There is a phrase that is used very often among people who are discussing immigrants and immigration. That phrase is:
“They should have done it the RIGHT way!”
Here’s the problem. And it may be something that you legitimately didn’t know. In this country “the right way” is very difficult if you’re an ordinary, working-class resident of many countries in Central or South America (and many other places! Though, how easy or hard it is depends on the country).
“Well,” you might reply, “then they just shouldn’t have come.”
The other problem (among countless) is that many thousands of these human beings who leave their homes do it because they see no other option. Would you want to leave your home and all your loved ones and everything you know if you really didn’t have to? Especially under the worst of the worst of circumstances?
Ok, here is a way to illustrate just one of the many scenarios that immigrants find themselves in. Keep in mind that this is simply a metaphor to try to illustrate why this happens.
Close your eyes and imagine something with me. Oh, right. You can’t read if your eyes are closed. OK, then, just pretend your eyes are closed.
Ready?
Imagine that it’s four in the morning, you’re in your bed with your partner, asleep. The house is silent, except for the little sounds.
If you were awake you might hear a clock ticking somewhere downstairs, one of your kids snoring in the room next to yours, or a bird chirping in the big tree in your backyard, because he knows the sun is coming.
Or…
you might hear glass breaking in your kitchen. You might hear a hand reaching through the broken glass to turn the deadbolt. You might hear the almost-silent scrape of the door against the tile floor. You might hear the squeak of the loose board on your stairs as a foot presses against it.
But you don’t hear those things. You’re asleep, trusting that the deadbolt is holding the world outside from interfering with the people you love inside.
A few dozen more ticks of the clock, and here’s what you DO hear: Your four-year old daughter screaming.
You know her almost better than you know yourself. Her scream is not a cry of sadness or the whimper of a bad dream. It’s not the angry protest after her discovery of a two-year-old sibling messing with her stuff.
It’s a scream of terror, and she’s doing it over and over again. It immediately sends a jolt from the top of your head, through your body, past your knees, to the tips of your toes. You and your partner both sit straight up, glance at each other for a split second, and you’re out of bed, bare feet on the cold floor. Without a second thought, you reach under your nightstand, hold your finger against a small circle of metal, and grab the gun from the safe. You’ve never had to use it before, but this is why it’s there. You are the protector of your family. Your partner and your three kids depend on you.
You edge your partner behind you and whisper “Stay here.” Your blood pumps, your heart racing like it did when you were fighting to finish the last stretch of that marathon last month. The one you almost didn’t finish because you thought your heart would explode first.
You hold the gun in front of you, quickly glancing into your son’s room as you pass. He’s sitting up in bed, eyes wide. You yell at him to stay there. No sense being quiet at this point. Your ten-year-old daughter pokes her head out of her room and you wave her back inside. Your four-year-old’s open door is straight in front of you. You walk through it and swing the gun left, toward where you know her bed is.
She’s standing on the cold floor, in a red ruffled nightgown, messy brown hair falling around her shoulders. She’s trembling from head to toe , tears are streaming down her face…and a masked intruder is standing behind her, arm around her neck, the point of a glinting silver knife turned toward her cheek.
You feel bile rise in your throat, muscles tensing everywhere in your body. The fingers of your free hand curl into a fist and your already racing heart shifts into overdrive.
This can’t be happening.
“Money. All you’ve got. And everything in your medicine cabinet.” The intruder says it calmly, but when you don’t move, he repeats it, yelling this time, the knife hovering millimeters from you daughter’s skin.
And before you can do anything else, he’s lunging at you with the knife.
So, you pull the trigger.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
The man dies.
Your family is safe.
It must have really sucked to pull that trigger, but you stepped up and did what you had to do.
BUT WAIT!
Killing is against the law, isn’t it?
Well, sure…BUT someone broke into your house, threatened your family, and attacked you. So, it’s justified.
But, WHAT IF there was no provision in the the law for self-defense? What if everyone were to tell you that you were wrong. That you should have calmly and rationally called 911 and let the police handle it, instead of pulling the trigger. What would you say to those people?
I know what I would say:
“Are you crazy? He was trying to kill me right at that moment! I DIDN’T HAVE TIME!”
OK, hopefully I haven’t lost you at this point, because I’m about to get to the WHO CARES part of this.
***We interrupt this program for a public service announcement. Because of the world we live in, the author needs to state that this is NOT an endorsement for or against guns. It just isn’t. Don’t go there. Seriously. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming***
Pretend you’re closing your eyes again.
Imagine you live in a place where work is hard to find. You have a spouse and four children. You need to feed them, clothe them, keep them safe. You finally find a job, and you’re grateful. Pretty soon, you realize it’s not going to be enough. The minimum wage is $5 per day, and you spend $3 of that getting to and from work on the bus. The remaining $2 is barely enough to feed your family for one day. What about clothes? What about medicine? What about school supplies? What about shoes? What about home repairs? What about anything else?
Your spouse decides to make food to sell out of your house. Doing that gives your family an extra $1 a day.
Your son needs new pants. His one pair doesn’t even touch his ankles. But, no money.
Your daughter needs medicine. The kind they give her at the public clinic doesn’t work. But, no money.
A local gang decides your house is in their territory and they demand $2 a day to “protect” your home and family. Your hands are tied. You know what will happen if you refuse. No home. No family. The “protection” money takes priority.
Despite the fact that you work 12 hours a day: No money AND no food.
Your family is suffering.
What will you do?
In the U.S. there are jobs. In the U.S. people’s work is really worth something. That’s what you’ve heard and know from other family members and friends who went there. You feel like that’s your best option. But how do you do it?
Well, here are the choices:
A) Apply for a visa to go to the U.S. to work.
Ideally, you want a visa that says you can work. That’s what you need to do, after all. That’s the whole point. But after checking out the options HERE, you realize none of them apply to you. You don’t have a bachelor’s degree in a select area of study that the U.S. wants. You’re not a college professor able to do an exchange with a professor from the U.S., and you’re not an artist or entertainer of any kind (among various other options that also don’t apply to you).
Oh! There’s a farmworker visa! You are very willing to do that! But wait…the employer in the U.S. would have to apply for a visa FOR you in that case. They don’t even know you exist and you don’t personally know anyone who has done that that could give you some kind of contact info or connection to a farm that is willing to do that.
So…since you don’t have an employer in the U.S. to apply for you, nor do you have a family member who is a U.S. citizen that can apply for you, you’ll have to apply for a non-immigrant tourist visa. You learn HERE that the visa application processing fee will cost you about $185 per person, and to get a Mexican passport will cost around $100 per person and it may take months to come through, if you’re approved at all. Oh, and from HERE you learn that there may be other documents requested (and by that, your friends who have been through this process tell you they are ALWAYS requested) that will prove that you’re planning to come back. Those documents must prove the following:
1. That you own your own home (nope)
2. That you have a bank account with a substantial sum in it (nope)
3. Proof of family in the U.S. waiting to support you while you’re there (nope)
4. Proof of employer that will be waiting for you to return (possibly, yes!)
Oh, and here’s the thing: Even if you manage all the rest of that, the visa you’ll be getting is only a 3 to 6 month tourist visa. You’ll be able to go see the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and Mount Rushmore. But you won’t legally be able to get a job.
So, when you come home six months later, should you decide to “do it the right way,” you’ll have exactly ZERO more dollars to contribute to your family’s well-being.
Well, you won’t qualify for the visa anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
Let’s check out other options.
B) Apply for a student visa
Good News! If you want to go to school in the U.S. then you can apply for a student visa! You’ll still have to pay $185 to apply (plus passport fee, scheduling, etc, etc). OK. Maybe your family will loan you the money.
But what about tuition? You won’t have access to all the same grants, scholarships and loans that a U.S. citizen has, so according to THIS, here’s what you’ll need each year for four years (including housing costs):
Public University: $49,080 (for out-of-state students) per year
Private College: $62,990 (for out-of-state students) per year
*https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing
Well, maybe you could find a community college for less. But even then, you’ll only be able to work part-time, on-campus jobs, if there are any available. Plus, you don’t automatically get a work visa after graduating. You have to find an employer who is willing to apply for a visa for you. And if you don’t, you go home. Or you go back to school.
In your situation, this kind of time and money only appears in your dreams. Looks like, for you, this option is dead in the water.
Especially because there is the little detail of having to get accepted to a college. Your dad made you drop out of school after 6th grade in order to work to help your family survive. Not impossible, but you would be facing an uphill battle that, again, you don’t have time for.
Next!
C) Marry a U.S. citizen
Not too many U.S. citizens are walking around your tiny town looking for marriage proposals. Oh, and there is one other detail: You’re already married.
But let’s pretend you’re not, just for fun. What would the options be?
1. Go to the U.S. in order to meet someone.
“So, I’m trying to get to the U.S. to meet someone, to marry him or her, so I can get to the U.S.?”
2. Fall in love and pop the question
I highly recommend the “fall in love” part, as faking this situation to get your green card is a serious offense that results in jail time and a $250,000 fine, which is what you find HERE, along with the following steps:
3. Go back to your own country and apply for a fiancé visa
Pay $675 to file (not including appointment fees, passport fees, etc, etc.), and then start the waiting game.
If it’s discovered that you were in the U.S. illegally, you’ll be required to return to your own country for a minimum of 10 years. If your spouse can’t or won’t come with you, for any reason, good luck. You know what? Just “good luck” either way.
(Think they’re kidding ? See Operation Amigos podcast episode HERE for a true story of just such a case. Except it was 12 years, not 10)
4. Don’t expect a guaranteed welcome to the U.S. even after your ten years are up. (see podcast above)
Again, for you, none of that matters, because you’re married.
Next!
D) Pay a coyote to take you over the border.
No, not a furry desert animal that might eat you on the way there. Check out the second one.
coy·o·te
ˈkīˌōt,kīˈōdē/
noun
- A wolflike wild dog native to North America.
- A person who smuggles Latin Americans across the US border, typically for a high fee. “At the bus station, there were coyotes offering to drive us to Los Angeles”
He’ll charge you a few thousand bucks. But you have a cousin in L.A. Maybe he’ll front you the money, and once you’re making $10 an hour instead of $5 a day, you’ll be able to pay him back in no time. Plenty of places need workers: farms, construction crews, cleaning companies, factories. You’ll find something easily, and send money back to your family.
Looks like D is the winner. The other three are not in your realm of possibility. But the last one…well, you don’t like the idea.
Besides the fact that you really do like being a law-abiding human, you’ve heard of people dying in the desert, getting shot at by border agents, and being beat up by gangs that prey on would-be immigrants. When you get to the border, the coyote will probably take advantage of you, making you pay thousands more than was agreed upon (or so you’ve heard is common). And that’s before you even consider what the U.S. law enforcement might do if they catch you.
Plus, your cousin says you’ll be treated like trash once you make it.
If you do make it.
Option D is the LAST thing you want to do. But what if it’s your only hope?
TIME’S UP! Time to pick one. Your family is suffering! What’s it gonna be?
***We interrupt this program for ANOTHER public service announcement. Because of the world we live in, the author needs to state that this is NOT an endorsement for or against illegal immigration. It just isn’t. Don’t go there. Seriously. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming***
This is the point: When we tell an undocumented immigrant that they need to simply do it the right way, it’s the same as telling a person who fired in self-defense, a split second before being killed themselves, that they should have called 911 instead.
HERE’S WHY:
We like to imagine that coming to the U.S. “the right way” is a simple, civilized, orderly process, and that if a person would just comply with it, they could be here, live here, work here, raise a family here legally.
For the millions who don’t fit into the neat little scenarios above: FALSE.
A couple of years ago, I picked up a novel at the library that I thought I might enjoy. The cover was decorated with sugar skulls, colorful and bright. I thought it might be a story that portrayed Mexican culture. Instead it was about a police officer in a border town who, out of the goodness of his heart, would identify Mexicans with fake papers and point them to the correct office, where they could stand in line to get real ones.
I wanted to rip the pages to shreds to ensure no one would ever read those words again! (But I didn’t, dear Librarian. I didn’t.)
That is the myth. Here is the REALITY CHECK:
What we have is a broken system that ENCOURAGES illegal immigration because receiving permission to work in the U.S. is more complicated, and infinitely less feasible than people realize. And that’s what most immigrants come for. To work to support their families.
There’s no provision in the law for these people. There’s no “self-defense” clause for them. What there IS is an automatic label: “Illegal.”
Not “Someone who exhausted all her options.”
Not “Someone who would have liked to do it the right way.”
Not “Someone who payed thousands to do it right, and still got denied.”
Not “Someone’s Father.”
Not “Someone’s Wife.”
Not “Someone’s Son.”
One label. No Provision: Undocumented Immigrant
Period.
And that, dear reader, is why you and I need to pause before telling an immigrant something they already know: that they should have come “the right way.”
***We interrupt this program for ONE LAST public service announcement. Because of the world we live in, the author needs to state that she was not trying to imply anything at all (Nothing. Really.) by the pictures she chose to use of brown, Black, white, Asian, hairy, bald, tall, short, fat, skinny, young, old, and old-ish people. They’re people. It’s not about that. It just isn’t. Don’t go there. Seriously. We now return to you to your regularly scheduled day.***
Check out all the types of visas for each country here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas.html
And next time you feel that sentence coming on (“They should do it the right way” or some other iteration), stop, and realize that it’s not that simple.
