Roamer 7: The Fixer Economy
The seventh conversation in my 100 roamers project.
The seventh interview introduced something I hadn’t heard explicitly before, though it had been lurking beneath the surface of every conversation—Fixers. People who know someone in the government. Who can expedite your paperwork, get you an appointment when there are no appointments, and push your documents to the front of the line for 10 times the official cost.
Roamer 7 has lived in six countries. Germany, France, London, the US, the Philippines, Spain. She’s 28 years old and she’s exhausted.
“The visa processes have taken away like five years of my life. If I’m going gray for any reason, it’s going to be the visa process.”
It started with Washington DC, in the US.
She’s from the Philippines. From a very small town—“middle of nowhere,” she said. Her university had a partnership with a school in DC. She got an internship in the US Congress.
The visa process was long, tedious, and scary.
“If you’re on a student visa, you have to prove you could pay for your whole stay. That means you have to have like $50,000 in your account. At least.”
She had to find housing, prove she could afford everything, and get a sponsor. The sponsor helped with paperwork, but the interview was terrifying. “The rejection rate for the US visa is really high.”
She eventually got approved, moved to DC, and loved it. “Everyone is so smart and intimidating. I really liked the fast pace of life.”
Then she decided to extend her stay, and she hired a lawyer.
She couldn’t afford a lawyer in the US, so she hired one in Canada—someone licensed to practice in New York. It was $60 per hour initially. Then it went up to $120.
“Every time you have to call him, you have to pay and it wasn’t even him doing the work. It was an associate, and the associate made mistakes which I think I could have done better. So it kind of made me upset about that. I kind of regretted paying him.”
When COVID hit and she needed to extend her internship again, she did the paperwork herself. “I decided not to go the lawyer route anymore because it was a lot of money.” She learned paying someone doesn’t mean it gets done right. Sometimes it just means you’re paying to watch someone else make mistakes.
Then came Spain.
After DC, she wanted to teach, so she applied to be a language assistant in Spain.
The problem was getting an appointment at the Spanish embassy. “The Spanish embassy—they have slots available for the day, and then the rest? You have to wait.”
She’s from an archipelago in the Philippines. She had to fly an hour to Manila just to get to the embassy, and the embassy was only open from 11am to 2pm.
She tried for a year and couldn’t get an appointment or the visa in Spain. The next year, she tried again, and this time, she learned about fixers. “In Spain, they usually sell those appointments. You have to find a fixer to do it for you, but you have to pay 10 times the original cost.”
A clearance officially costs €4, but with a fixer, it’s €300. She had no choice. There were no appointments or other way through.
So she paid.
Because she’d lived in the US for more than six months, she needed an FBI clearance to prove she hadn’t committed any crimes.
So she had to get fingerprinted to move to DC. “The fingerprint process is very strict. You can’t do it yourself. You have to go somewhere.”
She’s from a very small town in the Philippines. When she went to the local police station at home, no one knew how to do the process. “No one knows that. So I had to travel to find someone to do it for me.”
And the FBI clearance took six months to arrive.
She got to Spain and started teaching. Everything was fine for a while until her visa ended, and Spain suddenly decided they were no longer accepting Filipino language assistants.
“We were scrambling. Every one of us. We had like 90 days to be legally here.”
They found a new sponsor, but the process to extend was complicated.
“If you want to get a cita from the extranjería—their government office—you have to wake up at six in the morning. And they release appointments every Monday.”
She described the difference between the US government, the Spanish government, and the Philippine government. “Spain and the Philippines have a lot of similarities. We’re both former colonies of Spain. So there’s a lot of cultural things. They’re actually very forgiving with the papers.”
Someone at the office might say: “Oh, this is incomplete? Don’t worry. Just look for me. I can handle that for you.”
“The padrino system is still there in Spain. If you know anyone, you can get away with it.”
But the US is anything but forgiving.
She finally got her visa sorted. But then she wanted to travel to Norway.
The paperwork Spain gave her didn’t allow her to travel inside the EU. Only outside the EU.
“It’s called the regreso. Interesting, right?”
She had to call the Norwegian embassy. They told her: “You cannot apply for a visa while you’re in the European Union. You have to go out.”
“This is bullshit,” she said.
But then someone from the Spanish government helped her process her card. Within a week, she had it.
She told me about her cousin—an au pair in Norway.
The au pair program paid 400 kr a month. Everything was free—housing, food. Also, her cousin made five grand doing side jobs like cleaning houses off the books.
Then Norway canceled the au pair program and her cousin had to leave. But instead of going home, she went to Portugal and lived there for five years. Now she’s applying for citizenship.
But she went back to Norway and started working under the table again.
“I asked, are you not scared? Because I’m really scared.”
Her cousin’s Portuguese card expired and last October, the EU implemented a new entry tracker system.
“She had to fly back to Portugal without papers or anything.”
They booked the first flight of the day—no luggage, because checking luggage might trigger an ID check. They chose the first flight because there’s less border control early in the morning.
She made it through and now she’s paying for a house in Norway while living in Portugal. She bought a fake contract for two grand so she could renew her visa.
“She’s lying to her lawyer. Her lawyer doesn’t know she was in Norway for the past four years. I told her that you should never lie to your lawyer. You have attorney-client privilege.”
But her cousin doesn’t listen.
“Sometimes I get angry at her because of her stupidity. You know, you could have gone back to Portugal and renewed it.”
I asked if she worries about her own visa.
“I worry about it all the time. It’s not just a visa. It’s your future that’s tied to it.”
She thought about staying in the Philippines. Maybe her career would have been okay. But in Spain, it’s a standstill.
“The job market is really bad. I couldn’t find something I wanted to do. So it takes up a lot of your mind. What’s going to happen next? I don’t want to go back to the Philippines.”
At one point, she thought about going back because she was losing hope.
“It really affected me. I feel like, okay, what am I going to do? That’s why I always have a job. So I could feel like I’m actually doing something in life. Because being a language assistant is not a career.”
She’s leaving Spain in a year and moving back to DC.
“I tried living in Spain, but I don’t think it’s for me. The lifestyle here is very slow and people are conformists. People just want their siesta, their sangria, and to dance. That’s it. That’s Spanish life. They don’t want to climb the corporate ladder. Life is just about living it. You don’t have to do anything.”
Her explanation of Spanish life is not a criticism, exactly. Just a mismatch. “Purpose isn’t tied to work here. It’s just about existing in what you’re given. Being present.”
She tried. She has a remote job with a US company, but she doesn’t see herself settling there. “I miss the fast pace. Everyone in DC is so smart, so intimidating. I liked that.”
She got engaged recently. Her fiancé is a DOD civilian and he’s getting assigned to Germany. So the plan is: move back to DC, then eventually Germany when he gets the posting.
She could apply for a fiancé visa right now, but she doesn’t want to. She’s heard stories on Reddit and TikTok, about the interrogation process for fiancé visas in the US.
“They used to let you go through them together in the same room. Now, you have to be in separate rooms and they’re much more aggressive. One wrong answer and you could lose everything. And it could go for hours.”
Before, it was 30 minutes with general questions. Now it’s three hours. “I’m a person of color. It’s kind of scary for me to go that route.”
So instead, they’re getting married in Europe first. Denmark, specifically. “It’s the easiest country. If you want to get married next week, you can. It’s like the Vegas of Europe and it’s recognized everywhere.”
In Spain, the bureaucracy is intense. But in Denmark, you just need a passport and a certificate of no marriage. That’s it.
They’ll get married there, then she’ll go to the US with a green card already in hand. “At least when I go there, I have a green card. Because if I go on a K-1 visa, you never know what’s going to happen at the airport. I think they’re just finding reasons to take everyone out of the US at this point. So, this is the safest way.”
I asked what she would have done differently.
“I would have researched immigration lawyers more, so I wouldn’t have ended up with a bad one.”
But even then she wouldn’t hire from Spain. “All the information is online. But there are a few pieces of information that’s not openly public.”
Like the empadronamiento—registering your address. You need it to apply for your residency card. But some landlords won’t let you register because they’re renting under the table.
“So you have to pay someone to give you a contract. That’s another hurdle.”
Spain is complicated, and slow. Even the pace of life. “When you’re used to instant things, it’s very hard.”
She joined a Facebook group for Philippine auxiliaries in Spain. “They have all the experience, all the tips. They can give recommendations for translation, for accredited people.”
That’s where she found help like tips for the visa interview, which translators to use, and how to navigate the system.
But the person who helped her most was a teacher at the school where she first worked.
“Spanish people are very nice. The school I first worked at—I still have a good relationship with the teacher. She’s like my mother. Every summer I come to her beach house.”
I think having someone local is really important when you’re moving abroad. Someone who can help you. But at 28, she’s ready to settle down.
“Maybe when I was in my teens, moving a lot was exciting. But now I actually want to settle in a place. Have a career, buy a house, and just settle down.”
She’s tired of living out of one suitcase.
“You can’t buy beautiful plates or nice tablecloths because you’re only taking one suitcase. I want to build a life. Not just a career—but make a home. Something you can really feel comfortable in.”
She’s over the visa processes. “I think it has taken away like five years of my life.”
If she does another visa process, it’ll be for the US and then she’s done. “I don’t want to do it again, if I don’t have to.”
Despite everything—the fixers, the scams, the FBI clearances, the lawyers who made mistakes, the cousin stuck in limbo, the weight of visas hanging over everything—she doesn’t regret it.
“Moving around made me who I am. Piece by piece. What value should I take? What value should I not? What should I adapt?”
The US taught her about career ambition. Spain taught her about community, about relationships, about a sense of humanity she’d never experienced in the US.
Moving made her know herself more.
“What do I want in life? What’s important? Before, my plan was just: stay in the Philippines and work for the government. Now I have a different plan.”
Seven interviews in, and the fixer economy is finally clear.
It’s been there the whole time—Roamer 1’s realtor who became a guide, Roamer 2’s Telegram group, Roamer 3’s French friend who handled everything, Roamer 4’s regularization program. But Roamer 7 named it clearly: fixers. People who know someone. Sometimes professional, occasionally informal. Who can get you through when the system says there’s no way.
A €4 clearance becomes €300. An appointment that doesn’t exist suddenly frees up—if you pay.
The system creates scarcity—no appointments, impossible paperwork, six-month waits for documents and then people fill the gap. For a price.
And if you can’t pay? You wait. Or you give up. Or you end up like Roamer 7’s cousin, living in limbo with fake contracts and expired cards, one border crossing away from everything falling apart.
The question isn’t just “how do we make moving easier?”
The question is: “how do we dismantle the systems that create the need for fixers in the first place?”
Next week: Roamer 8.
Really good piece... again, having a community and a local to help with a soft landing seems like a common theme for reducing a lot of stress and navigating a new country.
This is great work, Sydney! Kudos 🙌