Two months ago I was overwhelmed with joy as Sara Ceballos and I were married. Today I am overwhelmed with sadness as my family and I laid my grandmother to rest. If Sara and I are ever blessed with a child or children (biological or adoptive) that child, those children will never know the grandparents who played such a pivotal role in my life. All four have left this earth. Yet I cannot help but acknowledge the tremendous privilege it has been to travel to Mexico to say goodbye to three of them. My mothers father was the first to pass. When he died my parents were out of status. This meant that the US government told my mother that if she went to Mexico to say goodbye to her father she would not be allowed back in the US. The irony is that my parents lost their appeal and they (and I) were forced to leave the US but a few weeks later. This is the pain that 11 million+ undocumented Americans know all to well. The reason why I am so enraged by those who have no empathy for immigrants. Too many folks seem incapable of wrapping their heads and hearts around the tremendous sacrifices migration involves. And for those who continue to insist that the problem can be reduced to those who follow the rules and wait in line and those who dont, I would point not only to the case of my parents who did everything by the book and still were deported. Their pathway to citizenship took 21 years. And that was before 9/11. Things have been much more difficult since. And again to put things in very personal terms, I had many relatives who were denied visas and were unable to travel to the US for Sara and my wedding - including two who were initially told they were approved and bought nonrefundable plane tickets, only to be denied visas at the last minute.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 20:09:53 +0000
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