Okay, guys. We foreigners know you’re in a bad situation. You’re sitting in a small office that smells like mold in the spring, frost in the winter, sweat and shit in the summer, and the flu in the fall. If you’re lucky you can pilfer a pencil from your meagre budget and your boss is a sadist. You would like to learn computers but all they give you is a little notebook with a picture of a computer on it. Your sweater is thin and so is your hair, your wife bugs you and you can’t afford to get a new one (or get her new shoes).

We accept, therefore, that we are to be treated like the scum of the earth for walking in with our new shoes, fancy sunglasses, and the smell of high-quality soap that has not been contaminated by mildewed ceiling falling on our heads and shoulders all day. We accept that fate is cruel and that we deserve to be humiliated every so often.

But there are limits.

Acceptable forms of humiliation to be inflicted by civil servants on foreigners are:

- Making us wait until the very last minute to get our visas renewed, even though this will cause us to accomplish even less than we presently are because we have to keep going into your office;
- Making us wait for up to 12 hours outside of your office in the freezing sleet / burning heat / stifling stench of the nearby latrines / wherever (’cause you know we came in the Land Cruiser anyway
- Accusing us of being spies (preferably of some highly reputed spy agency, and not for opposition militia groups, but whatever);
- Accusing us of doing nothing for the country, and saying that you could do much more with the money;
- Sighing very loudly every time you turn the page of our passports, and looking at every single visa and stamp one by one, then looking up at us as though we had entry stamps for Guantanamo Bay or something;
- Flirting with us and making positively disgusting sexual innuendos, touching hands or feet, and/or scratching your balls meaningfully in our presence;
- Asking for money, either obviously or in some sneaky way (”It seems you have incurred a fine for folding the visa in the corner…”);
- Insulting the way we dress, or our countries’ politics, or our culture, or our countrymen (”Please, tell me, why are all Americans fat? And then they wear such horrible clothes on top of it…”);
- Losing our applications for visas or travel permits or registration;
- Lying about when something or someone will be back;
- Forcing us to answer many political questions designed to make us look either like racists, colonialists, warmongers, or all three, or like total traitors;
- Giving us advice about our personal lives, such as that we ought to be married, or not, or should have children, etc. although for all you know we might be widowed with six miscarriages;
- Hiding and having your secretary say you are out for lunch.

Not acceptable:

- Insulting our family members’ honor (against the basic human sense of honor)
- Touching our private parts or talking about touching our private parts, or rape (honor, cleanliness)
- Losing our passports, tearing out pages, or defacing our passports so that we cannot leave the country (criminal- those belong to the countries of origin, and they are not our personal property)
- Name-calling (e.g. slut, whore, son of a bitch, etc.) (honor)

On the in-between list, depending on the context:

- Refusing to give us a visa for no reason, though we have signed contracts for the visa (certainly allowed but quite a dreadful thing to do to someone who has come to help your country, or at least spend money there);
- Trying to convert us to your religion, and getting miffed if we do not convert.

I invite all my well-traveled friends to add their advice to civil servants here. I have been the victim of all of the acceptable forms of humiliation, and recently, two of the unacceptable (passport loss, temporary, and insulting family honor- scarred forever). What about you?