Becoming American
I’ve never been to Santiago, Chile, but when I picture it, I’m imagining New York City along the South Pacific ocean. It’s the largest, most densely populated region of the country with over 5.614 million people. They have a subway system, most people don’t have cars, and it’s not an easy place to make a fair wage.
The cost of living is high compared to the typical household income. In most homes, you’ll find families with multi-generations living under one roof — grandparents, uncles and aunts, several children — and sometimes, even multiple families. This huge city is where the story of Pablo Riquelme becoming an American begins. And somehow, against all odds, it’s where two amazing people from totally different countries and backgrounds found each other.
Growing up in Chile, Pablo was always outside. When school wasn’t in session from sun up to sundown, he was riding his bike and playing soccer with his neighborhood friends in the city streets. And after dinner, he’d be right back out there playing more soccer.
By high school, his dreams of becoming a professional soccer player had dwindled, and his focus had shifted to art — buying brushes, canvases, pencils, and paints. When his mother sent lunch money with him to school, he kept it and saved up to buy art supplies and the occasional comic book or CD. When it came time to go to college, Pablo started studying advertising with a focus on graphic design, and in his final year of college, he met someone that would end up changing the course of his life entirely.
The meet-cute
In 2004, a young college student named Becki from a large family in a little town in Idaho stepped off a plane in Santiago. She’d be living there for 18 months on a mission trip with her church. Becki knew Spanish because she’d spent several months in Ecuador working with orphans, but even though the language was familiar, Santiago, Chile, was a very different, much larger place. The intimidating size of the city didn’t stop Becki from finding incredible people there and making life-long friendships. When it came time to return home to finish up her Bachelor’s degree, it was hard for her to leave.
Becki had been back in the states for nearly a year when she decided to give herself an early college graduation gift — she planned a short return visit to spend time with her friends in Santiago over New Year’s Eve, 2007.
When New Year’s Eve arrived, Becki went with friends to a party to celebrate. When she spotted Pablo across the room, she remembers leaning over to her friend and saying, “That guy is cute.”
A mutual friend graciously intervened and introduced Becki to Pablo who at the time, spoke no English. Pablo made a few light-hearted jokes in Spanish and Becki was surprised — apparently, humor in Chile is sparse and dry. Sparks flew, and the two started dating immediately. But Becki hadn’t planned to stay in Chile long-term. The new relationship felt dream-like and romantic.
Becki had to return to the states to finish her last semester of school. And crazy as it sounds, she and Pablo quickly knew this was the real deal. When she graduated, Becki sold her car, quit her job, and moved back to Chile. She found a job translating documents for an attorney there, and for a year, they dated and fell in love.
Chile or the United States?
Pablo was an only child, and he’d spent his entire life in Santiago, Chile. He grew up in a loving home with his mother, Eliana, and father, Gabriel — both chefs who eventually opened a bakery together and named it “Pablito.” According to Pablo, his mother still makes the best empanadas in Chile. When he and Becki met, he was living with them and working his way through college. His entire extended family lived in Chile, and he’d only ever been on a plane once. He’d never spoken a word of English, let alone visited the United States before. He’d never known anything other than Chile.
Even though Becki and Pablo were both working full time in Chile, they weren’t making enough money. Becki’s entire family was back in the U.S., and if things stayed as they were, they’d never be able to go back to visit. And the cost to move into their own place in Chile would be unsurmountable.
The question of how the couple would be able to stay together — and where they’d live — became an imminent topic of conversation. After months of long talks and some serious contemplation, they knew they wanted to get married. They agreed, moving to the U.S. was the right move for their future together. There would be more opportunities there for them.
Down on one knee with fireworks on TV
A year to the day since they met, on a quiet New Year’s Eve night in 2008, Pablo and Becki were just hanging out, watching fireworks on TV with the Olympics theme music playing in the background. Pablo stood up, knelt down on one knee, and asked Becki to marry him. She said yes. And for about three months, they got to float around Chile, enjoying the feeling of being a newly engaged couple in love.
But in March of 2009, reality hit. Becki returned to the U.S. to re-establish life there and prepare for Pablo’s arrival once they were married. She’d sold everything when she moved to Chile, and they’d need a place to live. She needed a job, a car…there was a lot to do. The couple set a date for a December 23rd wedding in Chile for that same year.
When December 2009 finally rolled around, the couple hadn’t seen each other in over eight months. Becki’s parents were about to meet Pablo in person for the very first time in Chile just days before the ceremony. They’d Skyped, but Becki’s parents didn’t speak Spanish, and Pablo didn’t speak any English yet. So, communication was always limited, and it went through Becki. As a parent, you can imagine, they must have had concerns. But as soon as the Campbells met Pablo, they knew he was one of them — he was part of the family. Today, Becki’s father says it’s as if he always was. And her younger brother says that Pablo is his brother from another country.
After the ceremony on Dec. 23, Pablo and Becki spent a week together honeymooning in Chile before Becki had to return to her new job in Idaho on Jan. 2, 2010. The next step towards getting Pablo to the U.S. was to apply for their marriage visa and Pablo’s green card. They were told the process would take three months, and Pablo would be able to come to the U.S. with his green card by March. But that’s not what happened.
The green card saga
Before they could start their lives together in the U.S., Pablo needed a marriage visa. But the paperwork was all in English, and it was complicated legal-jargon. They couldn’t afford a lawyer to review it all, so with each round of new paperwork and requested documentation, Pablo would have to snail mail the documents from Santiago to Becki in Idaho to review them. After filling out each paper’s request, compiling all the necessary documentation, and including the required U.S. dollar payments, she would mail the papers back to Pablo to sign, then he would mail them in and wait to hear something back. Months would pass without word. The only way they knew if the paperwork had been received or seen — let alone accepted — is when their checks would clear.
What was supposed to be a 3-month process came to a screeching halt when the U.S. immigration office informed Becki that, as a full-time teacher, she did not make enough money to support herself and Pablo upon his arrival.
In order for Pablo to be granted his green card, he would need to establish a financial “sponsor” who was an American citizen. Simply put, a sponsor must make 125 percent above the income level that the government believes puts a person into poverty and prove that he or she could financially support all the dependents in their family as well as the immigrant.
Sponsorship is a huge deal. If you become someone’s sponsor, you’ve entered into a legal and binding agreement that says if the immigrant enters the country and cannot find work, loses their job, or even decides to divorce their spouse and cannot financially support themselves individually, you can be sued to provide financial support. And at the time, Pablo did not know a soul in the U.S. except for Becki’s family, and even they had only met him once at the wedding.
Of course, there were skeptics. Some people thought the marriage was a sham — an excuse for Pablo to be able to enter the U.S. with a green card. What would happen after that?
After months of uncomfortable conversations, one of Becki’s family members decided to intervene.
Alan Campbell, Becki’s older brother, took a leap of faith. He trusted his sister, and he believed in her and Pablo. He let the government look into all of his finances and filed all the necessary paperwork to become Pablo’s sponsor, a commitment that would last for 10 years or until Pablo became a U.S. citizen. That was the final piece to the puzzle. But again, they waited. And waited.
The first interview
Seven months after they were married in Chile, Pablo finally received a letter in July of 2010 from the U.S. Embassy in Chile to come in for his interview to determine if he would be granted his green card and be reunited with Becki.
In the letter, they asked him to bring “evidence” of his marriage. Since he didn’t own a car, he lugged a box filled with personal items, wedding invitations, emails, letters, and wedding photos along on the subway. His last stop left him about a mile from the Embassy, so he walked the mile and a half, box in hand, to get there. He sat and waited until his number was called. When the pregnant woman ahead of him didn’t pass her test and left in tears, his stomach sank. There were no guarantees.
When they called his number, he handed over the box to a woman inside a window, kind of like a bank transaction. She began rifling through his box, and the questions began. Who’s this in this picture? Where was this picture taken? Name this person. Ten minutes later, the interviewer abruptly stopped the questioning and said, “Alright, you passed,” and took his box. Pablo urged her to relent — this box was everything he had of Becki. She finally let him take his box of memories home with him, along with the most important piece of paper he’d ever held — his stamped acceptance form granting him his green card. His passport arrived the very next day, and two weeks later, he would be on his way to be with Becki in the United States of America.
Getting into the U.S. is serious business
The experience Pablo stepped into at the Atlanta International Airport didn’t feel like the first stop to a romantic reunification with his wife. It felt more like he was a criminal. He was traveling to the U.S. with a marriage visa and a manilla envelope he was told not to open under any circumstances.
He was shuffled through the customs line by police officers, one of which realized he did not speak English and asked him to follow her. She motioned and told him to have a seat in a small waiting room directly in sight of the jail cell he’d be escorted to if he didn’t have the right paperwork with him. That’s where people were taken before they were deported.
Seated around him were families from all over — some seemingly from Africa, some European, some from the Middle East. But all of them had one thing in common — they had to wait their turn, no matter how long it might take. Each person would be required to provide the proper paperwork, then follow an officer into a private room to be searched, sniffed by drug dogs, questioned, and hopefully, released to be on their way.
In the waiting room at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration office, Pablo looked around at the stoic faces seated in tattered chairs that lined the room around him. And waited. And waited. Until the stocky, Gwen Stefani look-alike police officer returned an hour later with his manila envelope, opened.
“You can go,” she said. It was all over. He was finally going to see his wife.
It was 7 am, and by this point, Pablo had been traveling for over 24 hours. He was starving, so he pulled out his English dictionary to see how to say “I want,” and walked up to a Dominos pizza. Two gracious Americans helped him order and pay for an entire Hawaiian pizza and a Coke — the coke tasted completely different than Chilean Coca-cola. Then with the coins he had in change, not knowing how much it was, walked over to a payphone to call Becki and tell her the good news. He’d be there to see her in just a few hours.
Idaho and potatoes
Most of our foreign friends who have yet to visit our great nation don’t imagine the Idaho landscape when they picture the U.S. Pablo was used to a huge city in Chile — busy, big buildings, tons of people. Idaho was not that. Pablo never saw a “big building” in Idaho like he always saw in American movies. And he remembers clearly when it hit him, “oh, I live in the country.”
Back home, Pablo had already made progress in his career and had been working in graphic design. But in rural Idaho? There wasn’t much work to speak of, especially if you don’t speak English and you’re in the country on a marriage visa. He took a job working on a factory line, removing the rocks and dirt from potatoes. His job situation continued to be a challenge, but after a couple of years of manual labor, he finally found a job working as an art teacher at an elementary and middle school. But as it turns out, even two teacher’s salaries aren’t enough to survive. Not even in Idaho. Something had to change.
Pablo and Becki started looking into universities where he could get a degree that employers in the U.S. would recognize and respect. They decided on the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). Once he received his acceptance letter, they packed up all of their belongings, said goodbye to Becki’s family, and moved to the mossy, romantic town of Savannah, Georgia.
Mastering the English language and a lot of huge change
SCAD was a perfect fit. As it turns out, many of their master’s students are immigrants, which made for a warm and welcoming environment for Pablo.
SCAD required him to focus only on English for his first year in school. He and Becki had always spoken exclusively in Spanish to each other. But Pablo was determined to succeed at SCAD and learn English to move forward with his masters, so one day, Pablo turned to Becki and said, “I’m only going to speak in English from now on.” He left his native language cold turkey. From that moment on, he only spoke Spanish with his mother on Facetime.
Two years into his education in 2015, Pablo’s father tragically passed away. He hadn’t been home since his father dropped him off at the airport in 2010. The shock of his father’s death and the vast distance from his family was excruciating. But it would be a risk to return to Chile and then return back to the U.S. — at the time, there was an election coming up, and a lot of unrest in the country related to immigrant travel into U.S. borders.
Regardless, Becki’s family helped to get Pablo home to be with his mother and family. And thankfully, his return back to the U.S. was smooth. He has not been able to return to Chile since then, but Pablo plans to bring his mother to the U.S. soon for a visit.
Two years later, Pablo graduated from a top graphic design university with a Masters in Fine Arts. His father would have been very proud.
After graduation comes the job hunt. And with every interview, Pablo would prepare for the dreaded question, “Are you an American citizen?” Most companies aren’t interested in the complication of employing someone who isn’t a citizen. There were several long grueling months of interviews and disappointments, but Pablo landed a solid internship in another great southern city — Nashville, Tennessee. The couple’s move to the U.S. was starting to feel like it was the right one. Once again, they packed up their things. In February of 2018, they were official Nashville residents.
The internship provided Pablo with some great experience, and he was offered a full-time job with an event marketing agency. But quickly, he realized, things weren’t stable there. He started looking for something new. In May of 2019, he saw a job posting for a UX/UI Designer position at Lewis Communications, and applied.
A guy named Robert Froedge reached out and set up an interview within days, and as soon as Pablo met him, he remembers thinking, “This Robert guy is cool.” For the record, that Robert guy is cool. In June, Robert reached out again, and asked Pablo to come back in for a final interview with the rest of his team. They offered Pablo the job on the same day. But he had to go back to work to give his notice.
He drove back to work and changed back into his regular work clothes in the car, and as soon as he walked in the door, the company leaders sat everyone down to announce they were going under. The timing couldn’t have been better.
Becoming a citizen
In the midst of everything going on in the busy lives of Becki and Pablo, in the background, they were hoping desperately to start a family. If you’ve ever been through this struggle, you know this feeling — the fear of pregnancy being an impossibility never leaves your mind. Time continued to pass for the couple, and soon, they learned that they wouldn’t be able to conceive. Their hearts were broken. But Pablo and Becki knew they were meant to be parents. If you meet them, you’ll know it too. They decided on adoption. But Pablo would have to become a citizen in order to move that process forward.
The citizenship application process can take anywhere from 7 to 12 months, and it all leads up to one huge interview. After you file, you receive your book to study for the test, but there’s no end date provided. You’re just waiting to hear. After he applied in June, he heard nothing for nine months. But in November, Pablo received word that he should plan for his in-person citizenship interview on Nov. 19, 2019.
He’d studied meticulously with friends and coworkers for this test. He was provided with 100 questions to study — details about our country that most Americans who have been living in the U.S. for their entire lives probably couldn’t answer. The test would only be comprised of 10 questions from the 100 provided, and you must get 6 out of 10 correct to pass. The test is administered orally, probably so the proctor can notate the applicant’s ability to speak the English language.
When Nov. 19 came, he sat and waited in a room that looked like the DMV, watching people leave in tears of joy or utter defeat. When his number was finally called, he rose from his chair and walked into the room with butterflies in his stomach. But when he walked back out, he was an American citizen. He didn’t miss a single question.
The naturalization ceremony
At 7:30 am on Friday, December 13, 2019, a downtown Nashville courthouse hallway was packed full of friends and relatives of immigrants from all over the world. Inside the courtroom double doors were 58 immigrants from 30 different countries, waiting to have their green cards taken and replaced with U.S. citizenship.
Becki sat waiting with the rest of the immigrant families, talking with the 18 friends and coworkers that showed up to support Pablo. When security guards shuffled them all into the courtroom, there sat those 58 people, from all over the map with beautifully different skin colors, who spoke different languages, with one common thing tying them together — they were about to become Americans.
As they stood to take their oath of citizenship together, I looked around the room at each of their families. All of them, brimming with joy and pride, beaming support at their loved ones, and I felt more pride in being an American than I ever have before.
As each person in line in front of Pablo shook the judge's hand and received their citizenship paper, every single one of them looked towards their families, beaming right back at them.
And when Pablo's turn came, Becki watched him with tears in her eyes and the purest joy I’ve ever seen. They’ve been waiting for so long, not just for this day, but for every step along the way — waiting to be reunited, waiting on a visa or a sponsorship, waiting on a job or a degree, waiting to see their families, waiting to be notified of an interview or a test — for over ten years. And finally, they are done waiting.
