Note: I wrote this essay a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, not intending for it to be shared or published, just as an exercise in self-reflection and maybe to help put some unresolved feelings about the past few years to rest. After rereading it and sending to a few people, I found out many of even my closest friends didn't know or understand the full story behind my return to Canada, so I've decided to make this story truly public. While I've always been open and candid about my life and experiences, I'm sharing this with some trepidation because, you know, it's the internet. But I do think there is something to be learned from what I went through, and if you take the time to read through the whole thing, thank you, I hope you'll have found it to be, at the very least, not a total waste of time.
In many ways, it was a Wednesday
like any other. I was finishing up a
shift at the Women’s Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, an organization that aimed to connect
women with legal and financial resources in their community. I answered phone calls and greeted visitors
at the center, but generally as 5pm approached, the line stayed silent and the
office remained clear of any visitors.
My own attention was elsewhere; my eyes nervously darted from the clock
on the wall to my cell phone jutting out of my bag to my side. I imagined my parents in the elegant but
cluttered lawyer’s office, rising from their chairs, shaking hands, making
their way down the hallway to the elevators.
Any minute now.
When 5 o’clock finally came around,
I grabbed my bag and headed back to campus, crossed Franklin Street, and made
my way through the Upper Quad. As my
phone rang, Dad Cell announcing
itself brightly on the screen, life paused for a second. The world held its breath as I did, the
sounds drifted to silence, the nearby pedestrians faded into the
background.
“Hey dad.”
He choked out the news in his way –
straight to the point, but despondent and regretful. An I’m
sorry punctuated the announcement, but his own guilt seemed out of place
when there were so many others to blame, at least in my eyes.
So what was this meeting, this
fateful call?
On that cold January day, my parents
met with our immigration lawyer, two hours away in Charlotte, to discuss the
status of my green card application. My
younger brother, not even 19 at the time, had done some legal research and
found out that with my family’s current position in permanent residency limbo
(accepted but on the waitlist, waiting, waiting for years already), that we
children would only be eligible for green cards as long as we were dependents of
our parents - in other words, until we turned 21. As it happened, I had turned 21 seven months
earlier. I was in my final semester of
university, worried about upcoming midterms, balancing all of my volunteer
commitments, and trying to enjoy what precious free time I had left with
friends.
The words resounded in my ears: aged out. Seven months prior, without so much as a warning,
my green card application essentially disintegrated. I lived in blissful ignorance for those seven
months, carrying on the same belief I had had for the last 11 years, that soon
enough we’d get the call saying we were granted permanent residency, that I,
along with my family, would be given a real social security number and the
ability to work and stay in the United States.
I knew my temporary visa would be expiring soon; a technicality had
extended it past my 21st birthday but I was expecting to ride out
the 6-month grace period and according the government website, the hallowed green
cards would likely arrive within the year for my family and I.
The
actual call offered instead the stark reality – that chance was gone for me. Tears streamed down my face as I continued
walking unsteadily through the quad, listening to the details, and briefly
considering how I must look to all of these students passing by. From the outside, I would have probably
assumed I was the recipient of a failing grade, or else just had been dumped by
some guy. Had I not cried for both of
these reasons in the last few years? How
ridiculous that seemed now. Unbeknownst
to those walking by, at that very moment my dad was bringing up the one
suggestion of the lawyer that could perhaps allow me a chance at a green card
after all. To quote the lawyer, “Does
she have a boyfriend she could marry?”
Really?!
My
younger brother could sum up better than I could the set of circumstances that
led to this gaping hole in policy which allowed countless young people like
myself to wait for years and years for a green card, only to find out on our 21st
birthdays that we were no longer welcome in the United States. Months before my birthday, I received the
opposite assurance from our so-called immigration lawyer – he looked me in the
eye and told me that I was “accepted” and that my age or visa status (the
temporary one that I’d be losing soon) would have no effect on this. Whether it was the constantly-changing
landscape of immigration policy and precedents or our lawyer’s inexcusable ineptitude,
we didn’t know and it didn’t exactly matter at that point. I’ll let the fact that an 18-year-old food
science major having been the one who found out the truth speak for itself.
The
big questions remained: would I be allowed to finish my studies? Would I be
able to graduate? I had lived in North
Carolina since I was 10 years old. I loved
Canada and had returned almost every summer since we moved, either to visit
family or work. It was an inextricable
part of my identity, and yet “home “was invariably North Carolina, which held
my family, my best friends, and my visions of the future. I grew up in a small town, about 45 minutes
from Charlotte, and lived a stereotypical American adolescence – from school
dances, plays, the SATs, extracurricular activities, driver’s education
classes, and eventually getting a car, applying to colleges, going to prom... At 18, I began at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill where I learned to deal with roommates, 8am classes,
and unparalleled stress, but also what it meant to bleed Carolina blue, to make
the friends of a lifetime, and eventually discover my true passions and
interests. I lived abroad in Ecuador for
a semester, and spent two summers working in Quebec, but these experiences always
ended with the pull of wanting to return “home”. While living in Montreal briefly the summer
before my senior year, I had even declined to pursue a long-distance
relationship with a truly wonderful guy, because I had to go back to NC to
finish school and to quote myself at the time, “I’m realistically never moving
back to Canada.”
The
rest of that evening unfolded in a haze.
I remember walking straight past my apartment and continuing down the
hall to where my best friends lived. The
sobs I had held in until that point erupted when my friend opened the door. With no hesitation, she led me to her bed
where she let me curl up in a ball as she made tea, and I tried to control my crying
long enough to explain what had happened.
As the evening progressed, my other best friends caught wind of what
happened and came by to offer their apologies and shock and sympathy. A visit to my school’s International Student’s
office the next day clarified my next steps – I would be eligible for a student
visa, which would have to be approved physically at a customs office, in order
to complete my studies. That weekend, my
family and I drove the 17 hours up to the Canadian border to get my papers
stamped. (The following Monday, a friend asked, “So, what did you do this
weekend?” and with a straight face, I answered, “Oh, you know, drove to Canada
and back.”) Through this visa, I’d be eligible for an OPT extension, which
would permit me to work “in my field of study” but only for one year. Then, I was on my own.
I
could write a novel about the emotions I have experienced since that day. I felt obviously bitterly let down by the
whole system, the American government in general. I was sad, I was angry, I felt confused, and
also indignant. After all, I had lived
in the US for 11 years, more than half of my life, and had been waiting for a
green card for nearly 7 years. We went
through every hoop, my parents having paid thousands of dollars in application
and legal fees, and went through the countless steps required to prove that my
father (whose application it was) would be a worthy addition to the US
workforce and that he would literally be taking the place of no other
American. For me, growing up as a white
Canadian immigrant meant my status generally went unnoticed in my day-to-day
life, but every once in a while small reminders of my situation popped up. Among these were not having an social
security number and therefore not being able to work legally in the US, not
being eligible for certain programs and scholarships, and even not being
allowed to get a driver’s license for about 11 months when I turned 16 due to a
ridiculous law enacted to prevent undocumented immigrants from getting licenses,
but which inadvertently blocked legal immigrants from doing so as well. This is not to mention the yearly stress of
reapplying for our temporary visa and facing the terrifying (but admittedly
unthinkable) idea that we might get refused this time. But in the meantime, I lived the life of any
other middle-class, relatively-privileged American teenager. After that day, I explained my situation to
anyone who asked and learned a great deal about the American perception of the
immigration system. People were
genuinely confused at how someone living here for so long could be made to
leave like this, the subtext of this often being that I didn’t look like the
typical “immigrant" in their minds.
Immigration was obviously a widely-discussed and debated topic at that
point in time, but most of the people I knew generally associated immigration
with undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America. As one acquaintance exclaimed when I told her
my story, “But I just don’t understand… you’re white!” Yikes.
Parents seeing me off in 2013 as I left the States for "real" this time (note how thrilled they look)
Fast-forward
four years. The memories of that day are
still sharp; I doubt I’ll ever forget the feeling of having the carpet pulled
out from under me, the safe little world I was living in being completely
overturned. But Robert Frost explains it
well: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it
goes on." The year of my OPT
extension, I had the opportunity to work full-time with people with
developmental disabilities in Chapel Hill, and volunteer in a variety of
clinics and schools. It was a wonderful
year spent with fantastic people. I
applied to several grad schools and ultimately decided to attend McGill
University’s speech-language pathology program in Montreal, because of its
reputation but ultimately because of the cost (international student tuition
being just too much compared to what Quebec residents pay). When I went through customs that last time, I
handed over my visa and all the legal connections to the United States that I
had, but I was determined to stay positive and only look ahead to the great
opportunity I was again being afforded.
I
spent two years learning and experiencing a field about which I am truly
passionate, made incredible friends who share my excitement and interest, and reconnected
with my family here in Canada. I
graduated, found a job, and now get to apply the knowledge and skills I’ve
developed in my program while working with kids and their families, many of
whom again are immigrants. I miss my
parents, my brother, my family, and my friends still living back “home” in NC (and
those who have moved elsewhere as well!) but I recognize that the life I left
behind is not the one that I would find if I were to move back. For now, I love Montreal and have no
immediate plans to leave. Life continues
to be unexpected, with its continuous series of ups and downs, but I will never
cease to be grateful for all that I have and humbled by my experiences at this
point in my life. I hope only that others,
in hearing this one story (and certainly not the only one of its kind), gain
some insight on the extremely complex reality of immigration and consider these
issues with a broader worldview and a little more compassion the next time a
discussion comes up.
With my bro, 2015 graduation from McGill, M.Sc(A) in S-LP!
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