Recently a Canadian student was stopped three times in two weeks while crossing the border into the US. According to her account of the experience, the border guards were particularly interested in the condoms she was carrying, the lingerie packed in her suitcase, and the fact that she was traveling with a married man who was not her husband. They assumed, in other words, that she was coming to the US for sex work. That denied, they chastised her for being an adulteress, implied that her academic work on sexual assault suggested that she wanted to be assaulted, and interrogated her for hours.

As a writer working on crowd-funding a project on sexual assault it seems within the realm of possibility that the student gave the border guards a tough time and that they ramped up their response as a result. But let’s be clear. There was no reason to suspect that the student was planning or had ever planned any terrorist activities. There was no evidence that she was engaging in sex work (which, yes, should be legal anyway). She was carrying birth control and the kind of frilly underthings that are probably in the laundry piles of women all over the US. For that, she has been told that she now needs a visa to enter the US or she can be banned from entering the country for 5 years.

“To this,” to quote Menotti’s great opera The Consul, “we’ve come.”

And it is Menotti’s masterwork that I think of whenever I read stories like that, or watch videos like this.

The Consul tells the story of Magda Sorel who is trying desperately to get a visa to allow her to leave her country and go…anywhere else. In the famous aria you can listen to here, she expresses the agony of every immigrant and every refugee.

Papers!  Papers!  Papers!
But don’t you understand?
What shall I tell you to make you understand?
My child is dead…John’s mother is dying…
My own life is in danger.  I ask you for help.
And all you give me is…papers!
What is your name?  Magda Sorel.
Age?  Thirty-three.
Color of eyes?  color of hair?
Single or married?  Religion and race?
Place of birth?  Father’s name?  Mother’s name?
Papers! Papers! Papers!

As the wife of a political dissident, the stakes are potentially much higher for the fictional Sorel than they are for the Canadian student with the saucy smalls or for the various DHS checkpoint refusers. But stories about heavily armed tinpot bureaucrats hassling ordinary people at border crossings and internal checkpoints–plenty worrying on their own account–should make us all worry even more about what is facing immigrants and travelers for whom the stakes are higher. Reason Magazine published an effective and disturbing graphic in 2008 that brought this home. I doubt the wait times are any shorter today.

Those who are responsible for US immigration policies and for regulations governing travel within and to our “sea-washed sunset gates” could do worse than listen to Menotti’s opera while studying that graphic. They do worse, every day.

What is your name?  Magda Sorel.
Age?  Thirty-three.
What will your papers do?
They cannot stop the clock.
They are too thin an armor against a bullet.
What is your name?  Magda Sorel.
Age?  Thirty-three.
What does it matter?
All that matters is that the time is late,
that I’m afraid and I need your help.
What is your name?  What is your name?  What is your name?
This is my answer: My name is woman.
Age: still young.
Color of hair: gray.
Color of eyes: the color of tears.
Occupation: waiting.
Waiting, waiting, waiting!
Waiting, waiting, waiting!