Today's Level of Inferno: Immigration

During our orientation, one of the organizers told us that Martinique is a Paradise, but that it also has seven Infernos. While I don't think that the metaphor completely jives with the classic literary work, I will say that the observation has been a recurring joke amongst the assistants. The Inferno I finished traversing only yesterday was entitled: Immigration, or, if you had a president who bought into the myth that immigrants are refusing to assimilate into your culture, OFII: Office of Immigration and Insertion.
In order to understand immigration here, one must first appreciate the rigamarole that is Immigration in the capital. When I lived in Paris for a year, I arrived with some important paperwork that had been stamped by the embassy in the States as well as an entry visa in my passsport. I sent off the stamped paperwork with a host of other documents - proof of residence, proof of enrollment, proof that my mother's first cousin wasn't an alien, etc - to OFII right after I arrived, in the first week of September. At the end of October I received a letter summoning me to the immigration office in Paris in late November. There, even an hour before my appointment, the waiting room was full of people and a crowd of folks without an appointment were trying to get their affairs sorted, waiting outside the door surrounded by National Guardsmen with automatic guns. The appointment functioned like an assembly line. First, I waited to have a rude lady take my paperwork and briskly ask me questions. Then, I was moved to another waiting room. Then, a couple of nurses very matter-of-factly took X-rays of my lungs (twice, because a smudge from my old T.B. infection appeared ... ) Then I was sent to another waiting room. Then, somebody quickly took my vitals and asked me about my health - and actually made small talk. Then I was moved to another waiting room, where a bunch of other immigrants were being yelled at. Finally, I was called into one last room where a lady confirmed my identity, slapped my residency sticker into my passport, then shooed me away. Having arrived before 8 a.m. by subway, I was completely immigrated and free to have a late lunch the same day.
Martinique went a little bit differently.
First, my paperwork wasn't sent off until the first week of October, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive a summons by email for the last week of October - given, I only had a week's warning, and it was during school vacation, so several assistants didn't make it to their appointments because of the late announcement. There's no subway and the bus system doesn't come close, so I walked over an hour to a regular medical center a little bit out of the suburb of the capital. It wasn't an immigration center at all, just a medical center, where immigrating persons were waiting with regular residents. I waited to get into a waiting room, which opened, of course, late. Then a very polite lady took my info and ensured that I knew what was going on. Then she called me to a different waiting room. Then a very soft-spoken nurse took my chest X-ray. Then I went back to the first waiting room. Then I was given a physical copy of my X-ray, which I've never had in my hands before, and sent very vaguely to another building. I went to a new building and waited, only to be told I had been in the wrong waiting room and have to go to a different doctor's office. There I waited in a waiting room until I was called into a random regular practitioner's office. He very politely took my vitals and asked me about my health in general, ensuring that I understood how the medical system worked in case I needed anything. Then, when he sent me out, I asked for my residency sticker for my passport. He laughed in my face. Oh, no, he explained, he had to fill out a form, which had to be snail-mailed to OFII, who would then write me a new summons to go to a different appointment. I went home no more legally a resident than I had been before.
Finally, last week I received by email a second summons to a different office, this one mercifully in the capital, and completely unguarded and accessible from the street. Yesterday, I arrived early only to find that the office wasn't open yet and the secretary was bewildered that someone would be there so soon. Only a handful of assistants were there. Finally, several minutes after the first appointment was to have started, a representative from the OFII in Guadeloupe, whom the state apparently paid to arrive by boat or plane, came in. She discussed at length with the secretary that if anybody without an appointment came in, it was in fact alright, but they'd have to wait until she was done with her appointments. She calmly walked us up the stairs and asked us to sit for a moment while she got ready. Then she called me into her office, made some small talk about Martinique, asked me how work was going, and ensured that I understood what steps I had to take if I wanted to renew my visa as she filled out her paperwork and put my residency sticker in my passport. Then she told me goodbye, and I had to remind her to give me my medical certificate, saying I'd gone to the medical appointment last month. She very kindly thanked me for reminding her and explained to me in what cases I might need it. I was out of there within five minutes, a completely immigrated resident.
As is said here, aux Caraïbes, on n'est jamais pressé. The process here took two individual visits out of my way on weekdays, as, as a New Yorker at heart who fetishizes my time, that annoys the crap out of me. Not to mention, there were a thousand loopholes for things to get lost - going to one appointment but not another, bureaucrats forgetting or misplacing paperwork, physical X-rays to get lost. Yet, officials were actually nice to me, which, after Paris, is pretty nice, too.