Our America: A Path to Citizenship

- By Soledad Palmieri

I want to share what happened to me two days after the election, around 3:20 p.m. in the library café, a place where a lot of students, faculty, and staff hang out.

I was having a conversation with a friend and colleague; the two of us were sitting at one of the tables against the wall, under the TV screens. Eventually, another friend joined in. To any outsider, it was clear we knew each other; we were discussing the election and different topics related to it. The person sitting to my right—a Trump sympathizer masquerading as a social progressive young woman—kept interrupting our conversation to chime in on various topics. Usually I don’t mind this because, well, I’ve done it too, and I see no harm. She made clear to us how she wanted us to see her: she started every intervention into our conversation by establishing that she was a Bernie supporter, a member of the LGBT community, and a someone generally up-to-date with the news. I’ll skip most of the details on her specific comments: suffice to say that she brought up Planned Parenthood, and taxpayers’ money not going to abortions as a “choice,” and then she proceeded to fact-check me when I mentioned Trump’s immigration reform (which I had read about just prior to arriving at the library) because she didn’t believe me.

            Then, when I extended to her an invitation to join an event happening later that evening, about mass deportations and the Latinx community, she said:

“Actually, I think that illegal people should be deported. My father came from Spain twenty-five years ago and he did everything right, becoming a citizen, and people who don’t do that are just lazy and don’t want to put in the effort.”

I lost it. I gave her a piece of my mind and my own history. I used my nastiest tone of voice. I still get upset thinking about it. I told her that I was glad her father got his citizenship, but that there are no “illegal” people. That no one wants to be “illegal,” that no one wants to be “lazy about it.” I asked her if she even knows how costly it is to even apply for citizenship in this country, even if you don’t take into account all the previous steps, like green cards or visas, that you have to go through. And even then, you still need sponsorship. You still need to be able to read the forms and navigate a highly bureaucratic system, designed so that some people “make it” and some people can’t even apply. That you need to know English and legalese. That you need to be able to take time off from work, if you’re already working. That you need to eat. That you need someone to drive you, if you can’t drive yourself. That you need to prove a certain level of income. That I am a highly educated individual, with a BA and an MA from two European institutions, an MA from the US, working toward a PhD, having worked at some of the best colleges in this country—and I can barely read and understand the forms myself. That my friends and family who attended my own potluck wedding chipped in with a few bucks in a jar, so that I could afford the forms because, despite my desire to become a college professor one day (so I can become an educator and give something back), I can’t afford them on my current salary. That I was at one point an “illegal”—as she would say—in Spain!

That it happened back when my mother and I decided to leave Argentina, a country mired by economic issues, where women are killed and raped (sometimes in that order), and where a future for me was not very promising. That I had to spend about six months in Spain “illegally,” after having consciously overstayed my tourist visa, while I waited to hear back from Italy—where I was in the process of applying for EU citizenship. That during those six months I steered away from anything that might be trouble, constantly keeping a low profile, making sure that I didn’t draw attention and get caught. That I was anything but lazy. That I worked in a store twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and that I was grateful the manager (another Argentinian who had himself also been “illegal” in Italy for seven years, until he managed to get his papers) actually hired me and paid me under the table so that my mom (who also worked under the table, taking care of an elderly woman) and I could start a new life in the little apartment we rented. So that, within those six months (even though people filing for Italian citizenship in Argentina took well over two years), I could enroll in a university degree. I got a full ride at the local university for five years as a result of my excellent grades. That when I was offered a teaching job in the US for a year, at a prestigious liberal arts school, I remember asking my professor if I had to pay the visa myself, because I could barely afford the trip to the embassy in Madrid. That since then, I’ve made many more trips to the Madrid embassy, and that now I’m still waiting to hear about my green card. That if someone like me—having had it “easy” by all accounts, when compared to millions of others—was barely able to make it sometimes with my tiny support network (i.e., my mother), then frankly, I simply cannot imagine how others could just work hard and “follow the path to citizenship.”

At that point, I stood up and gathered my stuff. I know people were staring at us, at me. It isn’t often you hear someone angrily telling someone off in a library café. The young woman was speechless. . . all she could mumble was “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t done. I finally told her that if she doesn’t see passports for what they are, nothing more than ways to control the free movement of population, ways to make the “path to citizenship” easy for some and very hard for others, then she has much to learn. Then I left.

I could have told her even more: That I’ve known and continue to know countless people who make the painful decision to leave their country, their city, their town, their friends and family behind, sometimes fully aware that they’ll never see them again, fully aware that they’ll be “illegal”—and that I’ll never ever tell people in such desperate circumstances, “you were looking to be illegal.” That sometimes such a choice is warranted. Sometimes you do it to send remittances back to your kids. Sometimes it’s single mothers who migrate, leaving their children behind, in the care of a grandparent with a tiny or non-existent pension. That at least in Spain there is free universal health care. That I’ve put up with the derision and scorn, not from US citizens, because my port of entry has always been an airport, and my visa has always been coded as a “Teaching/Research Assistant” or “Graduate Student,” but from the Spanish men who’ve fetishized my Argentinian accent. And faced even more scorn from my own countrymen and women. From the asshole who once told me I was a “rat” for “jumping ship” in 2001 when things in Argentina got difficult, to the clueless tourists who visited Andalusia to play polo and asked me if I followed the sport. Even close relations questioned my mother for doing a “maid’s job” in Spain, because in Argentina it would have been beneath her. Because we, at some point, had a cleaning lady ourselves. And look where we were now.

I could have told her that where I am now is nothing but the product of my own work and effort. But that’s not true. It’s also the product of the color of my skin, of my ability to learn English almost without an accent, granting me a certain privilege of “passing.” I could have told her that her mistake was not judging her audience properly, her assumption that we would be of equal minds, simply because I don’t fit her expectation of what an “illegal” looks and sounds like. Because I am documented and legal. I could have told her that after working in jobs supposedly “beneath” her, my mother (at age sixty-seven) is currently a Junior at my alma mater, where she will soon get her BA—something she always wanted to do, but her need to support us had always prevented her from doing. That she calls me every day, to tell me about all her classes, about her professors (some of whom we’ve shared), and about her new eighteen-year-old friends. That she is so motivated and committed to learning that, when she visits me during the holidays, she loves coming to the library and getting coffee together, then going downstairs to study. That she is so committed to learning that she applied for study abroad for next year.

In sharing this, I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m not looking to make my story more important or special than anybody else’s, or to single mine out. This encounter occurred just a few days ago, but my response wouldn’t have been different if it had happened before the election or a year from now. Because the facts remain. I’m sharing this story because I have little patience for hypocritical self-righteous discourse about “hard work” and “illegal” bodies. That day I went into “fight” mode. But there are countless people who wouldn’t have. I’m sharing it because, if I’m your family, if I’m your friend, if I’m your colleague, if I’m a member of your community, then this happened to you too. Right here, at the library café.

Soledad Palmieri goes to school in the Northeast and hangs out at cafés whenever she’s not in her library cartel—damn that autocorrect! meant to say “carrel”—writing her dissertation.

Read more voices on #OurAmerica here.