I guess I should be grateful for America’s immigration policy. My parents only got married because my dad was going to get deported. They were good friends, both Colombian immigrants, in their early twenties living in Miami. My dad’s student visa was going to expire because he hadn’t been able to enroll in another semester of college. He was out of money with half a degree and had no prospects back in Colombia, which at the time was the largest drug exporter to the US courtesy of the many Colombian drug cartels that spread violence and blood money everywhere they went.
My dad got lucky. His options were go back to Colombia or try to stay here as an undocumented immigrant. If he had stayed illegally, he would have had almost no options to become a documented citizen.
A quick rundown of America’s immigration policy: you can apply for a “green card,” which gives you legal permanent residency, if you are undocumented and can prove that you need to stay in US. The proof varies, BUT if you’ve been living in the US illegally up until you receive your green card, you’re probably going to get sent back to your country for about ten years before you’re allowed to reenter the US. It’s like a forced penance for trying to succeed here without papers. And that’s if your petition gets approved.
My parents got around that by getting married, but that’s not a foolproof way either. Because my dad had a visa when they got married, he was allowed to apply for a green card. However, if you enter the US illegally and try to get married, even if it is a marriage of love, there’s still a chance you are going to get sent back to your native country for a time. It’s between three and ten years based on how long you lived in the US illegally. There are waivers for the time, but they’re extremely difficult to get.
Thankfully, my dad’s green card got approved and my parents eventually fell in love (even though they were already married) and had me. I got the perks of being born a citizen with two legally documented parents. You might not consider that a huge accomplishment, but considering how many friends I have with either one or two undocumented parents, it’s a big deal.
My parents got lucky. I know I already said that but I really want to drive home how unlikely it was that my dad was able to get his residency. America’s immigration policy, while gradually improving in recent years, is cruel to the people who actually have to experience the consequences. With the next presidential elections on the horizon, the same trendy political topics will come back into the public eye, and immigration will be one of them. Immigration reform needs to happen, but some of the people running for president completely ignore what it’s like growing up with these laws.
The people who want to get rid of illegal immigrants altogether don’t acknowledge that, first of all, unless you are 100% Native American, you are also an immigrant, and that immigrants make positive contributions to this country and could make even more if they didn’t have to live in fear of getting deported. I don’t have a solution, but I know enough to realize the system we have is broken. I have hope that our national leaders can come up with some better than what we have now, something that at the very least treats undocumented immigrants as people with real lives from varying circumstances and different stories, instead of rounding them up and branding them “illegal.”
I’ll stop there, because, as people remind me every time I talk about immigration, since my family—and mine is obviously the only one that matters compared to the millions of undocumented families—got lucky in an unrealistic and unfair system, I should be “grateful.”
