Of Love and Papers: How Immigration Policy Affects Romance and Family by Laura E. Enriquez

Author:Laura E. Enriquez
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Sociology, Social Science, Marriage & Family, Emigration & Immigration
ISBN: 9780520975484
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2020-04-27T21:00:00+00:00

After eight years of marriage, Blanca Marín and her citizen husband, Pedro, finally decided to risk the 10-year bar to pursue her legalization. Their lawyer was confident that their legalization application would be approved but felt they had little to demonstrate extreme hardship. Blanca remembered, “[The lawyer] said there was a good risk that they could leave me there for a couple of years, the maximum 10 years.”

Despite the risks, they felt that this was a necessary step to “succeed together as a couple.” Unlike most of my participants, Blanca had migrated at age 15 and fondly remembered life in Mexico and had strong ties to her family there.19 They decided that they would travel together, so that her husband “could stay with me” and she could continue to care for their two children. They spent two years saving up money so that they could afford living expenses for the first few months while they looked for jobs.

Luckily, Blanca’s application was processed quickly, and her waiver petition was approved. She recounted their risky move as more like an extended two-month vacation. They had saved enough that neither had started to look for work. They never got around to enrolling their children in school. Because they were not gone that long, their reintegration after returning to the United States was relatively easy since they were able to return to their old jobs—she as a sales agent and he as a security guard. Theirs was truly a best-case scenario.

Blanca’s process proceeded quickly and successfully. Their waiver, however, could have easily been denied. If this had happened, her family likely would have faced financial, educational, and emotional trauma. Given the state of the Mexican economy, Blanca and Pedro would probably have been unable to find well-paying jobs to sustain them once their savings ran out. Their children stumbled with Spanish, and she believed that it would have been hard for them to go to a school where they would have to speak a “new language.” Indeed, journalists and scholars confirm that Mexican schools are unprepared to support the children of returnees who have had no formal Spanish-language instruction.20 Further, these children have a hard time adjusting to the new cultural context and suffer emotional trauma from leaving their U.S. lives behind.21

Going Alone: Nicolás and Elisa’s Emotional Strain

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