immigration.

{Insert cliche statement about this year and all it’s been.}

I’ll just say that my sons two favorite role play games currently are:
Playing Covid //  He blocks your way, takes your temperature and tells you if it’s okay or not; then gives you hand sanitizer.
Playing Immigration // He takes any nearby notebook and flips through page by page with dramatic, loud stamping on each page. Then hands it back, asks for money, and says “Thank you” respectfully in Thai. 

We have spent a lot of time at Immigration this year, going nearly every month. And pretty much every time, they aren’t sure if we’ll get another extension; or what the situation will be when we’re back. We wait and hope and pray and consider our options.

And due to the continuing health situation worldwide, they usually extend it at the bottom of the ninth, and we get another stamp. 

Plus a bright red stamp stating this is an exception.

It’s been stressful throughout, but took some new, extra stressful turns last month. 

At our last appointment we were given sixty days and told this was our last extension; they were done. No more red exemption stamps.

Sixty days to figure out a plan.

In sixty days, two of us are kicked out of this country to get a new visa, but our passports aren’t very welcomed worldwide currently (so we can’t hop to nearby country as we usually do). So, we are likely needing to return to the US to apply for a new visa, quarantining on both sides of the trip—one side being government run and expensive. This also requires they actually give us the new visa once stateside, which always felt unsure before covid and visa restrictions! 

Oh, and one of us, in sixty days, can still live here. And yet can’t actually travel to the one place the other two would need to go. 

So, in sixty days, in the midst of an international pandemic, we can either try to get two people special permission to stay in Thailand, or one person special permission to go to America. 

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We started with the Embassy, which was as helpful as I feared they might be. They said they can do nothing, even as we are two Americans with a Thai son. (My movie experience did not give me a realistic perspective of the US Embassy.) 

They did send us information for how to apply for a visa for America, so we are considering that as a back up for if we are kicked out. We’d like to have this on hand. However, it takes a whole lot of paperwork and an interview in Bangkok. And we need to ensure that we apply for the correct one that doesn’t later make citizenship more difficult. 

…So we wrote our lawyer in America to ask about more details.

Meanwhile, we are looking at what the paperwork includes; and considering our options. Most of the processes take 6 months to one year; we don’t have that and would need a special exception. Due to Covid and current inter-provincial restrictions, we’d need permission to travel to Bangkok. It also is a much greater risk of exposure, as we’d be traveling into red zones. But this is only through January; so do we wait to February? That is a delay, but we needed special permission anyway…

So while we wait to hear from our US lawyer and wait to see how Covid and restrictions play out, we work on things from the Thai side. 

We spoke with friends in Thailand, who recommended other friends. This person asks for paperwork, then talks to that person; that person asks for paperwork. Then someone asks for a different item of paperwork, and I go searching. And really, we just wait to see if anyone who knows the system or knows the language or knows the options gets in touch with us. I respond to messages throughout the days answering questions and sending more info. I stay up at night, gathering the documents together. 

And now we’ve hired a lawyer. We have an office staff who helps with visas, and she does speak the language and helps us understand the process. But she, too, is learning the process. It turns out it’s not always easy to understand for the people utilizing it, even if you do know the language.

So for the past few days I’ve been working with lawyers on both sides of the world, while I watch a clock ticking down. {39 days.}

It’s given me a new perspective on immigration in America.

We work with refugees and migrants here; and we’ve been immigrants for a decade. We are a mixed culture and country family. It’s not surprising that I believe in open borders and a generous immigration policy.

But still, this month I understand more of how immigrants feel in America; how my friends feel. I understand more of what I believe about the immigration process and immigration reform.

I understand more of how the DACA students feel, waiting daily as laws change and update. But it isn’t just a law to them. It’s their life. The life they know and live.

The children with citizenship and parents without; the fear of being deported as a partial unit. The fear for one and not the other.  I feel a little closer to them today.

I understand the stress of not knowing exactly what I’m aiming for; or how to appease the powers that be. Some days thinking maybe language would be the thing that would help me; frustrated at myself for not studying enough. But other days realizing communication isn’t actually the problem. Still more days thinking that while I study “jump” and “medicine” I might be quite far away from language becoming helpful in the immigration office. 

We share the feeling of wanting to stay somewhere so badly: of feeling at home and feeling known in a place, but then also feeling like they really don’t want us at all. Do they not see that I am trying to contribute? I am giving everything I have to make this home and be a contributing part of this society. 

We know the fear of being kicked out of the life we know: for me, the only life I know as a married woman; the only life I know as a mom. The place where my work and my books and my memories are. The place where my community and my friends are.

But beyond the life I personally know; the fear of my being separated from my son, because we hold two different passports. “They would never do that,” I think. He’s my son!

Oh, but they do do that. 

Whoever “they” is.

It happened so many times in the past few years in America; hundreds of children, including families they are struggling to reunify. Did you know sometimes they resorted to using DNA to match families because the records were destroyed?

I don’t have the same DNA as my son.

________________

I caught myself this week in a paradox.

I have great respect for our US immigration lawyer. He does a lot of work in the refugee community we used to work in, and I’m so thankful he’s helping people to stay and figure out their processes. I’m thankful our money is going to support him to help more people. I’m thankful he’s helping us maneuver the US immigration process.

But then this week, I found myself skeptical of our lawyer here; does he just want us to give him more money? Does he understand we don’t have endless resources?

I caught myself feeling a respect for immigration lawyers in America, helping people to stay; but then am skeptical of lawyers here just wanting to make money.

But perhaps he just wants us to be able to stay, too.

Perhaps my eyes are stained by stereotypes. 

________________

And so we wait. I have no conclusion as of yet. Just 39 days to see where God takes us.

Literally where. We have no idea.

I don’t love it, this not knowing. But I’m also choosing to be thankful that each challenge gives me a better understanding of others’ challenges.