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Changing immigration status, part one

It’s interesting how when you’re in the moment of a stressful time all you can see are hurdles but once you’ve gotten past the storm you rarely give that time a second thought. My husband and I waited ten years until our lawyer thought it was safe enough for him to apply for a change-of-status-appointment in Juarez. Waiting was difficult, the nineteen month separation was agony, but now that he’s been a legal resident for the past seven years I have to rack my brain to recall that time—when I thought our lives would never get better. I don’t want to forget, however. I must not. It is utterly important to remember because many people are still waiting for a chance at citizenship and some of those are married to Americans and have American children who depend upon them. Today when I think of how serious Enrique’s expression was on our second date and how he explained his lack of status I get it completely, something I didn’t understand at all at the time—as an inexperienced and optimistic twenty-one-year-old. He said he was an illegal alien and my response was “Okay, well I’m sure you can fill out some papers to make you legal.” As our relationship got more serious I imagined within months of us getting married, and long before children entered the picture, he’d be a U.S. citizen with all the same privileges I possessed. Oh how little I knew!

We got married May 18th, 2002 and his change of status got pushed to the corner of the shoe closest. Instead, we reveled in the joys of being a newlyweds. Taking long strolls hand in hand in the park beat filling out stacks of paperwork by a long shot. Besides, Enrique’s younger brother had become a legal resident fairly quickly after getting married and Enrique was much more active in the community and even paid more taxes so I assumed his process would actually be quicker. That summer my new sister-in-law explained the process in detail to me, including the paper I needed to file with Department of Homeland Security. Summer was nearly over when I filed and I didn’t give the papers another thought as we went on with our lives. It wasn’t until December when I hadn’t heard a word, that I started calling to check for updates. Each time I was informed that our request had been received. I was satisfied the first time, knowing that they would contact us at some point and schedule an interview in Detroit at the Mexican consulate. But as months turned into years, and our family of two turned into a family of four, my calls became more frequent not to mention more desperate. By the time our oldest entered kindergarten I had become completely aware on what it meant to be married to an illegal alien. I knew the embarrassment of leaving a blank spot under ‘father’s social security number‘ on my children‘s birth certificates. I knew the discouragement of not qualifying for tax breaks and credits when we filed our taxes because my spouse was illegal. I knew the resentment of having friends who’s husband could apply for any job in the country and buy a nice home because they were born American. I also knew the fear of being married to someone who could be taken from you at any moment by immigration. That fear—of Enrique being deported—never felt so real as it did the summer of 2008. To be continued....




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