Even though it feels like anything but, I suppose traveler's anxiety is normal. My nearing homecoming has flooded me with thoughts and emotions. What if I miss my plane? What is it going to be like to look into the eyes of the one I love? How cold is Minnesota? What does it even feel like to be cold? Is my head going to explode? Could I consume two Chipotle burritos in one sitting? Am I ready?
People here have been asking me about my trip. Some are fascinated with the idea of flying, others with the fact that one can be transported in a matter of hours to a forbidden place that has served as the fabric into which so many Salvadorans have sewn their individual threads. Others express the seeming injustice of my facility to come and go as I please, while their undocumented family member has been denied the luxury of visiting their loved ones for decades.
It makes me think of my experience as the mirror reflection of the typical Salvadoran-US experience. Many find it absurd that I would leave country where I can make more than $10 an hour, to come live in a place where unemployment is as ubiquitous as cornfields.
"But why are you here?" they ask while squinting and raising their palms upwards in gesture of confusion.
I am partly here because I have been privileged enough to have been born in a country whose passport enables me to go most anywhere. But I am also here because my government received permission from this government that I come and live here. There are many Salvadorans like this in the US, that immigrated as refugees during the civil war. However there are many more that have since gone clandestinely in search of economic prosperity.
While living in San Francisco I befriended a young Honduran line-cook named Jose. He had made the journey to the US only a couple years back and was still in the infancy of his American life. I enjoyed talking to him and learning about his personal experience and perspective. I remember I asked him if he was afraid of being deported. He quickly snapped back with a "Naaa" while protruding his lower lip with indifference. He reasoned that he understood his fellow immigrants' fear and indignation about deportation, but he also said he knew the rules of the game before he went to the US, so how can he be mad if it actually comes to pass?
I think there's a lot of truth in that, but it's never so simple. Jose was 22 and had only been in the US for less than 2 years. Life hadn't become complicated for him yet.
Sure many undocumented immigrants come in knowing the rules, but their lives are not static. They fall in love, have kids, and take on more and more financial responsibility for their family back home as the years tick by. So what happens after a decade in the US, when you've put down roots, have a job, house, car and family only to get stopped on a traffic violation and get sent back home? It's infuriating, heartbreaking, an injustice. You knew the rules the whole time, but your new life, full of new family and friends and experiences, has clouded the reality that technically you're not supposed to be there. People change everyday, but US immigration policy rarely does.
All this to say that I do view my ability to travel with ease with some guilt. Guilt for those that long to see their families, their children who they wouldn't even recognize. But I also view it as only a logical extension of the current geopolitical landscape. Everyone knows the rules, as unfair as they may be. Some just forget that they're not playing by them.
Like many Salvadorans I have a significant other in the US. Long distance relationships are a challenge, but if they were an Olympic sport, El Salvador would take home gold every time. Oh, you miss your girlfriend that you haven't seen in six months? I'll be sure to tell my husband who's been living uninterrupted in the US for the past twelve years. In a way it's consoling, because I know it could be much worse. Like Salvadorans, work has taken me away from the ones I love, but unlike them I know when I'm going home. I can visit. I don't live with their uncertainty.
In my host family, the father has been in the US for almost thirteen years now. They tell me that he's always saying he's done with the US, he doesn't want to be there anymore and that he'll be home come Christmas. And Christmas rolls around, and instead of him, presents arrive at their doorstep. Next year, I promise, next year.
I can't imagine what he must feel. Each year he's sent back more money, more gifts, but he's missed milestone after milestone of his children's growth. They talk on the phone at least, but what could it possibly be like to go back and meet your twelve year old son who was a fetus the last time you you were home? What are those first seconds like? What do you say? Where do you begin?
I think that that's why five years becomes ten, and then twelve and then thirteen. The fear must be crushing. The guilt and uncertainty snowballs and snowballs.
I'm sure things seemed a lot simpler when he first crossed the border in 2001. Make money, get in, get out. But just like life doesn't stop moving in the US, it never stops moving here. Birthdays, deaths, holidays fly by and you wonder how much of the life you left behind is still there.
Who are you now?
Who are you now?
