The Weight of My Self
They used to say that every Filipino wants to grow up to be American. That was true for me since I was born. I was born in the Philippines, but my father admired the United States as did his father before him. For as long as I remembered, my father always told us that what he wanted to settle here and that was what we would do. I say this to you as a way of explanation. This love is an ancestral memory, passed from generation to generation, in awe of our civilized ex-colonial masters.
Things didn’t quite work out the way that my father planned. That is a long story, but we wound up moving to a different country, and my teenage heart was planted in Vancouver, Canada. It still feels torn.
One thing I feel like I learned from being Canadian is a respect for fairness, an obedience for rules, and that waiting in lines is a mark of a civilized society. You wait and you take your turn and your patience will be rewarded. That is why you wait.
Eventually, the longing re-emerged and each of my family members left Canada and entered the States. I was the last. I came to the United States in 1992 to attend university and to join the rest of my family. I have lived here legally and within status for 24 years; but I am not yet a citizen. That may seem like a long time for you and it is.
Of the 24 years I’ve lived here, 9 years were spent waiting for a Green Card, which is also long, but I work in technology and not every tech startup is a robust company with stable financials and a well staffed HR department that can retain good legal counsel. I switched employers for the same reason that many of us normally have switched — because the company was failing. Because a good boss left and the new boss was toxic. Because we were getting bought and our new owners were more interested in the tech than the people. Every time I switched employers, I had to start over again. Go to the back of a new line. Those were not trivial choices, but they were choices that I had to make.
I am not complaining about the time that it takes. That is not why I am writing this piece.
I finally received my Green Card in 2016. I got it by literally earning it across 24 years of being a student and a professional. As a technology manager, I have hired and helped create jobs for at least 30 Americans in that time. So I think I’ve earned my place.
To petition for my Green Card, my employers have had to do a lot of work. They had to file documents describing why they needed to hire me: prevailing wage surveys for my position and industry, job descriptions, the resumes of every American that they considered for the position, tax forms to show that they were a legitimate business. It would’ve been so much simpler for them to hire an American, but they couldn’t find one that they wanted, and I had proved to them that I was worth it.
For myself, to get that Green Card I had to:
- provide my professional qualifications including, resume, degrees, and my grade transcripts from university and graduate school
- make three medical appointments to screen me for tuberculosis, HIV, syphilis and other conditions
- divulge if I was ever a Nazi, a communist, a terrorist, a polygamist, a prostitute, a gunrunner, a drug smuggler, or a war criminal
- have my fingerprints and my picture recorded
- provide the names, contact info of every boss that I’ve had
- provide letters from each employer confirming details in my resume
- provide proof of valid work authorization for each job
- photocopy every page and stamp of all of my old passports to verify dates when I was in and out of the country
I think we can accept it as fact that in the 6 months between when I let Immigration take my fingerprints and when I got my Green Card, they asked the FBI and other DHS agencies for information on me. I don’t know what parts of my past they investigated, or what other facts of my life they reviewed after I surrendered all of this identifying data. They’re not obligated to tell me that.
I have a document box with all of my petitions and my resumes and my college transcripts and my expired passports and my recommendation letters and my paystubs and my tax returns sitting in my office. I have carried that collection from dorm room to apartment to condo. It has grown from an envelope to a shoebox to a 12x12x12 cube. It weighs more than 10 pounds. That is the weight of my worthiness to live here.
I carry it because every time I have to come back into this country, every time I cross into your borders, there is always a chance that I will be suspected, and that I will be challenged. I used to have to apply for a new visa every year; and every year somebody at the border didn’t like the way a ‘t’ was crossed or how an ‘i’ was dotted. More than once, I have actually had to call my HR department from a border crossing in Vermont to have one word changed on my petition letter and have it faxed up to the station just to be admitted back into the country. The box is my arsenal for their questions, the physical proof that I am allowed to be here.
When you come into this country through an airport, you are always greeted with two sets of lines at Immigration — one is for Citizens and Green Card holders, and it never really has a line because those people are being welcomed home. The Other Visitors line is for everyone else. That line can take a while. Those people are always suspected.
I always waited in the Other Visitors line, and for years I looked over at the Green Card line, and I kept my patience, because I believed that the line was worth it.
In August I got married to a wonderful woman. In September we put an offer on a condo. In October, my actual Green Card arrived. In November, we moved into our new place, the first piece of American real estate that either of us have owned. I carried the box as I always have. For a brief few weeks, I entertained the notion that I had arrived, that I no longer needed the box. That I was, as the card says, a permanent resident. I earned this security. I earned the peace of being able to empty that box.
I believed that was the promise that the country gave me, as enshrined in the card that I was given, which gave me the following rights:
- live permanently in the United States provided I do not commit any actions that would make me removable under immigration law
- work in the United States at any legal work of my qualification and choosing
- be protected by all laws of the United States, my state of residence and local jurisdictions
And this weekend I saw that many of my fellow Permanent Residents were not protected. A member of the Federal Government asked the White House if they were supposed to subject Green Card holders to ‘extreme vetting’ and they were told that, even after all that permanent residents had to endure and experience, they had to be subjected to this suspicion and humiliation one more time.
That is an insult.
I don’t care about the fact that DHS reversed their position after the outrage happened. I don’t care about the fact that I was not personally covered by the ban. I do care about the fact that DHS asked the White House if they were supposed to ignore the rights that were given to us and the White House said yes. I do care that even after the temporary stays were granted, CBP continued to detain people in defiance of court orders. I am livid with the news that permanent residents were unlawfully forced to sign away their Green Cards while under detention.
That is a slap to the face and a breach of trust to every immigrant who has worked to be here, and a betrayal of the American Ideal. The sting from the slap still lingers even after you say you’re sorry.
You will never be my President, Donald Trump, and I will devote all of my spare energies to seeing you removed. I don’t care if you know this. I don’t care about what you can do. In accepting permanent residency, I accepted the responsibility to:
I will honor that responsibility. But I promise that I will work to ensure that you will be removed and I will relish every drop of sweat that I have contributed to that outcome.
This is my promise to you.
