For the Love of Government

By Kurt Kruger
June 11, 2014

In late March, 1999, I traveled to Tyumen, Siberia with my — now former — wife to adopt a baby boy. It was and remains the greatest thing I have ever done. Traveling to Siberia under any circumstances is, well, proverbial. Traveling to Siberia and returning with a baby…

Nonetheless, even such an extraordinary way of starting a family has some things in common with the more usual way. There’s still the announcement to friends and family, “We’re going to have a baby!” There are lots of visits to the doctor’s office (for both parents, when adopting). The time from our commitment with the adoption agency until placement lasted about seven months, not far off gestation, especially since my son was born about five weeks short of full-term. And, of course, there was that unforgettable moment when I saw my child for the first time. All these years later, I smell again the bleach and chicken soup that seemed to ooze from the walls of the orphanage whenever I recall the first time that I saw the little bundle in mismatched pajamas.

There are, however, many things about adoption that are peculiar to that process. Chief among them is paperwork, especially when adopting internationally. It’s a mountain of paperwork. One’s good standing as a law-abiding citizen must be established and verified by three domestic jurisdictions (municipal, state, and federal), and one international (Interpol). Mental and physical health must be established and verified. Gainful employment must be established and verified.

Then a dossier is assembled that must be translated for the government of the child’s native land. Every scrap of it must be notarized, and each notary’s commission verified by an apostille. These ornate, golden stamps could only be had in the capitol, Sacramento, about an hour and a half from home in San Francisco. (The owner of the adoption agency, herself a Ukrainian immigrant, put it this way, “They want to be able feel the letters and see the shiny gold, then they will believe that it’s real. They may work as bureaucrats, but they’re still just peasants.”)

There was one particular piece of paperwork that had to come from the federal Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). We were getting close to the end and this one form, the approval of our petition to adopt a foreign child, could potentially hold up everything. Instead of waiting for it to arrive by post, my wife went in person to the INS office in San Francisco. She was directed to the appropriate department where they told her flatly that she would have to wait for it to be sent. She pleaded her case.

The INS official took her aside. “Don’t tell anyone that I did this,” she said, and took her into another office where she found our particular piece of paper sitting in her outbox. She gave it to my wife and reiterated, “Please, don’t tell anyone. We can’t have everybody showing up in person for their paperwork … and congratulations!”

In Russia as well, in addition to all the perfunctorily officious paper-stamping, we were treated to unexpected moments of humanity. One such occasion looms large in my memory. Our little group, my wife and I, another American couple, our translator, their translator, and a Russian lawyer representing our interests, were all herded into an office building made of logs, each two feet in diameter. We were brought to a tiny office on the second floor containing two desks.

We all filed in, the mothers-to-be given pride of place in the only available chairs, with the rest of us pressed up against the wall. The officeholder stood up (although it was hard to tell, short as she was). She was corseted into a black calf-length skirt and a bright red blouse. Her boot-black hair was sculpted into an elaborate wave. With her hands clasped at her diaphragm like a miniature opera diva, she spoke to us in Russian then paused for the translator.

“We welcome you to Tyumen,” the translator began. “We apologize for the condition of our city so early in spring. We assure you, had you come a month later, you would’ve found our beautiful flowering town.” The officeholder spoke again in Russian then paused for the translator, a sequence repeated more than once.

“We want to thank you for coming all this way and opening your hearts to these poor orphans. There is no greater joy in this life than giving your love to a child. It will be your solace for the rest of your lives. We wish you all every possible joy in your future lives with these children who so deserve to be loved.” And so on, in similar fashion.

Even at the time it wasn’t clear to me why we were there—some document needed a stamp most likely. The last thing I expected was this personal outreach, so thinly veiled by the socialist “we.” I didn’t expect tears from the director of the orphanage, when we left with our son, or that she would ask me, during a recess in court, if our families were worried about being in Russia while the U.S. bombed Serbia. I didn’t expect that the judge would soften her stony face once the proceedings were efficiently concluded to beam a heartfelt “congratulations.”

Once back in San Francisco, we were advised to “re-adopt” our son in the United States. A mere formality, it nonetheless required a court appearance during which we were once again treated to a heartfelt speech delivered, this time, by a U.S. federal judge. It had nothing to do with the official proceedings. It was an opportunity that she took to express to us how happy it made her to officiate over such a joyous occasion.

A few years later, having relocated to the east coast, I discovered that someone at a party I was attending worked for the INS. I introduced myself to him. When asked about his work, he became cautious, even elusive. He gave only the briefest of explanations, after which I sensed him bracing for a harangue.

I told him about my wife’s experience with the INS in San Francisco. He was so happy. He went into government, he told me, to help people. He went into government, despite having a law degree from a good school, because there were things more important than money.

The political philosophy of neoconservatism has a vested interest in portraying government as an unresponsive monolithic enterprise. Its supporters sow contempt for government whenever they can—even as they increase its size—because their goal has been to remove those functions of government that cause it to stand between the 1% owning, not just 90% of everything, but 100% of everything.

Their goal has been not to destroy government but to make it into an ever more effective means of funneling the fruits of everyone else’s labor into the gaping maw of the very few. So they filibuster a minimum wage increase, characterize progressive taxation as “punishing the best people,” and attack any program that does not take everyone else’s tax dollars and hand it over to those same very few.

They tell us that government is the source of everything wrong in this country and then prove it when they come to power.

As a justification for diverting federal tax dollars from established social welfare programs to private, so-called “faith-based initiatives,” former president George W. Bush declared, as an undisputed fact, that “government cannot love.”

But surely, in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, if the people love, then the government loves. And when the people love they cease to be “the people and become each “a person.”

I realize that my testimony is anecdotal — how could it be otherwise? — but this is what government can be. This is what government is, wherever a conscientious official makes it so.

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Kurt Kruger, an unemployed master furniture maker, is living in the Berkshires, teaching Sanskrit, writing poetry, etc., while his meager savings bleed out.