I
am not a typical immigrant. Seventeen years ago, my parents brought me to the
United States on an 18-wheeler tire that they pushed across the Rio Grande. I
hardly remember it, but my parents tell me that we reached the shores of El
Paso, only to be detained and deported by US Customs and Border Protection. End
of story? We crossed the border again 24 hours later, under cover of darkness. La migra didn’t arrive to round us up
like pigs this time. My parents hid me and my brother Misael among prickly
shrubs until a van came to pick us up. A coyote
gave us plane tickets to Dallas (airport security was lax in the 1990s), and we
flew away from El Paso, de volada, as
quickly as we could; I suppose la migra didn’t
understand our aversion to waiting.
That was not my
last experience with the US immigration system. I sat in the back of an SUV at
the age of seven, fidgety and frustrated as our vehicle chugged along the
Laredo Bridge System’s monstrous traffic. The two people in the front of the
SUV pretended to by my parents; my mother and brother, who sat beside me,
passed off as my aunt and my cousin, respectively. I was petulant during the
six hour journey from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo, and I was also annoyed when
the coyote in the driver’s seat would
ask me what my name was. I knew what I had to say: My name is Robert. This is my aunt. This is my cousin. These are my
parents. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t use my real name. I didn’t
comprehend that crossing the Laredo Bridge with a fake identity was the only
way to get into the United States safely, and that crossing the bridge was
better than wading neck-deep through the Rio Grande. But I did think that it
was better to lie about my name than to be left behind like my youngest brother
Paul, whom we left under my grandparents’ care back in San Luis Potosi. Paul
was an American citizen and could easily get into the United States. He didn’t have to lie about his name. As
I thought about these things, the SUV painstakingly moved a few more meters,
like an ant amidst a swarming colony. I felt like screaming.
Our
SUV finally reached the immigration checkpoint. A Customs officer in a Ranger
Smith green uniform gestured for us to stop. El coyote pulled down the window and greeted the officer.
“Immigration
papers, please,” the officer instructed.
“Certainly,”
el coyote calmly answered, handing
over his prepared documents.
“What’s
the purpose of your visit, sir?”
“Vacationing,”
el coyote said.
“Very
well. Move along.”
I held my breath the entire time, avoiding the
ranger’s gaze. He didn’t notice tiny me fidgeting nervously next to my mother. El coyote
rolled up the window, and the gates opened. As the SUV accelerated forward, I stopped
twitching. At least until we arrived at the next checkpoint.
I wasn’t as fidgety during the next twelve
years, but I was as tired and as trapped as a parakeet in a golden cage. I never
left the United States. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t. I
couldn’t go to Mexico to see my grandparents and my relatives. I couldn’t go
abroad without having to pay more than four hundred dollars in advance parole
application fees. I couldn’t become an American citizen after more than twelve
years of undocumented residence in this country. I took extraordinary measures
to take care of myself. When I was admitted to Yale, I skipped class to get a
passport from the Mexican Consulate, so I could fly to Connecticut. When my
Academic Decathlon team won the regional championship, I couldn’t go with my
teammates to El Paso for the State Finals; I never would have gotten past the
checkpoints outside of the city. I
waited for some legislation to come along and make traveling and working easier,
but nothing productive came out of Congress or the Oval Office. Trust me: I tried to get permanent residence. I
swear. But the immigration filing process is the equivalent of a bloated slug,
which means to say, the whole process is not worth the money and the time. My
mother, for example, requested a visa in 2001; it has been twelve years, and
her case is still “Under Review”. Her
visa had to be requested by a close relative- her brother- who is a US citizen.
My brother Paul wasn’t yet old enough to request one for me. So I had the
following options:
1. Have
a company petition the United States Customs and Immigration Services for my
visa.
2. Leave
the country and apply for reentry.
3. Marry
a US citizen.
A company would not
have hired me, unless I were a Canadian singing prodigy, which, sadly, I was
not. Leaving the United States and applying for re-entry was out of the
question; I would have had to abandon my Texan home, forsake my American
education, and wait a decade in Mexico for permission to return. Given the odds
of ever hearing back from USCIS, (I was more likely to be killed by a Zeta
hit-man than to be granted immigration to the US) I decided to stay in Dallas.
And as for marrying a US citizen, I convinced my girlfriend to grant me that
special favor; it was too bad she broke up with me a year after she promised to
make me an American citizen…
I didn’t like waiting for things to happen. I needed to
work after my freshman year of college, and the only way I could do that was to
get a fake Social Security number. My mother dialed up a document forger, and
within a day I had in my hands a gray-blue Social Security card and a green
Permanent Resident card, faster than USCIS could have ever supplied. But they were
only temporary solutions; E-Verify ensured that I was rejected by most
companies, and I was only able to get employment within an immigrant-dependent
industry: electrical wiring. So I worked as a residential wireman during the
summer and hoped for my legal status to change, bidding my time until the
suited men and women on Capitol Hill and the White House would notice that the
immigration slug needed some speed.
I was keeping my balance on a ladder, vigorously screwing
in a light fixture in the upper bedroom of a Preston Hollow house in northern
Dallas, when I heard my father shout something from downstairs. I went down to
see what the fuss was about. My father stood near the stairway, phone in hand,
a smile on his face.
“Your uncle called me. There’s good news.”
What he told me wasn’t exactly the greatest news ever,
but it was a start. President Obama had announced the Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which would grant me asylum in the United
States. When my father finished telling me the good news, he smiled. A
tentative smile. He knew that this program did not address his legal status; because
the White House thought that legalizing undocumented minors would be earn it
some votes from Latinos, only my brother Misael and I directly benefitted from
DACA. My father had lived in the United States far longer than I had, and yet
he was excluded from DACA. It was unfair.
“At least there is hope,” he said, his smile unfading.
For my dad, there was hope that immigration reform would not stop at DACA. I earnestly
hoped so. I smiled back, and then I walked up the stairs to the bedroom I was
working in, climbed the ladder, and recommenced screwing in the unfinished
fixture.
Three
months later, I was in Hartford on a wet and windy workday. Thick drops dripped
from my umbrella and moistened my sweater, my shoes sloshing through gray
puddles as I trudged along Main Street. I had an appointment with USCIS at 1
PM. I arrived 4 hours early because the New Haven-Hartford Express Bus did not
offer service after 8:21 AM, and I didn’t want to risk missing my appointment. So
I was stranded in the city until one o’clock. I took refuge from the rain in a
café at One Constitution Plaza, where I ordered some hot tea and I sat down to
do some homework. CNN news anchors burbled political opinions from the TV in
front of me. People monotonously chattered in the background. I grew restless. Here
I was, a nineteen-year-old immigrant who had skipped class and woken up at
seven in the morning and travelled 39 miles to Hartford just to get his fingerprints
scanned. I was tired, soaked, and sleepy. Why
did the process have to be so hard? I tried to contain my frustration and
concentrate on my reading assignments. After an hour at the café, I went out
into the rain. Everything moved slowly in the blanketing spray from the
traffic, umbrellas bumping into each other like leaves in a choked stream. More
rain. I walked around downtown for two hours, and then I returned to One
Constitution Plaza to wait for a bus to East Hartford. I stood in the rain for
another half hour. At last, the bus arrived. I clung to the inner railings as
people crammed into it, the bus slicked with mud and water. This is the immigration system, I
thought.
Twenty
minutes later, I got off the bus and trekked half a mile to the USCIS field
office. An attendant instructed me to disinfect my hands and gave me a form to
fill out. I was given a number and told to sit in a waiting area. A plasma TV
blurted American history facts and immigration oddities. The Mayflower. The
Statue of Liberty. The good old Red, White, and Blue. I wonder
how long the people on Ellis Island had to wait. Did they remain undocumented?
How did they become citizens? Someone called my number. A young bespectacled
USCIS officer stood at a booth next to a scanner, expecting me. I went.
“Place
your hand on the scanner,” he ordered.
The
officer pressed my hand onto the scanner, a little more forcefully than I
expected. The machine beeped and displayed the word “Failed”. So the scanner can’t read my fingerprints.
Great. Just great. The officer sprayed disinfectant on my hand, rubbed it
with a Kleenex, and pressed my fingers onto the scanner’s cold, smooth surface.
The machine beeped again. Damn it. The
officer tried the procedure once more. Spray.
Rub. Press. Repeat. Ten minutes passed before the machine clicked and
displayed the word “Passed”. I sighed.
“Sir,
please look at the camera,” the officer said. A flash. My eyes glazed over for
a second.
“Okay,
you’re all set. Fill out this Customer Service evaluation, and you can be on
your way.”
I
filled it out. And as I left the field office, I felt relieved, as if I had
crawled out of those prickly shrubs, or as if I had squirmed my way out of that
SUV. I was free to go home, and I would receive my documents in a month. . I
headed toward the exit and went out once more into the fountain pouring from
the sky. I opened my umbrella. How freely did it open!
No,
I am not a typical immigrant. I am, as of April 2013, a legal temporary
immigrant worker. My parents are still undocumented. My brother still awaits
legalization. DACA remains in place and an immigration reform bill is in the
making, but the immigration slug remains as slow as ever. I feel optimistic,
but I suspect that the next immigration program will have flaws. After all,
don’t we hate to see our friends and family in limbo? Don’t we hate to stand in
line to get our passports and our permits? Don’t we hate to wait days and
months and years for things to happen? When immigration reform arrives-if
indeed it ever arrives-will the wait be worth it?