by Sara Saedi
The officer stared back at them blankly as they explained their predicament, and then he cut them off.
“I don’t know why you’re here,” he said. “The fingerprints were received for your daughter. Everything is fine. She has her interview date.”
In an era without cell phones, our lawyer had been trying to reach my parents to let them know my sister’s application was in the clear, but they were already banging on the doors of the INS. Our lawyer even called my uncle to tell him, but no one was able to reach my parents. And that’s why it was the immigration officer who broke the good news. My dad was so overcome with joy and relief that he pulled the man into a bear hug. My sister was only filled in on the story after the fact, and by the summer of 1998, she and my mom finally got their green cards. To put things in perspective, it would take another two years for me and my dad to become permanent residents. If we hadn’t been able to get a rush on my sister’s application, she’d probably still be waiting to become a legal immigrant.
I remember my interview at the INS well. By then, I was going into my junior year of college at UC Berkeley. After two years of debauchery at UC Santa Cruz, my immigrant child guilt complex kicked in, and I decided I couldn’t let my parents pay for a college education that included no grades, narrative evaluations, and a stump on campus that doubled as a bong. I needed something more academic, so I made the move to Cal and suffered through life as a junior transfer with no friends and no social life. My isolation was compounded by the fact that during a weekend home visiting my parents, I had the urge to get my hair cut on a Saturday without an appointment. I slipped into a salon in the posh town of Los Gatos, and every ounce of my being told me to run the other way when I was greeted by a hairstylist who was definitely in the witness protection program and hiding out from the mob. I showed him a cute photo I’d found of Kate Winslet with a layered bob. When I left his salon, I had an uneven, boy-short pixie cut. I went to a stylist in Berkeley to get the cut fixed and she looked at me and said, “This is the worst haircut I’ve ever seen in my life.”
In order to fix his screwup, she had to trim my hair even shorter. So when I arrived at the INS with my parents for my interview, I was the spitting image of Justin Bieber. As previously mentioned, I still hadn’t gotten over my sterling-silver-ring phase, and my mom was utterly horrified. Despite my questionable physical appearance, I charmed the immigration officer, answered a bunch of benign questions, and walked out knowing that I’d finally be getting a green card. The whole process took an hour, tops. Actually, the whole process took eighteen years, but the end felt deceptively easy.
The financial benefits of becoming a permanent resident would also finally ease the burden of college tuition on my parents. After three years of struggling to pay my tuition out of pocket, we were finally able to apply for financial aid for my senior year. The timing had worked out similarly for my sister when, two years prior, they were able to get a loan to pay for her last year of college. But getting a green card wouldn’t be the ending to our story. I still wanted to become an American citizen. For years, I’d claimed to friends, classmates, and co-workers that I’d held on to my Iranian citizenship because I wanted to travel back to Tehran at some point and it would be much more difficult on a US passport. This wasn’t a lie exactly, but the real reason I wasn’t a citizen was that you had to have a green card for five years before you could become one. And thus becoming a permanent resident marked the beginning of our next chapter of waiting.
Five more years. Five more years and I could finally vote in an election and not get patted down at airports purely because my last name was Saedi and I had an Iranian passport. Five more years and I would officially become an American. On paper, anyway.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION #7
I’m undocumented and I’m scared. Any words of advice?
I was scared, too. I was scared a lot of the time. There are some details of my family’s immigration story that I’ve chosen to leave out of this book, because I’m still scared we could get in trouble for having been here illegally for so long (especially considering the unpredictable times we’re living in). For undocumented immigrants, past or present, the fear becomes a normal part of our daily lives. Even after the relief of getting a green card or becoming an American citizen, it’s easy to channel my days as an “illegal alien” and feel the anxiety all over again. So I’m not being disingenuous when I say that I feel your pain.
As of now, it’s impossible to know what the future holds, but we’re living in a much scarier era for immigrants (and other marginalized groups) than when I was growing up. In fact, it was Republican president Ronald Reagan who granted amnesty to nearly three million undocumented immigrants in 1986. (Our family was ineligible, because anmesty was only granted to those who came to the country before 1982.) And, now, we’re certainly living in a much more terrifying time than we did under the Obama presidency. Some called former president Barack Obama the deporter in chief, because his administration deported more undocumented immigrants than any president before him. This isn’t totally inaccurate, but it’s also likely that Obama took a hard line against immigrants with serious criminal records in hopes of passing legislation that would help undocumented families and children stay together.
In June 2012, the Obama administration implemented Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) by way of executive order. This was primarily in response to the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act’s failure to pass in Congress. Under DACA, undocumented children who entered the United States before the age of sixteen would avoid deportation. However, the executive order only bestowed temporary legal presence and work authorization. To become a permanent resident, a DACA recipient had to qualify through another basis (normally, through a spouse or a child over the age of 21 who is a US citizen.)
Then, in November 2014, also under executive action, Obama announced an immigration policy that would have helped millions of other undocumented immigrants by also giving them work permits and “deferred action” (basically, a safeguard against deportation). The new program was called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). I spoke to my cousin Kianoush Naficy Curran, a former immigration lawyer, and she referred to DAPA as what every immigration lawyer she knew had been waiting for, because it would have helped legalize so many people who had lived and worked in the shadows for years.
Unfortunately, DAPA was halted by the court system, and when the case (United States v. Texas) eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which at the time had only eight members, the justices handed down a split decision. Thus, the lower appellate court’s holding (that Obama did not have the right to implement the program) remained the final word, and DAPA never went into effect. This was the state of immigration reform under a leader who had progressive and humane intentions on the issue, and was stonewalled and thwarted at every turn.*
During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump talked about building walls and deporting the eleven million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. There are people across the country who not only championed those policies but also cited them as the reason they voted for him. On November 8, 2016, as I watched the election results with the rest of the country, I experienced waves of panic, broken up only by heavy sobs. Throughout the night, my sister and I called each other. If she was the one spiraling, I tried to calm her down. If I was the one spiraling, she tried to calm me down. As the sun came up the next day, I didn’t know what to mourn first. As a female, a minority, and an immigrant, I felt lost. And I don’t blame my confusion on living in a bubble. Yes, I grew up and live in one of the most liberal states in the nation. I know parts of the country relate to me about as much as I relate to them, but I had mistakenly thought that even if our lives were undeniably different, we were still connected by our humanity. And that, ultimately, our morals would prevent us from elec
ting someone who promoted racism and misogyny and xenophobia. Also, I really wanted to witness Hillary Clinton become the first female president.
That didn’t happen, which may be why you’re more afraid now than you’ve ever been. It’s impossible for me to know how the country’s policy on immigration will change, but after the fallout from an executive order to turn away refugees and ban citizens from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States, the future seems even more uncertain. In June 2017, the Supreme Court upheld parts of the executive order allowing a ban on foreign nationals from those countries who have no “bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States.” The decision was deemed a victory for the Trump administration. The court will hear the case in the fall of 2017, but as of this writing, the restrictions stand.
Despite the direction the country is headed, it’s helpful to remember that you have options and you have rights. There are millions of activists who have mobilized after the election on your behalf, but you can do your part, too. A little legal advice from my cousin: as a young person without immigration status, you must avoid a criminal record at all costs. Trump has said he would focus on deporting immigrants with a record, but that could translate to a single DUI or a simple misdemeanor. If fifteen-year-old me had been caught smoking pot and these proposed policies were in place, I would have been shipped away. Luckily, places like California and New York City have said they would not aid the federal government in deporting undocumented immigrants and have created safe zones on school campuses that would prevent federal immigration officials from entering.
But there are also basic defensive strategies you yourself can employ. Despite being undocumented, you have the right to a fair hearing and a right to find an attorney (even though the government has no obligation to provide one for you). You should never sign paperwork you don’t understand. Most important, never open the door for any immigration enforcement officer unless you are presented with a warrant that the officer has slipped under your door. Being afraid does not have to mean giving into intimidation tactics.
A few days after the election, I was still in a fog. I walked into the ladies’ room at my office, and this is what I saw on the mirror:
I realize it’s just six words on a Post-it note, but for a moment at least, it filled me with hope. I didn’t know then that it was the beginning of a movement. A couple months later, I stood among hundreds of thousands of protesters at the Women’s March in Los Angeles. A few days after that, I watched as protesters gathered at major airports across the country to denounce the ban on Syrian refugees and Muslims around the world. It reminded me that none of us are alone in this. Even if you feel like you have to stay hidden, there are millions who will gladly keep fighting on your behalf—myself included. All of that said, if it turns out that I’ve been shipped to a Muslim internment camp, please send help—and copious amounts of cheese and crackers.
* * *
* Sadly, on September 5, 2017 (and as of this writing), President Trump rescinded DACA, giving Congress six months to pass legislation on immigration reform—all while putting the lives of 800,000 young people in limbo.
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
—Excerpt from the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America
The scorching temperatures in Pomona were unbearable that day. Even with my air conditioner on full blast, I could already tell that I was sweating through my wrap dress. It wasn’t just the heat that was making me perspire but my nerves about what lay ahead. Right now, in my car, I was still an Iranian citizen. But in a couple of hours, that lifelong fact about me, the one that always seemed to surprise people, would no longer be true. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. Elated? Indifferent? Obnoxiously patriotic? I periodically glanced at my printed-out MapQuest directions until I came upon the Fairplex and pulled into the massive parking lot. I was late. There was already row after row of parked cars, and I suddenly felt like I was attending a carnival and not a swearing-in ceremony.
I’m not sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it. As I made the long walk from my car to the entrance of the building that normally housed the county fair, I moved past vendors selling hot dogs, American flags, and T-shirts. It was like we were being welcomed into the country by capitalism and obesity. I decided not to shell out any of my hard-earned cash on cheap memorabilia…though celebrating with transfat was tempting.
It was 2005, and I wasn’t too keen on the American government during that period. President Bush had famously referred to Iran as part of an axis of evil, and after twenty-four years of living in the United States, I felt like the Middle East was even more misunderstood than during the hostage crisis or the Gulf War. Everyone who wasn’t related to me made a huge fuss over the news that I was about to become a citizen. I received a barrage of congratulations from my work colleagues and from my American boyfriend’s family. I suppose it was a big deal, but for some reason getting congratulated for becoming an American citizen brought on a slight feeling of discomfort. The reactions seemed to suggest that being an American was better than being anything else.
“You’re one of us now!” I could hear people saying underneath their cheerful rhetoric.
And then I could hear my parents’ voice from when I was a teenager…
“You’re becoming too American.”
Or maybe what they meant to say was, “You’re not one of us anymore.”
It wasn’t like I was going to be the first in my immediate family to take the plunge and become a citizen. Kia had been one from the moment he entered the world. Maman and Samira were still two years ahead of me in the process and had already traded in their green cards for US passports. Since I’d become a permanent resident, I’d suffered through two frustrating presidential elections without being allowed to vote, and it was important to me to exercise my democratic right in the next one. But voting booths aside, I worried I’d be betraying my Iranian side if I was too gung ho about becoming fully Americanized. And so I treated the swearing-in ceremony like it was a movie with an exhaustingly slow build and an anticlimactic ending.
I raised my right hand as directed and looked around nervously at the other hundreds of participants while a video of an imposing President Bush stared down at us like Big Brother. The acoustics in the Fairplex were so poor that none of us could understand a word of what the president was saying. We were supposed to repeat the words of the naturalization oath as he said them, but his voice echoed off the walls incoherently. A roomful of immigrants smiled and shrugged at each other as we all made a lame attempt to follow along. On the sidelines, family members waved flags and hollered. I wondered if I should have brought along my boyfriend to make the experience feel more real or important, but I hadn’t expected it to be a spectator sport. Instead, I did the most American thing I could have done during the rest of the ceremony: I worked. For the last few years, I’d been employed as a creative executive at ABC Daytime, and I’d gotten adept at finding windows of opportunity to catch up on scripts. While everyone else grinned from ear to ear with the promise of the future, I flipped through the pages of an episode of General Hospital.
Looking back, I regret my behavior. I wish I had left the script in the car. What did other people think as they looked at me, keeping my head buried in an episode of a television show? It probably seemed like I was belittling a moment they’d been waiting years to experience. Perhaps they assumed my path to citizenship was painless, smooth, and easy. If it had been arduous and traumatic, then I’d be savoring every second of the occasion. I finally put down the scrip
t when it came time to announce every country that was represented in the room. As cheers rippled through the crowd, it felt like we’d all gathered at the World Cup. I yelled loudly when Iran was announced. In that moment, being surrounded by a diverse group of ethnicities—all of us about to become citizens together—I realized that this is what I loved about America. This was why I was proud to be here. I was about to become part of a country that was much more rich and interesting because it had no walls built around its perimeter.
By the end of the ceremony, I was far less cynical about the whole event. This was the true end of our immigration nightmare. I was two when we moved to the United States, and at the age of twenty-six, I was finally an American citizen. After the ceremony ended, we were directed to wait in a line that corresponded with our last name to turn over our green card and to receive a certificate of naturalization.
Once I received my certificate, I hurried through the parking lot to get back to work, but it took nearly an hour to find my car among the massive and indistinguishable rows of vehicles. Later that week, my co-workers surprised me with cake and a congratulatory card, and I thanked them and allowed myself to recognize the significance of the experience.