More than a year ago (June 2011) I flew home to visit my family for 2 months before going to Canada. Our plan was for Fabian to go on a student visa to study English. I had been accepted to a wonderful Spanish/English translation program in Toronto and was hoping to study French on the side. We didn't know if I'd be able to to study the same year or if I'd have to wait until he was finished with his studies. In the end all of our planning was useless anyway since once again it didn’t turn out the way we had wished.
Literally one week before my parents were going to drive me to Canada, I still hadn’t found an apartment and had no idea what we were going to do. Then we suddenly got the news that Fabian’s student visa was denied. I ended up staying in the U.S. for 7 months trying to figure out what we were going to try next.
We had been advised by the agent making the arrangements for him to study in Canada, to lie about having been in the U.S. illegally. I simply was not comfortable with lying and decided to take our chances with the truth. Apparently Canada didn’t like our truth. Fabian has suffered from my honesty so many times in the past 6 years and I’m sure he wishes I’d just fudge things the same way most others seem to do, but I can’t. Integrity is the main principal I learned as a child after “love God with all your heart, soul and mind”. I don’t regret my decision to be honest at any point in this process. I am determined to do things “the right way” as much as is possible and to correct any possible “wrong decisions” of our pasts.
The week we received the news of our Canadian denial an old friend of mine contacted me and suggested we hire Mark Daly, an immigration lawyer based in Nashville, Tennessee. He has worked with our case via Skype. The first time we went through this whole process I only consulted with a lawyer once and the information she had given me was completely incorrect. At that point we thought our approval was based on merits instead of hardships.
That is the most frustrating part of this whole situation. I've always worked hard to avoid difficulties in life. I've attempted to make goals and achieve them. I've been successful in some areas and failed in others, however, I never want to strive to be worse but rather better. I'm a tad upset that re-entry is not based on our merits. It seems the system encourages people to make poor decisions, to be dependent on the government and to have dysfunctional families.
Quite frankly our being banned from the U.S. for 10 years on the basis of undocumented entry is not something I feel bitter about. I can understand that if we break a law we will have to suffer some type of consequences for it no matter how sad our sob story sounds. What bothers me is the fact that you have to be messed up in order to get the 10 year ban waived.
The majority of the waiver applicants (75%) DO get accepted for the pardon based on how crazy or horrible their lives are. I don't know if that is an indicator of how many Americans are dysfunctional, how many are good at pretending they are, or how many are driven to it once exiled. Now, instead of being able to focus on improving myself, I too must focus on the negatives in hopes that I can be viewed as pathetic enough to re-enter the country legally. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this whole process really has taken a toll and created some severe hardships. I just might be considered screwed up enough to come home this time and make that percentage of mad Americans grow! Yeah! (Sarcasm with a hint of joy) :)
Finding a good psychiatrist to do my psychiatric evaluation has been key. During my time in the U.S. I visited one psychiatrist but my lawyer decided I needed to hire a new one and hope they could express themselves better and concentrate on the hardships in our case. The first one couldn’t write a grammatically correct sentence so her report looked very unprofessional. Also, since she hadn’t had any experience with immigration cases she spent most of the time just trying to understand our situation.
Recently I had a second psychiatric evaluation via Skype with a man who had experience writing up this specific type of psychiatric evaluations. His questions were to the point and he didn’t let me ramble. He knew what issues immigration wanted addressed along with all the details of how the immigration system works. He didn’t waste his time talking to me about things that wouldn’t help our case. The lawyer seems to be much more positive about our upcoming interview after receiving the second evaluation.
Our U.S. immigration case should be coming to a close (yet again) in the next 6 months if we don’t have anymore unexpected delays. I originally wrote this blog a month ago but didn’t post it since we got more correspondence saying that we had to send in additional documents.
Next week, if all goes smoothly, we should have all of our paperwork in. After that we’ll just be waiting for notification of Fabian’s first immigration interview in Ciudad Juarez. We know he will be denied at that appointment because of his undocumented entry into the U.S. nine years ago. Although he has been out of the U.S. for 4.5 years remember that the punishment is a 10 year ban.
We’re hoping this time we will be approved and will have 5 years to catch up on all we missed since we had to leave the U.S. It would be great if we could both get good jobs and prepare for possibly having a family in several years. I’m 31 years old now. Ideally we would have started a family already but we feel like we can barely take care of ourselves much less a child.
My hopes are high again and my patience is seemingly running out. I’m trying to remember how many other times I thought a good change was coming only to be disappointed but I can’t help dreaming about our return. I’ll continue to think positively and deal with the news as it comes. Thanks for your prayers!
Love and blessings,
Alicia
“… being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father…” Colossians 1:11-12a
P.S. Fabian and I need to have a good photoshoot sometime soon so we can get some decent pictures together. This photo was our 6th year wedding anniversary dinner. Not the best quality but it shows we are alive, happy and healthy!
