While I am staying in my Virginian suburbs of Washington DC, I share little parts of local life—starting with the rides on the “metro” system, where I pick up glimpses of what is going around in my temporary surroundings. On the local newspaper, I see that the state is “going English only” (to have some information on this, follow this link). As a Frenchman for whom French is the constitutional language in my country, I am not overly struck by the news, but still it is a sign of the closing of the country, that I have noticed since 2001. In my first stay in the US, I had been pleasantly surprised to see the efforts of the bureaucracies to translate their documents in Spanish—we are from doing this in Arabic, probably the largest second language in my home country. This sense of openness, that I do appreciate among Americans has been shuttered down by the collapse of the twin towers, and while this thought occurs to me, I think that after all, my research stay to work on the reorganization of the visa system, has to do with this very sense of a limitation in the welcoming of aliens. (I do not mention the burden that visas represent now for a foreign academic like me whenever I am invited by an American university, because it is probably worse than in the late 90’s, but still better than in the 80’s…) So between the local news, and global academia, a link is made, while I am reading the local newspaper over my neighbour’s shoulder.
