Strangers will often pause and squint before asking: “So where are you from?” or “How did you come here?” Until that question was first asked when I was a 12 year old, I’d never considered that I was an “other” from elsewhere. I was bullied often as the only foreigner in my Canadian elementary school, and I wondered if I’d ever be anything aside from the “other.” Being just as foreign in India, I’d probably have been bullied there too. Kids grow into adults carrying their habits with them — bullying maturing into micro-agressions—and as an introvert, I learned to navigate life undercover, putting every bit of my culture and identity away so it couldn’t be used against me. But over time I learned that no amount of “covering” could ever veil my history, that in my mid 30s I finally felt it’s better to live vitally than muted. My father is mostly deaf, and has suffered but endured as most immigrants do. Though he rarely talks about his life, I can see his eyes well quietly, storied with sacrifices and humble gains.
But why have I been so quiet about my long immigration journey?
If you should know, I last crossed the United States border from Canada as an undocumented immigrant in the fall of 2009. I rarely discuss my life before California with anyone—as though it were all as alien to me as the government—for fear of being misconstrued or worse, digested for cavalier consumption. Those were tense times for the undocumented and everywhere, Americans were talking deportation. I remember then, staring out the window of a Greyhound bus parked at the Detroit border, unable to see my future any clearer than my past, life a slight gray like the center’s facade. I’d fallen in love with a woman in a cocktail dress when we met at a cabaret show in a reclaimed barn and made a life in Michigan even though my statehood remained in Canada and India.
“Purpose of your trip?” the border agent asked. Answer the question like you rehearsed, I thought. Tell them you’re going to a camping festival with your friends and you plan to leave on this return ticket in five days. But don’t say it fast like a rote memorization. “Don’t you mean you’re visiting your girlfriend?” he said. How did he know? Are you surprised that they have you on file? You’re a brown-bearded man in Islamophobic times, just answer the question. The expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement along with record-breaking deportations numbers was reaching peak frenzy nationwide in 2009 and though I was crossing a different border, I felt the looming threat. I wondered if he was considering sending me to secondary questioning or simply denying my entry. I’m fucked. How many more years will you keep living undocumented, dragging yourself undercover through border checkpoints? You’re almost 30, aren’t you tired of working minimum wage under the table. Ending up in a detention center isn’t worth it, give up, go home.
I never did board that return bus to Toronto. Instead, in October of that year, the woman in the cocktail dress and I married. We fell deep in love after a trip to India together and couldn’t imagine being apart. We wed at a rustic chapel in the presence of a few friends and hardly told anyone. A life together still seemed premature but we were going to make it work.
She was the woman who dreamed me into America.
We visited a nondescript office in Dearborn, a large Arabic exurb outside Detroit. Sitting in an interview room barely big enough for a desk and two chairs, we spoke to an immigration lawyer. A one hour free consultation was all we could afford at the time, so I prepared just one question: should I admit to living in America undocumented?
“There’s one thing that definitely gets your application rejected: it’s being non-factual,” he said. Admitting to illegal immigration seemed like bad advice, but it’s the best thing I could tell anyone. In order to learn more about the immigration process, I would study immigration forums, gleaning pointers from the stories of distraught couples. I also bought the next best thing to a lawyer: a NOLO guidebook entitled Fiance & Marriage Visa, A Couple’s Guide.
We moved in together soon after and started documenting our lives together: the travel, our projects, love letters… It took us a month to prepare our application. Every immigration form required its own careful filing and fee. I-130 & I-485: $985 plus $85 for biometrics. Supporting documents G-325A, I-864, I-693 & I-765. Health exam: $200. On paper we did our best to ensure that our union matched the Western heteronormative idea of marriage. When I finally filed my I-130 petition I received a status designation that officially acknowledged how I felt, “alien relative,” emphasis on the alien.
Now, looking back, it all seems so compressed. In reality, the weeks passed slowly as we waited for notifications, wondering if we’d filed everything properly. Though the Detroit immigration processing center is less busy and harsh than other centers, a single error could set the case back months or worse, dismissed. Every so often, I’d enter my alien number onto the immigration site to see if there were any updates. Once my I-785 work authorization was approved, I could work legitimately too, which was mostly what I cared about. But it also meant that for seven months after our marriage, I couldn’t leave the country whatsoever or risk abandoning my application.
My oldest niece was born in Canada just before we married, but living an undocumented life, I grew distant from my family. One day my brother called and asked: “Will you be my daughter’s godfather?” As much as I’d wanted to reunite with my family, I couldn’t leave now, not after all this. So often, the narrow confines of an immigrant’s journey limits the room for baggage or regret. So I said No to them, without so much as an explanation. I choose to cover my marriage and immigration from my family for a long time.
Finally, the day came for our immigration interview, nervous that our lives were dependent on whether the agent slept well or had a good breakfast. Given that we were two middle class English speakers, the interview went well. I got the sense that the agent couldn’t be happier that a Canadian was moving to the recession plagued state of Michigan. The next day, I filed for my driver’s license, a social security number, and a bank account. The newness of it all was like re-entering adulthood.
But our marriage didn’t last more than two years before we suddenly separated. She was an academic studying the social psychology of race and violence, and when she moved to New York City for a placement, I choose not to follow. I didn’t have the courage to uproot myself and board another bus, to start over again in another state having just settled down. So I collapsed where she left me and I left her, and I drowned myself in the drink. She was the best thing to have happened to me. With her gone now, I started dating a bar owner and sank deeper into depression even while climbing my career ladder as a designer.
More than a year had passed before I saw my wife again. When we met for a coffee she expressed her concern over my binges and toxic relationship. And when she asked me what I was going to do about our marriage, it hit me. My two-year conditional green card was about to expire but we were separated. My odds were slim but I soon learned that I could still renew my green card if I filed a waiver. So after telling her what I’d learned and working out reasonable terms, we filed for a divorce. I had to wait out the minimum 60 days period before I could appear before a trial judge, and in the interim, I filed my I-90 green card renewal with a waiver for divorce.
It was 2012 and though spring was arriving I thought I’d have to leave soon. By March, I’d broken up with the bar owner and divorced my wife and the judge’s gavel sounded my end in a moment of empty misery. I was on my own, my ex-girlfriend was seeing someone else on the sly and my ex-wife had already moved back to NYC. I was doing well as a designer, but a year of drinking and depression rendered my life a mess. I guess I had the sense not to end up in jail, lucky since deportation for even minor infractions was common for us aliens. Unsurprisingly, observing my wretched demeanor, the design agency suggested I take a break from work. By April, I’d about lost everything I strived for, except for an old white diesel Mercedes from my marriage. With my green card renewal still pending, I didn’t see much reason to stay on in America and when I finally stopped grieving, I began packing my life into boxes preparing for a move back to Canada. After six years and six months, this chapter of my life was coming to a close. I spent that last Saturday in June packing up everything in my apartment. I was almost done loading boxes into a box van when the mailman handed me an envelope from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This was it. This was the letter that would have made everything worthwhile and my last chance to live a normal life here. Did they accept my green card renewal despite my divorce?
I stood fixed in the doorway, opened the envelope and unfolded a single page letter that informed me in a plain monospaced type, that my ten year green card was approved.
I cried knowing the hardest part of this journey was over.
I still wonder how I didn’t end up in a detention facility. I have a hard time believing that it all somehow worked out for me when it doesn’t for so many others. It wasn’t long before I moved to California with my green card and the little savings I had from selling that Mercedes. I loaded a dozen boxes onto an Amtrak in Cleavland, determined to start my life over as though none of what I told you had happened. Having booked my flight to San Francisco on air-miles, I had a goodbye party after six years of living in Michigan. A lot of my friends showed, we laughed and cried as though little mattered. After all, my exile as undocumented was now over.
Predictably hungover the next morning, I barely caught my flight out west. I planned my trip to coincide with a developer conference and within a day of landing, I’d secured a job offer in San Francisco over a handshake with a Black manager. A former front man of a straight-edge hardcore band, he was one of the kindest people you could met that he seemed to make everything softer. After everything I’d been through, an amicable divorce, a terrible breakup, a green card renewal, a transnational move and a new job, I ended the year vacationing in Oaxaca and Mexico City. A little odd, considering that after waiting so long for alien resident status in America, my immediate inclination was to want out.
By now I’ve told myself that my path is narrow, with only enough room for one. I’ve never looked back and wondered what if? My ex-wife and I had always wanted to move to California together; she showed me Oakland once and that’s where I live now. When we met again recently she told me over tears how paranoid the immigration process had made her, and the sense of relief she felt the day we split. We made amends that night and though we’ve moved on, I admire everything she is.
Yet I still don’t know what to say when someone asks about my “status.” Especially Americans that claim all the privilege of ancestry but none of the historical pains. We want the Vietnamese food without the war refugees and Cinco de Mayo without the annexing of Northwest Mexico. Subsets of America want desperately to wave their American flags (Made in China) at anti-immigration rallies despite the inherent contradictions of their stance. Our immigration system is woefully outdated with its quotidian expressions of xenophobia found in every instance from student visas terms to the H1B quotas. Canada by comparison has a functioning immigration system. And when the Supreme Court ruled against Arizona’s SB 1070 in the summer of 2012, it finally quieted hysterics for more detentions and deportations. By then the mistreatment of immigrants had been almost federally sanctioned, but the ruling signaled a subtle but important shift as states gradually began passing legislation to bridge the path to residency for the undocumented.
I don’t know that I’ll ever forget those six years between when I first entered America undocumented, washing dishes for a living, to when I finally got my unconditional green card, working as designer. And despite the hardships and losses, I look back and I’m really grateful for all of it. Though what I experienced isn’t even half of what others endure, it instilled in me a tested resilience and trued empathy. I’d like to think I’ve learned to honor my journey and not internalize the diminutive narratives about immigrants. I think when my niece is old enough, I’ll tell how I got to America with $500 in my pocket but why I couldn’t be her godfather at the baptism.
And to answer your question, I, Immigrant, was born in India, grew up in Canada, and I got to California by love and grit. Much the same as so many others.
“We tend to regard ourselves as the puppets of the past, driven along by something that is always behind us. Because I want to turn the thing around, completely the other way and say the past is the result of the present.” —Alan Watts
