Spare Parts

by Joshua Davis

  “I’d like to apply for residency,” Oscar said.

  “Documents?” the clerk said, sounding tired.

  Oscar slid his application and medical certification through a slot. The man flipped through the packet and saw that Oscar was married to an American and had an American daughter. He asked Oscar to confirm the date of his marriage and the spelling of his daughter’s name.

  Then the clerk posed a simple question: “Were you ever illegally in the United States?”

  Oscar could have simply said no. The consulate checks for a criminal record but doesn’t have the time to dig up the minutiae of every applicant’s life. It was possible that they would turn up a record of his ASU graduation, or some other telltale sign that he had been living in the United States, but admitting that he had been in the United States would guarantee the rejection of his application.

  But Oscar refused to lie. He didn’t want his path to citizenship to be based on fraud. He wanted America to want him. He hoped for understanding so he looked at the man and told the truth: “Yes. My parents brought me to the United States illegally when I was twelve, and I lived there until crossing back yesterday.”

  “Your application will be denied,” the man said mechanically.

  It felt like a slap across the face. But then the clerk explained that Oscar could apply for a waiver. It was his only hope. He would have to demonstrate that being separated from his family would cause extreme hardship for his wife and child. Since they were both U.S. citizens, the government might seek to mitigate their pain. The clerk told Oscar he could come back in eleven weeks and present his case. In the meantime, he was stuck in Mexico.

  OSCAR STEPPED OFF the bus in Temosachic. In his memory, his former hometown was a pristine rural community. Now it appeared to be an abandoned cluster of crumbled homes by the side of a state highway. It looked dirty and depopulated. He walked down the main street and saw boarded-up houses. Many of his neighbors had long since departed for the United States, giving the place the feel of a ghost town.

  Oscar found his childhood home. The grass had grown up tall all around it, and through the dirt-caked windows, he could see that the inside was covered in spiderwebs. He shook the metal door. It was locked. He didn’t have a key so he wandered down to a tire shop on the main road run by an old friend of the family’s. Together, they walked back, knocked the door off its hinges, installed a new lock, and put the door back on the front of the house.

  Oscar moved in and set about making the most of his time. He cleaned up the family home and got a job picking beans for about $3.80 a day. It wasn’t what he expected to be doing after graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. In the mornings, the temperature hovered around freezing and it was hard to get his fingers around the stalks of the plants. As the sun rose, the temperature rose dramatically, sometimes passing ninety. After about six hours of picking, he was soaked in sweat, but he worked fast. He still wanted to be the best, even if that meant he was the best bean picker.

  Eleven weeks later, Karla stood nervously at the bus station in Juárez. She hadn’t seen Oscar for almost three months and scanned the crowd for her husband. She saw a stocky man walking toward her and tensed. He was wearing boots made out of discarded car tires and jeans splattered with mud. He kept his face down, his eyes hidden beneath a soiled, faded-gold Arizona State University baseball cap.

  “Oscar?” Karla said tentatively.

  Oscar looked up, smiled, and wrapped her in his arms. He had put on muscle working in the fields and was trim underneath his shirt. Karla felt butterflies, as if she were a teenager falling in love all over again. “What are you doing looking like that?” she chided. “You stink.”

  They headed for a taxi and Oscar explained that he was trying to blend in. He didn’t want to look American and attract the attention of thieves or gangsters. The stink came from the pound of cheese in his backpack. He’d made it himself and hoped that the pungent aroma would convince people that he was nothing more than an impoverished peasant.

  Karla had come prepared. They checked into the Quality Inn and she unpacked Oscar’s wedding suit. He showered and came out looking great. Clean-cut, strong, and handsome. It was the first time he’d worn the suit since their wedding. “Oh, wow,” Karla thought. “Look at this guy.” She was sure that America would want him.

  She also prayed that the government would understand. Karla was working constantly at an Alamo Rent A Car office at the airport in Phoenix. Her salary was all the money they had. At four dollars a day, Oscar’s bean picking did little to help. As it was, Karla couldn’t afford to buy enough food and send Oscar money for bus tickets. She had begun accepting charity from a Phoenix-area food bank to feed herself and her one-year-old. The time she was taking off now to be with Oscar only worsened their predicament. She desperately wanted Oscar back.

  After six hours in line, Oscar presented himself at the consulate’s bulletproof window again. He tried to straighten his suit; it had lost some of its crispness over the hours standing in the sun. Oscar didn’t let that dampen his spirits though. He stood tall, his tie knotted perfectly in a half Windsor, and slid the clerk his I-601 form. It was termed an “Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility.” Oscar included a copy of his ASU diploma, a reprint from the Arizona House of Representatives’ official record honoring his accomplishments, and letters of support from Karla, Allan, and Fredi. The clerk was nonplussed.

  “When I had to leave Oscar in Juárez, it was like leaving a piece of me behind,” Karla wrote the government. “We have been good people who work extremely hard for the few things that we have … We do not deserve to have our family torn apart. Please I beg of you to grant Oscar Vazquez the right to live and work in the USA with his family. He just wants to provide for us and have a loving home for our children to grow up in.”

  The clerk took the paperwork and told Oscar that the government would issue a decision in seven to ten days.

  “Thank you, sir,” Oscar said.

  A WEEK LATER, Oscar received word that the decision was waiting for him at a local DHL office. He and Karla hurriedly got in a taxi for the twelve-minute ride. The cabbie often drove this route, doing a brisk business ferrying would-be immigrants from the consulate to the courier company. Oftentimes, he would wait to bring clients back to their hotel, so he had witnessed many people’s dreams come true. The return in those cases felt like a celebration. He had also driven clients back in complete silence, a heavy pall hanging over the cab.

  “I can tell you this,” the driver said to Oscar on the way to the office. “If the packet is thick, it’s good news. If it’s thin, it’s not.”

  The driver dropped them inside the gated DHL facility and parked in the large parking lot, which had room enough to accommodate all the taxis that idled while people learned their fates. Karla took Oscar’s hand and they walked inside, showed Oscar’s ID, and received a thin envelope. Karla felt the tears welling up. Oscar opened the envelope in a daze.

  “You have been found ineligible for a visa,” the letter inside read.

  Oscar had received the maximum penalty: he was banned from the United States for a decade.

  KARLA RETURNED TO PHOENIX on the Greyhound, sobbing most of the way. She barely remembers saying goodbye to Oscar in Juárez. He just disappeared.

  Oscar knew there was nothing for him in Temosachic, and Juárez was too dangerous. With few good ideas, he boarded a bus for Magdalena, a town an hour south of the Arizona border. An uncle of Karla’s lived there; it was better than nothing. Oscar rented a one-room concrete structure by a dried-up riverbed and walked to local businesses to apply for a job. He wasn’t the only one looking for work. After two weeks, he hadn’t found anything, but he heard that a car-parts factory just outside town was hiring.

  He lined up with a dozen other applicants at the factory gate and got an appointment for an interview the following day. He showed up with his résumé and ASU diploma.

  The interviewer s
eemed surprised. “You’re pretty well educated.”

  “Yes, sir, but I’m willing to take any job.”

  “We only have low-level assembly-line positions. You’re overqualified for that.”

  “I’m happy to do anything.” Oscar’s aspirations were in tatters. He no longer dreamed of doing important work or building cutting-edge robots. He had no contacts or money and had to build a life in a country he didn’t know. That was challenge enough.

  He was hired to supervise a portion of the assembly line and began building wire harnesses, the bundles of cables that run behind dashboards and underneath a car’s seats. He was paid about $22 a day. It was better than picking beans, but it was far from ideal. After a month, he managed to get an Internet connection and started looking for opportunities in other countries. He knew Germans appreciated good engineering talent, and he wasn’t barred from moving there. Maybe he could move the family to Europe if America didn’t want him.

  At night, he called Karla and tried to sound chipper. It was hard. Intermittent gun battles occurred in the streets, and Oscar had to crouch low by the walls inside his hovel. The bullets pinged off his metal roof and thudded into the concrete walls. He flipped off the lights and hoped nobody would try to break in. One morning, he walked outside and saw eight bodies in the streets. Oscar told Karla that he was having trouble staying optimistic. “I’m so lonely,” he said.

  On one of his first days off, he spoke to Allan on the phone.

  “This is just totally unbelievable,” Allan said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m doing fine.” Oscar didn’t want Allan to worry about him.

  “That’s good to hear,” Allan said cheerfully. He didn’t want the conversation to depress his former star student.

  Debbie snatched the phone away from her husband. In her opinion, Allan wasn’t asking the right questions. She quizzed Oscar on his living conditions. Oscar had to admit that he was sleeping on the floor and had no furniture.

  “Well, that’s one thing we can change,” she announced, and told Allan to get their truck ready for a journey. Debbie loaded it up with everything she could imagine Oscar would need to start a life in Mexico: a bed, sheets, towels, a TV, dishes, pans, chairs, and a couch. Karla drove to a PetSmart and bought two guinea pigs; she hoped the animals would help Oscar feel less lonely. The furry rodents rode atop a giant pile of stuff in the back of Allan’s white Toyota Tundra for the four-hour drive from Phoenix to Magdalena.

  Oscar found it hard to fully express how much their arrival meant to him. It was a reminder of whom he used to be, of the kid who dreamed of doing great things. “Thank you. I just…”

  Debbie smothered him in a hug and patted him on the back as he fought back tears.

  “You’re not alone,” she said. “We’re going to get through this together.”

  OSCAR’S SUPPORTERS all over the country started a letter-writing campaign to convince the government to reverse its decision. CNN picked up the story, as did The Arizona Republic. “Isn’t he the type of person though that you would want to have immigrate to the county?” asked CNN host John Zarrella. “People who have a good education, people who have high-functioning skills like an engineering degree?”

  In Washington, D.C., Oscar’s story caught the attention of Senator Dick Durbin. Durbin and the Republican senator Orrin Hatch believed that America was squandering an extraordinary resource by overlooking the talents of people like Oscar. In 2001, Durbin had introduced legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants who had been in the United States for at least five years and were attending college. It was titled the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, otherwise known as the DREAM Act. “The DREAM Act would allow a select group of immigrant students with great potential to contribute more fully to America,” Durbin said.

  The bill initially failed to even make it to a vote. Durbin tried every year thereafter and yet didn’t make much progress. Some senators argued against it because they wanted comprehensive immigration reform, not just piecemeal legislation. Other senators had graver concerns. They believed the DREAM Act would provide amnesty and encourage migration from Mexico.

  In the fall of 2010, Durbin tried again to convince senators to move forward on the bill. Almost a decade had elapsed since he first introduced the legislation and he was finally able to bring it to a vote. Durbin decided that putting a face on the plight of these kids might help. He chose to talk about Oscar and unveiled a poster-size photo of the young engineer on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

  “This is Oscar Vazquez,” Durbin told his colleagues. He explained that Oscar and his teammates had beaten MIT to win a robotics contest sponsored by NASA. He also said that Oscar had left the country. “This extraordinary young man—a mechanical engineer who won a national competition, a person who can add something to America, who has a wife and family here, who is doing the right thing by going back to the country of his origin even though he has little connection with it anymore—is being told: America doesn’t need you,” Durbin said.

  The emotional plea didn’t change the outcome. Senate Republicans commenced a filibuster, blocking the vote. “This bill is a law that at its fundamental core is a reward for illegal activity,” said Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, defending the filibuster. Democrats needed sixty votes to break the deadlock. They were able to muster only fifty-five votes, and the legislation was tabled yet again.

  Durbin felt that it wasn’t fair to students whose parents had brought them as children. These kids wanted to live legally in the United States and go to school. He had proven unable to change their fate, but he might be able to do something for one of them. His staff contacted the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and asked them to reconsider their stance on Oscar’s application. Maybe it would make a difference.

  * * *

  In July 2010, Karla loaded her daughter, Samantha, into the car and backed out of the driveway. She had taken three days off to go see Oscar but stopped when she reached the road. She felt that she was forgetting something and glanced over at the mailbox. She hadn’t checked it yet and decided to grab whatever was in there.

  Amid a stack of overdue bills was an envelope from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Confused, she opened it and read it twice before shoving it back in the envelope.

  Karla took a deep breath, climbed back in the car, and set off on the four-hour drive to Magdalena. When she arrived, she wrapped her arms around Oscar.

  He noticed that something was different. “What is it?”

  “Let’s unload the car.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “The car,” Karla ordered.

  Oscar dutifully unloaded the car and put Samantha down for a nap. When the room was quiet, Karla took out the letter and handed it to Oscar.

  “What is it?”

  “Read.”

  Oscar looked at her and then started reading: Your application for permanent residency status in the United States of America has been approved.

  Oscar didn’t react.

  “You understand what this means, right?”

  Oscar still couldn’t say anything.

  Karla took his hands. “It means you’re coming home.”

  IN LATE AUGUST 2010, Oscar returned to the United States after a year in Mexico. The auto-parts company he was working for offered him a promotion and a raise if he’d stay in Magdalena. He politely declined.

  Allan and Debbie threw Oscar a big welcome-home party in their backyard. Lorenzo and Luis brought the food. It was hot, so they decided on a cool, crisp menu: salads, a cheese platter, and melon-flavored water they made by floating sliced bits of cantaloupe in a jug. When they saw Oscar, they wondered if they should have brought carne asada instead. Oscar had gotten skinny living by himself. His cheeks had hollowed out and he’d lost the heft of the squad-leading cadet he once was. He didn’t mind. He was just happy to be back.

  Oscar’s exile from the United S
tates had drawn national media coverage and brought him to the attention of Bard, an S&P 500 company with twenty-one thousand employees that designs and manufactures health-care equipment. Initially, before Oscar was readmitted to the United States, a director of plant operations at Bard e-mailed him to talk about hiring him in Nogales, Mexico. But when he received residency, the company offered him work at its Phoenix office. Oscar would be helping to design lifesaving medical devices, such as stents and catheters. It seemed like a great opportunity.

  But then, two months after his return, Oscar rode his bike by an armed-services recruiting office in a mall on East Baseline Road. He had learned to ignore the recruiting offices over the years, but now something clicked in his head.

  “I can do that now,” he thought. “I could enlist.”

  He rode his bike into the mall and stepped into the office. The recruiter was happy to see him. The Afghan War was still raging—the Army needed high-quality candidates like Oscar. He had a college degree and could apply for Officer Candidate School. It was a natural choice, but Oscar wasn’t interested in starting out as an officer.

  “I want to serve as a soldier,” he told the recruiter. Oscar couldn’t imagine ordering men into battle without having first experienced combat as a grunt. He wanted his authority to come from experience, not from some bars on his shoulders.

  “You’d be entering as a specialist,” the recruiter warned him. It was a harder path. Oscar would be starting from near the bottom of the military hierarchy and would have to work his way up the chain of command step-by-step. It could take years, but Oscar was accustomed to that. He didn’t believe in shortcuts. He believed in hard work.

  “That sounds great,” he told the recruiter.