Radio Workshop

Consulates on the Move (Transcript)

by Carla Sapsford

NATSOUND

[2 seconds of Jose Carlos]

NARRATION

Jose Carlos is a Brazilian construction worker, and he has come to this Danbury Connecticut community center to register this upcoming marriage. He has come to use the latest innovation in consular service: the itinerant consulate. He asks consulate worker Tereza Costa how to register his upcoming marriage. He is a brawny fellow, with paint-splattered cargo pants and a shy smile. Tereza is a petite woman with short wavy hair and a no-nonsense but patient manner. There are about 40 other people in the room waiting to see her. Rather than taking a whole day off to travel to Manhattan, Jose Carlos and his countrymen showed up in this small town in CT to handle their paperwork. Normally, the community center is a part-time party space and watering hole. Today it is a consulate, performing every function that the main one does. Lines are inevitable here, too.

NATSOUND

[2 seconds of guy tapping out samba tune on the bar]

NARRATION

One man taps out a samba tune on the wooden bar that stretches across the side of the room, leaning on it as he waits for Tereza to get to him. There are waves of visitors here to see her, the only consular staffperson sent out to these itinerant consulates. Tereza IS their one-woman consulate, traveling over five states to meet many of the 300,000 Brazilians wherever they live and work.

This Thursday the consulate is taking place in a community center, although the consulate also uses banks, restaurants and churches - wherever Brazilians congregate. Delicate Brazilian lace dangles from these windows, and the atmosphere is warm and cozy. Compare this scenario with the main consulate in Midtown.

NATSOUND

[People milling, blaring of a number being called, fade out under narration]

NARRATION

Just traveling to the Manhattan consulate and waiting in a long line, hoping you'll be seen by the end of the day, is more like visiting the dentist. So in order to better serve their community, the Brazilian staffers are on the move. Simple transactions that Americans take for granted, like signing a legal document, can become a legal nightmare for an immigrant without a nearby consulate. But once people started flocking to the temporary consulates, the tide could not be stemmed.

There are other reasons Brazilians have been nervous about visiting the main consulate. Andre Guimaraes is the Vice Consul.

TAPE/Guimaraes

In the past, especially during the military government, people used to be afraid of the consulate, because they used to think that we worked for the Americans, for example. That we would give their info. to the INS.

NARRATION

The itinerant consulate is a hit, by most reports. Relations between citizens and their governments here have never been better, by most reports. Silvio da Silva is the publisher of the Newark Newspaper "The Brazilian Press".

TAPE/da Souza

It help a lot. Because a lot of people, anything you need you got to go to New York. Not easy to go to New York. A lot of people come from Pennsylvania. They got to go over there to get it. So it's much easier here.

NARRATION

But these consulates may be victims of their own success. All of the area consulates that have this itinerant program say that demand for their services skyrocketed once people saw the value, like getting an identification card for an undocumented worker without a driver's license. Andre Guimaraes.

TAPE/Guimaraes

We reach a point where we will have no solution than we have to move to a bigger place, or having other consulates...It is difficult. I tell my consulate general, that in two years our space will be very very small.

NARRATION

The itinerant consulate may be the most innovative thing consulates have done for their citizens - ever. Both sides seem to win - the consulate gains the trust of its citizens, and the immigrant gains a home away from home. Carla Sapsford, for Columbia Radio News.