The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles by Charles Piot and Kodjo Nicolas Batema

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles by Charles Piot and Kodjo Nicolas Batema Cati Coe Charles Piot with Kodjo Nicolas Batema, The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 224 pp. The Fixer tells a dramatic story of creative and innovative forms of trickery generated by US immigration policy. Its overt focus is a single charismatic and thoughtful Togolese broker, Kodjo Nicolas Batema, who carefully studies the US Diversity Visa lottery process in order to coach his clients to successfully receive a green card. The book details the ways through which brokers learn about the lottery interview practices and prepare their clients for the different questions (Chapter 2), the kinship practices and microeconomies generated by the lottery (Chapters 3 and 4), the machinations of embassy staff to catch fraud (Chapter 5), a peaceful protest by visa applicants in front of the US Embassy in Lomé (Chapter 6), an incident which landed Mr. Batema temporarily in prison (Chapter 7), and the lives of successful visa applicants in different regions of the United States (Chapter 8). Piot argues that the Diversity Visa lottery is a source of cultural production, generating new marriage practices and state documentation processes. Piot calls the cultural production of the visa lottery "border games." Building on the Comaroffs' arguments about the signal role of the imposter in runaway capitalism (Comaroff and Comaroff 2016), Piot argues that the distinction between fake and authentic seems to dissolve in these games. "Fake" marriages—that is, marriages arranged for the purpose of papers—can become real, in the sense that they can turn into sexual relationships and long-term partnerships as couples live together in order to pass the scrutiny of consular and immigration officials. Similar to marriages arranged for emigration purposes, marriages considered real often have economic or bureaucratic reasons for their documentation or state [End Page 559] legalization. Furthermore, in Togo, identity and marriage documentation can be secret, manipulated, and multiple, beyond emigration contexts. Piot argues that the visa lottery and its cultural production is a "textbook illustration" of extraversion and the hybridity and improvisation of Atlantic African economies (39). The virtue of this book is in its details and liveliness. It reads incredibly quickly, almost like a novel, with well-written and exciting chapters. Impressive access was given to Piot by both Mr. Batema and consulate officials, which struck me as quite amazing given my own difficulties convincing consular officials to meet with me. In addition to its details based on Piot's high degree of access with key persons, another strength is that it is excellent on the economics of the visa lottery process, arguing convincingly that a major reason for "fake" marriages in Togo is because of the high lottery fees (Chapter 4). Given the exorbitant fees and the large number of applicants every year, millions of dollars have been redistributed from Togolese individuals to the US government. Many remittances from the diaspora are used to fund emigration plans. Piot makes a strong case for the unfairness of Diversity Visa fees being set worldwide, without consideration for local incomes. Let me explain this relationship between "fake" marriages and high fees. Unlike his competitors, Mr. Batema charges no fees to applicants, instead raising the funds for those chosen to be interviewed (at the second stage of the lottery process) from those in the diaspora, who can add their own loved ones to the applicant's request. The relationships formed to raise the funds for the process then require new marriage and birth certificate documents which can easily be back-dated by Togolese state officials willing to enable with these ruses. Extensive coaching by Mr. Batema makes it extremely difficult for consular officials to determine whether marriages were "real" or not. (If a marriage is made real by legal documentation, these marriages are, of course, real, since official documents certified the marriage.) Because of their paranoia about what they called "pop-up marriages," US embassy officials went above and beyond the law in hiring Togolese investigative personnel to track applicants in their homes and workplaces and asking questions that were overly intrusive and unfair, through which long-term marriages sometimes failed to convince consular officials of...