I'm sure that by now you know someone that has dealt with immigration.
Either that person you know is here in the US as an undocumented immigrant, or they are related somehow to one.
What has happened in our country is sad. People are warring over human rights and prioritizing some pretty darned stupid ideas to control something that will NEVER be controlled.
Over time I will post updates on situations regarding immigration. I am not trying to start a political argument here. Please don't go political on me. I am just going to be pointing out the wrongs and the rights, as well as highlighting some of my friends situations, as long as they are comfortable of sharing!
I'd love to start with my own situation. First of all I need to give some background ;o)
I met my husband 16 years ago. Wow. After writing that I can't believe it, but yeah, 16 years ago!! We met at work, a restaurant. He was the dishwasher and I was the cashier. After a year of working together he moved up to food prep while I stayed as cashier. At first I was eyeing someone else we worked with. My husband literally scared me when I first met him. I distinctly remember him one day chasing me around the kitchen of the restaurant with a knife pointed at himself, saying please kill me, and laughing. I knew he was joking, but at the time I was scared! After nearly a year of working together we were talking more and more.
One day a bunch of us decided to go bowling after work... at first it was going to be about 10 of us, including some co-workers who were off that day. It ended up being only about 5 of us. And it ended up turning into a date with my man. :o) On the way home we were snuggling in the back seat and he whispered in my ear "I love you." I turned and looked at him and said "You can't mean that, you just met me!" Ha ha ha!! 7 months later we were married!!!!!
Of course, the whole time I knew that he was not of legal status in the country. It never bothered me at all. I only had eyes for him and who he was not of his immigration status. So when we made plans to get married, we actually had wanted to wait until December... it was February when we announced our engagement. However, news came to light that a general amnesty was happening allowing undocumented immigrants the chance to get documented, but there was a time limit for submitting the applications. That caused us to get married in March instead of December. Well, on top of that I was already pregnant with our first child, LOL!
Fast forward a few years, and he finally receives his permanent residency card. It only took 4 years to arrive. Could have taken less time, but that's another post to explain. So my husband becomes an official permanent resident in 2002. Come 2007, and he has one of his yearly visits to Mexico to see his family. Only something doesn't go right coming back. All I will say publicly is that he tried to help a friend with something, out of the goodness of his heart, and that heartfelt hand out turned into a nightmare. 3 years of immigration court, only to have the lawyer at the end screw us up and conveniently forget to give us information or communicate completely, and my husband was picked up and sent back to Mexico. That was in 2009.
September 1, 2009, 7am, two ICE agents came walking up the stairs to my apartment as I was leaving to take my older kids to school. As I was driving away, my husband texted me to say hurry home cause it was the police... That scared me. I had left the youngest child, (who was still a baby) at home with him that morning. It took me 30 minutes to get the kids to school and then get home... the whole time I was a nervous wreck. I get home and the two agents were talking casually with him as if they were just there to visit. At least they were nice. I'll give ICE that as the only positive comment. But even though they waited, they still had to take him. Turned out that a deportation order was issued three months prior that we never received, nor did the lawyer, or so they claimed. By 10pm that night, my husband was already in Tijuana. I couldn't do anything because the lawyer didn't call me back until the next day, claiming that he had no way of reaching us, which was a big fat lie. ANYWAY, lol, the deportation came at the worst time in our lives. We were frantically looking for a new place to live after being served with an eviction notice. Both my husband and I were about to start new jobs. I had to scramble to find daycare for the baby, and find transportation for the older two to get back and forth to school, as well as someone they could stay with either before or after school until I got home from work.
Life got extremely crazy for me and my children during those next three months. There were days I had to work at 3am, so I had to drop off my daughter and the baby with a friend, who stepped up and asked to take care of the baby and take my daughter when I needed it. My son ended up spending nights at hid best friends house if I had to work early or work late... that first week I had to deal with cleaning out the apartment on my own and storing the items that I wanted to save. We ended up sleeping on couches the first month. The second month my brother-in-law rented a room in his apartment to us, so we were able to say good bye to the couches, but were still sleeping on the floor most of the time. By the time the end of October came around I knew that we would not be able to handle being in this situation much longer. My son was starting to do poorly in school, which was unusual for him because he was a straight A student suddenly getting C's and D's. My daughter and I were arguing more often. My baby was not sleeping like he used to. Between work, kids, and suddenly being a single mom for a short time, I was not dealing with it well. The kids and I sat down and had a serious talk, and we all came to the decision that the best thing for us would be to move.
To Mexico.
There, we would be all together, mom, dad, and kids.
So once the decision was made I started making plans to leave. Stuff was sorted through in my storage, the school was notified that the kids would not be coming back after the winter break. One of the hardest parts was to give my two weeks notification to my job. I had only been there for three months. Thankfully I had wonderful bosses. They were very understanding and told me that whenever I came back to the US, and I needed a job, just to come in and say "I'm back" and they would give me my job back without going through the interview process again. The absolute hardest part of the decision was to inform my parents. My dad dealt with it better than my mom did. At least he was willing to help me out with preparing me for the trip. My mom thought I was leaving to spite her. Long story about my mom, and another post.
We left for Mexico December 10, 2009, driving. My husband met us in Tijuana, and helped drive through Mexico. We had a very relaxing trip, enjoyed beautiful scenery, and reveled in being together again.
Fast forward to today. After having some ups and downs, we made another family decision. That decision was for me to come back to the US so I could find work, and get a new lawyer to get my husband back into the US legally. I've only been here for two months now, but that is my plan. Finding work, I knew, was going to be hard. So far I have not found anything but I am keeping my hopes high. As soon as I do have a job, then I can start saving money to pay the lawyer. Who knows how long that will take. Who knows what my husbands chances are of being able to come back to the US legally. I know that I won't allow him to come back illegally. I don't want that pressure. So this next year will be very interesting. I don't know where this journey will take our family, but I pray that it takes us where we want to be.
