Immigration truths and realities.

I
In every immigrant family like mine there are two histories, the romantic myth and the real account. The romantic myth is told around the overwhelmed table with food from home, with a drink in hand, a hearty laugh, and loud music in the background. It is the stories you grow up hearing about how we came to the United States!! Told with hyperbole, gusto and lots of exclamation points. All the sentences start with: “Remember when?”

That table at la tia’s is not just filled with pasteles, patacones, or tongue. It also has hot dogs and a store bought pie proudly displayed right next to the rest of the strongly spiced fare. The hot dogs with ketchup are for the kids who are americanitos and think the tongue in tomato sauce is stomach turning, not a delicacy to be savored. They also prefer the store bought pie perfectly edged to the arroz con leche that is lumpy and imperfect. As they grow up they don’t question the myths. Their parents also prefer to hide from them the dark side of immigration. It helps to gloss over the anger, the shame, and the sadness of their experiences.

The truth is that leaving your country is not easy. You leave everything you’ve known for a big unknown. You don’t know the language, the customs, the laws, the weather or the geography. For example learning how to get a job involves a whole complicated set of transactions that you must learn from scratch. Add to it finding an apartment, setting up utilities and learning the transportation system. It can be taxing and disconcerting.

In the process you also must learn what and who is sincere. Not to be tricked or bamboozled, no matter how friendly the face. And yet all along you must believe that you made the right decision to leave your country. Just like you trust that the virgin, and the saints you have hanging on the wall, or propped against the windowsill won’t forget you.

My family is not unlike most immigrants’ families; some came over legally, some on student visas, others on tourist visas. All came because they wanted something they could not get back home, safety, opportunity, or an education. How each person became “legal” is complicated. Some have taken a risk of living without papers for years while awaiting an amnesty, or have paid expensive lawyers bills; others yet have married a person with their papers. Some have had all three experiences. Each stage of their lives in the US played out depending on how close they are to becoming “legal”. Some have had close calls with raids, saved by the shouts of the migra ringing down the street. One thing is certain; no matter how difficult the situation none has wanted to return “home”. When a deportation has happened we don’t talk about it. We just send packages full of vitamins, underwear, socks or sometimes the odd fifty-dollar bill.

This silence continues when we don’t mention our truths unless it is in hushed tones. The jobs for little pay, the small and large humiliations, the pains of being confused in a strange city, or how cops scare you. We also don’t talk about the real reasons we came: the political situations, the civil wars, or the disappearances. By the time you made it to that table full of delicious food, the whole family crowded in to a small living room, music and children making noise you don’t want to bring up the truth. You want to talk about the time grandmother made a dress from scraps from the factory and it looked better than anything in a store window. The first time you saw snow, how you finally saved enough money to buy a sofa that is now permanently encased in plastic, or who was your first real American friend. These stories become legends in the family lore told over and over again.

So why bring up the realities? After all you are a survivor who managed to be patient enough to learn how to work within the system, you now have a drivers license, and the kids speak English. So why remember the past, when the future is what is important? And in that moment you become American. It is not the papers kept in plastic sleeves for their protection but how you slowly and surely forget. You unconsciously join in that great American pastime that is forgetting its’ past.

II
The problem is that not all of us can forget at the same rate. Some of us carry the wounds and scars on our faces, and bodies. The anger or frustration that become embedded in the skin, like the ulcers, arthritis, or high blood pressure from working two or three jobs at a time. These jobs are hard back braking labor. Just for a while longer until…you learn English, until…you have saved up some money to for a down payment on your own place…until you try to finish some sort of schooling. Until you get that dream job. An easy office job, because you get to sit all day and do nothing. Until then you do the job nobody wants to do, for a wage nobody wants.

Ask what the minimum wage was any given year and my aunt can remember the exact amount. She has tracked the quarter-by-quarter raise given to her in every job. She has had factory jobs when there were factory jobs, and since then she has waited tables, been a childcare worker, and now she is an elder companion. She has done all these jobs and she has done them well. For thirty years she has worked with her ingles machacao, her broken English and raised two sons. All she has ever done is clean for, clean up, clean after, and clean people. And yet through it all she has never wanted to return “home.” She left such a long time ago and that place is no longer there. It barely exists in her memory. She waited too long waited until…

III
If you are like me you see your relatives at baptisms, weddings or funerals. It is there that you see the gap between those who have managed and those who just barely manage. It is not in their manner or way of dressing but how they stand, how a smile is barely ever on their lips. It can be painful to see those who you love in such pain. And yet they still hold on to the promise of next year one more year. Until…

The contrast of between us is palpable. I have a college degree, I did not have a baby before the age of twenty, I speak English without an accent, and I have never been in jail, All of these experiences make me seem lucky, blessed and destined to not suffer their pains. In their eyes I look like the nice middle class girl who made it. Cops don’t stop me because I look “suspicious”, store-owners hardly ever follow me as I browse in their shop, and I have rarely been called a spic to my face. To these family members my life is golden. What they don’t realize is there is no free ride for an immigrant. Not even me. Everything you have you have worked for. Your inheritance is your work ethic. As a result you work hard but not smart and the world seems to pass you by. Your home is small, full of items from the 99-cent store, and the plumbing isn’t great. While I admit I have many opportunities and advantages, I am no more gringa than they are. I too have the scars of the racist and class based system. More than once I have been passed up for a promotion by someone whiter, younger and less experienced than me. Nobody is off the hook when your last name is Hernandez, Rodriguez or Medina.

At these family reunions the endemic silence of the truth haunts us. Nobody talks about this shadow that has adhered to us. It explains the melancholia, the clinginess, and the grief that can overwhelm that home we have worked so hard for. Hasta en las mejores familias, even in the best of families that risk of immigrating can turn sour. That never really belonging seeps in to your skin, and it becomes easy to fall to the demons. These demons have modern names and faces. They are drugs use, alcoholism, physical abuse, abandonment, and compulsive shopping. And yet we don’t want to leave the US.

One more year, just a little longer while junior finishes school, we save just enough, or the political situation at home calms down. Then maybe we will go back for a visit. Playing tourista by going the beach and bringing all the cousins to eat all they want. Proud off all the empty bottles of beer and Coca Cola strewn as you film it with the new camcorder you bought specially for the trip. You get to be a big shot and showoff the green bills, los dolarsitos. The problem is that one-year slowly becomes ten, twenty or thirty. You might never make it to the beach, and in the meantime your life is more about being here and not there. Until…

IV
We immigrants have made a pact with the American devil. We have exchanged knowing the rhythm of our seasons for a level of comfort. We left behind knowing when it is mango season and how do~Na Ernestina’s tree can perfume the whole block. That if you get sick someone will always be there. Coming by with soup, a joke, and a prayer. We exchange that for knowing that there will not be a military coup, the feared police won’t ask for a mordida, buses always run, the mailman does not steal, water and electricity are always available. We fear the cold and yet we endure it because we have the right to heat. In exchange we have given not just our current labor, but also our future generations.

Our children will have a heavy task not just to “brown” the United States but also make it truly American. It is my hope that the United States does not continue to pretend to be an only child in a large family. Our young new “American” will help to create a larger America that comprises the whole of the continent from Alaska to the Patagonia. That realizes the untapped resource that we all posses. That Europe is not the motherland, but that a true America is one populated by those of us who have tangible roots in the Americas.

We are now a nation that knows what dulce de leche, tortillas, and carne asada are. That uses these words on a daily basis and also knows how to pronounce correctly. So much so that they do not require italics as I write them. As my mother says this is a nation that loves our food but hates us. Immigration reform is about realizing that to have Mexican, Salvadorian, Dominican, or Colombian food, you have to have Mexicans, Salvadorians, Dominicans and Colombians. If you want to have clean houses, well brought up children, and supermarkets stocked you need us as much as we need to have our needs met. True reform will mean that the next time somebody immigrates they won’t have to create myths. The truth will be uncomfortable, disorienting, but not painful, or heartbreaking. Then maybe we can get what we really bargained for: an opportunity. Until then…I hope that congress does the right thing and honors our contributions by letting us emerge from the shadows of being undocumented.