USCIS defines and illegal alien as a migrant who is unlawfully residing within the United States…
I was an illegal alien for 16 years, from 1989 to 2005 when I decided that I had enough of not only my immigration situation but of a country where many struggled to recognized. The color of their skin left them at a distinct disadvantage.
I have not decided exactly what this is going to be but I will continue. It was 16 years ago that I decided to migrate to the United States searching for the excitement of freedom living with my mother, more colleges from which to choose and better career and experience opportunities. Just about everything I felt my country did not seem at the time to be able to provide.
It was a trip being sponsored by my old high school, Mannings. The idea of the US being a place paved with gold was evident in the lines on ____street. We arrived very early the morning but the lines had already been formed and extended for quite some distance. It was literally an all-day affair as you watched people going in and out. The faces of disappointment marred with another year of hopelessness before being able to make another attempt at attaining a visa while others glorifying the “Golden Gates” being opened. I received a three-month visa and therefore saw the “Gates” for myself…here was a chance to not return. I had waited patiently for my Mother to send for me since my graduation from high school the previous year but I saw a chance to get there before she was able to provide the green card, the correct documentation for me to travel and stay permanently. Of course the lack of this piece of document would become a cross I would bear for the next sixteen years.
Disneyland is a vague memory as I can clearly see myself after making arrangements to meet my Uncle who lived in Miami at the time come up to Orlando to pick me up. I was standing at the side of the hotel with two friends with whom I had attended Mannings. They knew what was happening and helped me pack. In our young eyes it was a moment of ADULTHOOD/FREEDOM/CHANGE. In my memory it almost seemed hazy as we had stood together waiting for my Uncle to drive up. Praying that no one from the trip would discover the plot and give me up. It would have been embarrassing to be caught. Then up he drove in a yellow older model BMW. As I talk about this sixteen years later it all seems like a dream but the story becomes more real as I think back to some of what went on in my young life then.
Chicago was a beautiful, a young woman’s dream of America. My mother lived right off Sheridan Road which runs right along side Lake Michigan and in the summer you see people sailing or lying by the shore…working on the only tan many of them would have for the rest of the year. I remember eating literally stuffing myself with Hershey Kisses, sweet as it melted against your tongue below and palette above
I would buy the bag and eat them all in a few days. Bumps on my forehead…yep that was payment for my chocolate cravings. I never had pimples during my earlier teenage years so this was very unusual to me. However it never curbed the habit, I kept eating.
Now I have Anipooh, Rory and another little one on the way, regrets don’t exist for anymore, they are more like past situations that have helped to sculpt who i have become…and really, I like that person a lot. I have learnt much about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses though I fail to acknowledge them, I am have come to know my capabilities and continue to get to know them as I keep growing.
I was 20 when i went to work for the Mott’s in Hempstead, Long Island. I had found them in the Irish Echo. That was where you found most of the babysitting and housekeeping ads. All you needed was to make sure you had credible references, now that was what Ingrid was for. Jamaican but she worked out of her home in Westchester functioning as a agency, where she found jobs for you and you would pay her a weeks salary. She also functioned as a great reference, she sounded professional and if white people called half the time they thought she was white too…interesting how comfort can be found so much easier with those of your own race or what sounds like those from your own race and possibly class. I am saying she sounded white, perhaps but really what does that mean? However, she was great with giving the information necessary to make you the housekeeper or babysitter they wanted. I really wanted to work, my independence in making my own money had been discovered, a habit I am yet to break.
“Will you watch me jerk off? I will pay you…you don’t have to touch me?” Now that was a question an employer had never asked me before. 68 years old, married with four children. An old white man trying to buy my ‘Negro’ behind! He senses my…
