mexicans make it all so confusing…”

Soccer mum sitting behind me evidently finds is shocking, and confusing, that these damn wetbacks don’t even know that nationality is Eternal, much like the stars and stripes she has flying in her front lawn next to her picket fence.

And I sit their pondering whether I should point out that all white Americans are immigrants somewhere along the line, and that for all of them, ‘American’ is only their ‘current’ nationality.

Nah...