I went out to buy fresh fruit like I do almost every morning. There is a man around the corner from my grandma’s house who has a cart filled with delicious fruit and will cut it all for you when you order it. I order a giant cup of mango with chilli and lime juice and make my way to the “Cyber Café”. I need reasons to get up in the morning, I hear my grandmother milling about the house and I get up and try to help her with daily chores. It’s difficult to help such a powerhouse, to help a woman who has done everything for herself since she was 14 years old. So I wash some dishes help my aunt clean some windows and head out to the Cyber Café.
I get news from a friend of mine who happens to be an immigration attorney that he wants to help me with my I-601 application. He has always been willing to help but he saw the resent posts about me being in Mexico and he is worried about me. Last year we spoke about this event and he advised me not to leave because the danger was very real that they could kick me out of the country for a long period of time. I knew then he meant well but at that point fear had not yet set in, only determination. Like I explained to him, there came a point when I was tired of living the way I had been living for 23 years. I was tired of the double life and the constant need to act super human. I am not super, just human and I needed to feel like it for once. Tired of living in the shadows and hearing people talk about what a drain people like me are on the U.S. and biting my tongue. Let’s make some things very clear, I DID NOT choose to travel to the U.S. in search of my parents dreams for themselves and their kids. I DID NOT choose a home, a home choose me, I DID NOT choose what ethnicity I was born or the location of my birth and when I became and adult I DID NOT choose to break any laws, laws were there that prohibited me from being, acting and treated like a human being!
When I was 7 I was devastated when I overheard my mother tell her mother that she was taking her kids and following my father to the United States. I had my grandparents, cousins and friends there, how could she possibly take me away from all that. For a minute there I remember hating her, she was taking me from all I knew and relocating me to a foreign country where I knew no one and no one knew me. Where I didn’t speak the language or know the food or the culture. Then I overheard her tell my grandmother something else, “I need to have my family together, wherever we end up but together. My children still have a father and him and they need to remember that”. She was right, how is a home a home with out family? I ask myself that question now. I have 7 years in Mexico as a child to compare to the 23+ I have as a teen and an adult in the U.S. How anyone can place a worth on that is beyond me, but the U.S. government and many others do it every day.
My friend the attorney sends me a case study to read, so I can be sure to site the right evidence in my case. I am infuriated by what I read. I have a Bachelors degree in Political Science and a Masters in Communication Studies, my dissertation paper was on Political Communication. I understand government, how it works and how a bill becomes a law but most of all I understand how “poli-tricking” (politics) work and the victims it takes. But what I still don’t understand is how some people are given more worth than others, that concept will elude me till the day I die. “All men are created equal” was a fraise uttered by idealist and liars. I read through the case file he sent me and I am appalled by some of the wording used in this legal document, a document setting legal precedent that will decide the fates of so many people. After being denied legal residency at my first appointment I was instructed that the only way for me to return is to establish an “extreme hardship” on my citizen husband. “Extreme hardship” as I understand is a relative term. What is “extreme” to one may not be to another. So to whom and how do you prove that something is an “extreme hardship” to an individual. Apparently, the government has boards that make this distinction and determination they themselves explain that “extreme hardship is not a definable term of fixed and inflexible meaning, and the elements to establish extreme hardship are dependent upon the facts and circumstances of each case” but as you will read below, what is black to one person can be white to another.
‘The common results of deportation are insufficient to prove extreme hardship.’” (quoting Hassan v. INS, supra, at 468)); Shooshtary v. INS, supra, at 1051 (holding that the uprooting of family and separation from friends does not necessarily amount to extreme hardship but rather represents the type of inconvenience and hardship experienced by the families of most aliens being deported);I can assure you that being uprooted from your family and friends is about one of the most traumatic things a person can go through. People go into severe depression and isolation because of it, but to the Immigration system it is merely an “inconvenience”.
Shooshtary v. INS, supra, at 1051 (stating that the “extreme hardship requirement of section 212(h)(2) was not enacted to insure that the family members of excludable aliens fulfill their dreams or continue in the lives which they currently enjoy”).Another quote comes to mind when I read this “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” which again seems like bullshit when you have people enforcing laws that are not enacted to take into consideration a persons current state of living or their ability to dream and work for a better life. “Who died and appointed you lord and savior?” The next quote is my favorite, mainly because it applies to my situation and because I find it deplorable when some people feel the need to cast judgment over others. In this particular case it was decided that the “alien” spouse did not have a right to return to the U.S. to be with his citizen wife, however, the decision was written as such:
Silverman v. Rogers, 437 F.2d 102, 107 (1st Cir. 1970) (stating that “[e]ven assuming that the federal government had no right either to prevent a marriage or destroy it, we believe that here it has done nothing more than to say that the residence of one of the marriage partners may not be in the United States”),I can’t even be mad at this quote it makes me laugh. To them it is the mere relocation of one individual whose residence just can’t be in the United States. All that Hollywood, Disney, Founding Father’s bullshit we are sold about love, pursuit of happiness and living happily ever after should come with another disclaimer: “Dreams can only be sold to those who establish legal citizenship and are entitled to the full benefits of the law”.
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