I, myself
am experiencing the fear that comes along with being married to an undocumented
immigrant. I am so afraid that my husband could be deported, I think about it
every day. When we had been dating for a while, and I started imagining us
getting married, I was under the impression that doing so would make things
better. I thought if we got married, he would get a green card, and deportation
would no longer be a threat. I was wrong.
If we could
go back in time 10 years, and get married then, I would have been right. Years
ago the U.S. government handed out green cards much easier, and that’s probably
why they have cracked down so much now. How it works now when an American
citizen marries an illegal immigrant is that nothing happens at all. You are
legally married, but the immigrant receives no break in return and is still
just as “illegal” as before. And illegal might as well just mean criminal
because that is how undocumented immigrants (U.I.’s) are looked upon. In my
opinion, it is unfair to judge U.I.’s all the same, as many have a different story
and live different lives.
My husband for example, Carlos,
came to the United States as a teenager from Mexico. He was 16 and his mom who
had came to the United States before him had sent for him. He didn’t even want
to come. What teenager wants to leave their friends and home just to go to
another country where they don’t even know the language? I’d say few to none. He
was underage however, and so had very little say in the matter. He came to the
United States. He has been here for over 10 years now, and as an adult who is
much wiser, wants to stay here. Besides having built a comfortable life here
and not wanting to leave it, Carlos knows that there are more opportunities in
America and that Mexico is not safe. He doesn’t know anyone there anymore, all
his family is here, and would be more alone in his own country than he is here
in mine.
As soon as we got married, I was
pushing for us to go see an immigration lawyer and right now we are beginning
the long process towards changing his residential status here. The chances of
it working aren’t especially great, but I am at a loss of what else to do. The
whole lawyer process costs about seven thousand dollars and with no guarantee that
we will get what we want, that’s a little hard to swallow. What we have to do
is prove that I would face extreme hardship if Carlos were to get deported in
order to convince them that under a special circumstance they should let him
stay. The problem with this is that for 10 years my husband has stayed under
the immigration radar; he hasn’t gotten in any trouble and has stayed away from
police. If we go through this lawyer process, and then nothing happens; we will
have essentially put the spotlight on him and then he could be at a higher risk
for deportation. This risk is enough to convince many couples in our situation
to stay put.
The other problem we have with our
case is that I am a pretty healthy human being. The extreme hardships that they
see as deserving for changing an immigrant’s status are usually sicknesses in
which a spouse needs their undocumented spouse to take care of them. Although I
am convinced that I cannot live without my husband, and that I would experience
major hardships if he were to get deported, the government may not see things
the same way. This is another thing I think about daily and which scares me
half to death. If things don’t go as planned, and if this lawyer doesn’t get us
anywhere, then my husband will stay here risking getting deported. If he gets
deported one day, I am sure I would make the decision to go with him, but I am
scared of that day ever coming.
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