Oh, the agony . . .

Waiting is so hard!  I have been obsessing about our waiver and counting down the days until we receive a response, fearful that instead of counting down the days to the happiest day of my life, I may be counting down the days to the worst.  I have been endlessly browsing immigration forums, analyzing hardship letters, calculating processing times of other cases . . . I have become obsessed, worrying about whether or not my "extreme hardship" is "extreme" enough, wondering how we will manage financially if we are condemned to live the next 7+ years in Peru, remembering all the challenges I faced while in Peru.  My brain is on thought overload.  And I still have 4 months to go (according to my incessant analysis of other recent cases) before I am put out of my misery.  It's torture :-(

With or Without "Inspection" - Does it Really Matter?

I refuse to allow anyone to make me feel ashamed of mine and The Dreamer's situation.  I know that it is the law of man and not the law of God that deemed my husband "illegal" and that anyone who knows us and has interacted with us on any kind of level, at any point in our lives, would vouch for our integrity, not just as a couple, but also as individuals.  For this reason, I tend to be very open about our situation in my day-to-day life.  The majority of the US population is ignorant to all things involving immigration and I enjoy the opportunity to educate through my experience when given the chance.  It's usually akward at first, explaining that my husband was deported, especially when I don't know the person's political views regarding the issue, but I never lie about the situation regardless of their political beliefs, because, afterall, those that agree with me aren't those that need to be educated.

I have yet to have a person tell me to my face that my husband deserved to be deported.  And to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of confrontation, so I'm grateful for that.  Instead, everyone expresses some form of sympathy, shock at the injustice of the situation and hope that The Dreamer will be granted a visa to return to the US as soon as possible.  What they don't realize, though, is that despite their supposed support for The Dreamer and I, many of them are not on our side.  They focus on the fact that The Dreamer entered the country on a visa and use that fact to distinguish him from the many other undocumented immigrants who enter the country "without inspection" and then build the case that because The Dreamer entered with inspection, he is somehow more "correct" than those that enter without.  In other words, they're on our side only because The Dreamer was lucky enough to get a tourist visa before entering the country.

Now I know, on a practical level, for those American citizens wanting to spend the rest of their lives with an immigrant who entered without inspection, that that little fact makes a world of difference, but only because the law distinguishes between those that entered with inspection and those that entered without.  When The Dreamer was still in the US and we had plans to adjust status I felt one-hundred percent blessed by the fact that he had entered the country on a visa.  Visas are hard to come by in Peru and the fact that he had one, even an expired one, gave us better options for the future than those without.  But, in the end, it didn't matter how he had entered the country, he was deported just the same.

My question is this - why is it more "correct" to use a tourist visa to immigrate to the US than it is to cross the border without one?  In both cases the purpose is the same - to better one's life.  And in both cases the end result is the same - a person who was not given legal permission to make a life for themselves in the US is doing so.  In both cases someone is working without permission to work and someone is "unlawfully present".  The one doesn't have any more or less integrity than the other.

One commenter on a blog that I frequent chose to refer to those that enter with inspection as entering through the "front door" and those that enter without inspection as entering through the "back door", and then implied that the choice of which door to use was determined by the immigrant.  But, the truth is that those that choose to immigrate to our country aren't given the choice of which door to use - if they were, I don't know of anyone who wouldn't choose the "front door" - but the choice isn't theirs because more often than not the "front door" is closed, locked and dead bolted against their knocking.

It would be easy to accept the kind rationalization of those who "support immigration, just not illegal immigration" when they confirm the injustice of my situation based on the fact that The Dreamer was trying to do things the "correct" way, but I'm not ignorant to the difficulty involved in obtaining a visa, and I don't think that those that enter "without inspection" are any less "correct" than my husband.  So, thank you for your support, but your NOT on my side.

Our Story . . .

So, I've just learned how to use pages and "Our Story" is now up.  Check it out via the link at the top of the page to find out how we arrived at our current situation.

Coming Out . . .

When my husband was first deported from the U.S., I honestly thought that I was the only U.S. citizen with a deported husband.  I remember scouring the internet, googling "married deported".  At the time, there was only one other blogger that I was able to come up with in a similar situation and having just that one other person made a huge difference.  Over the past two-and-a-half years since then I have realized that I am by far not the only one and I can't explain the comfort that this fact gives me.  So, when Corin from "Corin in Exile" wrote her recent blog post titled "Solidarity" asking why so many of us in this situation aren't speaking out about it, I decided to answer her call. 

It's hard to believe that I started this blog a whole year ago - time really does fly - and as you can see, my blogging has been slim to none.  I've always been a little hesitant about speaking out considering our situation, which is why I will blog anonymously, at least for now.  Once mine and The Dreamer's fate is decided (once our visa waiver is approved or denied) anonymity won't matter so much, but until then we will be The Planner and The Dreamer.  But, honestly, I hope my blog will serve as some sort of comfort to someone else out there in a similar situation just as the blogs that you'll see listed under "Other blogs to check out . . . " have served as a comfort to me.  Thank you to all those that haven't been afraid to speak out - I have been guzzling your words greedily and anonymously.

So, I'm recommitting to this blog.  Bare with me because I'm just learning all this blog design stuff and don't quite have everything up, yet.  I hope to be publishing "Our Story" soon.