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Happy New Year to all. I’ve had a December-To-Remember™️ and wanted to share some end-of-year updates.

Updates:

I’ve ended up back in Bethesda until January 5th for two reasons:

it’s important to see your family during the holidays and spend time with loved ones etc.
and (perhaps more importantly)

Kenyan Immigration Services™️ denied my initial application for a long term work permit, so I’m not, technically speaking, allowed to be in Kenya.
There’s an appeals process for the long-term work permit and I’m pretty confident about my second application, but still definitely super anxiety inducing. We’ve also applied for a second short-term work permit while my appeal for the long-term application is pending; I should be able to go back to Nairobi with the short-term permit, at least for a little bit.

I’ll head to Kigali Rwanda on January 5 for DIL’s education study. We have 2-3 months of work to do there so it’s unclear when I’ll be back in NBO.

My Work Permit

I’ll elaborate on the work permit debacle. I arrived in Kenya in September on a 3-month work permit while Immigration Services reviewed my application for a 2-year work permit. UChicago hires me through a shell-employment agency called Mauve; though I don’t actually work with anybody at Mauve, they are my official employer and as such they are responsible for handling all employment bureaucracy. This of course includes getting me a work permit.

Mauve applied for my 2 year work permit in late September and the application got denied on November 21st. Once we looked behind the curtain and inspected Mauve’s submission, it became clear that Mauve put negative effort into the initial application for my work permit.

Their work was sloppy and unacceptable – their documents were littered with typos and poor grammar; they also submitted my application with different job titles in different documents and made factual errors throughout the application materials.

Most concerning is that they didn’t consult me or UChicago HR about how best to frame our argument as to why I should get this work permit; they just wrote a single paragraph about me based on my CV and sent it in.¹ They made a weak argument on my behalf and their initial application warranted rejection.

The Immigration Authority has given us a chance to appeal the decision for a fee (a bribe, formalized) and we did so on December 17th. I sincerely think we’ve done a much more thorough job the second time around and I think we’ve submitted a strong appeals case. Mauve’s immigration lawyer’s official position is that I have about a 50/50 chance of getting approved and I’m choosing to err on the side of optimism. I’ll have plenty of time to be in a bad mood if I get rejected, so there’s no point in being gloomy before we even get a decision.

Your Christmas/Hanukkah present to me can be to send a prayer to the work-permit-gods; in exchange, if our prayers are answered, I’ll grab you a beer the next time we run into each other.

“We just have to bribe somebody, right?”

— Nathan to Nathan, after finding out that we have the opportunity to appeal the decision.

“Nathan, why are you freaking out about your visa? You should just talk to [and pay] My Visa Guy™️, he’ll get you sorted out”

– Everybody and their mother in Nairobi who heard about my visa debacle.

“Well, we know that some immigration advisory firms are more successful than others. The more successful ones are successful because they invest in facilitating good application outcomes [by paying public officials]. Maybe DIL should hire the advisory firm with the strongest track record and minimize the chances that Nathan gets denied again.”

– [REDACTED] while brainstorming potential policy solutions to my visa debacle

The obvious solution to this whole situation is to make some phone calls to the relevant public servants and financially encourage pro-Nathan immigration policy decisions. To make it clear, I’m fully aware that bribery is bad; I’m being petulant because I am pissed that things have gone slightly wrong in my situation. I understand that it’s wrong for bureaucrats to give a middle finger to basic principles of fairness that should hold civil society together. My willingness to participate in this corrosive institution, simply because it’s convenient for me, is bad.

However.

In our reality, where we’re forced to live, finding A Guy™️ in the Kenyan Immigration Authority to handle this removes all doubt and anxiety about whether I’ll get approved. While being morally reprehensible or whatever, bribery in low-income contexts maintains a strong appeal because it’s the only way to guarantee that you solve your problems. That’s doubly true if you need to make progress by overcoming low-functioning public services.

Have the cops pulled you over for nothing and won’t let you go? Is the disgruntled immigration agent harassing you at the border and won’t let you into the country, even though you have a valid visa? Do gangs rule your streets and you need to pay them a “protection fee?” Do you need to re-apply for a 2 year work permit because Mauve HR people couldn’t be bothered to do a thorough job? Bribery, almost by definition, gives you the best chance of an optimal outcome in all of those contexts.

I’m not even fully convinced that it’s that bad to make bribes to ensure that public servants administer public services. It’s not my job to make bureaucrats be ethical, upstanding public servants and they’re going to bully me and others whether I take a righteous moral stand or not. If we take our moral stand, they’re more likely to reject my application – they’ll happily solicit bribes from the next applicant. If we make the payment, they’ll disburse my visa and happily solicit bribes from the next applicant.²

I don’t see our righteous stand making a difference in the big-picture; either way the immigration official will bully the next applicant. The micro-level difference, of course, is whether I get to have my job and life in Nairobi, the way I signed up for.

Selfishly, I’d like to maximize my chances of receiving my work permit so I’m left thinking “who can we pay to move things along?” Of course, no matter what I think, UChicago will not be bribing public officials. All we can do is continue to pray to the work-permit-gods and hope for the best.

Below was me, grumpy, in the Istanbul airport on my way home, looking like I “got electrocuted.”³ I think it’s my favorite non-Japanese airport thus far. The food is nice, the space is light and open, and security was laid out really intuitively.

Hopefully you had a nice holiday period and are feeling refreshed and ready for the new year.

Cheers — Nathan


1
When we asked Mauve why they were comfortable submitting work of such low quality, their beautifully sincere response was,

“well we normally submit applications of way lower quality that get approved, so we don’t know what happened.”

Translation:

“Normally we proudly submit way shittier work than this and it works out, so I don’t see why you’re complaining’”

Chef’s kiss.

2
On a nerdy, game theory point: If you imagine this as a two-agent, simultaneous move game, the immigration official’s optimum strategy is to deny anybody who doesn’t pay him (it’s always a him) and only approve applicants who pay, rendering the bribe necessary and sufficient for my getting a work permit.

If the official approves the applications of non-payers, then the next person will justifiably believe that they don’t need to pay to receive their work permit. Having a reputation as a lenient immigration official causes bribe-payments to dry up, and the official is stuck with no bribe-income.

To maximize rent-profits then, applicants have to believe that paying the bribe is the only way to receive your work permit. To maintain this reputation, the official must deny all applicants who don’t pay.

Crucially, this framing implies that the immigration official will ignore the merits of the application; the only approval criteria is to have paid a bribe.

3
Stephanie Lin, December 6, 2024.