Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Driving from our house to the grandmother's house, we stopped by a gas station to get cash and pao de queijo. Brief aside - pao de queijo are these little round cheese breads made from three different kinds of manioc flours and fresh cheese. They are the junk food of choice here - you eat them in the movies, at the bakery, when you just need a quick pick me up. I will miss them when we move back to Minneapolis NEXT WEEK.

But anyhow, we stopped by the gas station and while I was waiting for my friend, Anthony, to get money out of the cash machine, I browsed the post card rack on the wall. Now, post cards racks here usually mean advertising. Upcoming plays, movies, new products get advertised on lovely glossy postcards that are free and many of which you can actually use like real postcards. How cool is that!

One of the glossy numbers caught my eye because of the return address: www. quebec.immigration.br On the front it said, in Portuguese of course, "Quebec invites you to immigrate! We are open for you!!" Then, if you turn it over, there is a little introductory paragraph about how lovely Quebec is then it says, "Why immigrate? Because.." followed by bullet points, "You will be respected for who you are here, it is safe, we speak French, you can get training for work and there are plenty of jobs." Then the postcard directed you to a website where you could take a quick online test and find out if you can pack your bags and leave Brazil for Quebec.

I have never and I mean never seen an advertisement for immigration. Change that - I have seen signs in Ireland inviting Irish ex-pats to come home. I have seen flyers when living in England telling you how easy it was to work for a few years in Australia, here's how you do it, but don't stay more than two years. I have seen many many signs asking people to stay, please, don't emigrate somewhere else. And, of course and not only recently, I have seen millions of signs saying we don't want immigrants. But I have never seen a postcard advertising easy immigration.

It makes me think of the 19th century - posters posted in southern and eastern Europe begging folks to come do the cheap ass jobs. Land rushes and false advertising.

Rocki and I talked about going on line and seeing if we could immigrate to Quebec. But then we got nervous: what if we filled out the forms and the Quebecois found us favorable. What if we then disconnected without following through on the immigration. Would someone show up at our house, banging on the door, "Hey, you said you wanted to come live with us, we have your apartment and job ready. Where did you?"

It's a strange thing. This world of begging-immigration. I've never seen it before and, seeing as how we're returning to the States NEXT WEEK, I don't expect to see it again.