In which it all falls to bits.

Well, a super shitty few weeks on the immigration front, and I don’t mean in Arizona or Utah.

No, no – we’re gone from the US, but we still get to live the US immigration experience every day.

First, I’ve been struggling with the possibility of having to apply for “the waiver.” For me, the waiver of inadmissibility is my last resort, because I am philosophically opposed to the government dictating whether or not my marriage rises to the level of what they consider significant enough to honor. I know that everyone has different views on this, but for my own situation, my marriage is between my husband and me. Not between my husband, me, and some guy at USCIS.

But I recognize that there might be some situations in which I would have no choice but to apply. If my health or life were on the line, I would very seriously consider it.

Cut to the constant, gnawing abdominal pain I’ve had for the last 5 months – almost since I arrived in Brazil – with a number of delightful accompanying symptoms (none of which are fit for polite conversation, so I will spare you). I managed to brush it off for the first few weeks (months), telling myself it was the water or the food or my seriously augmented bean intake, but when you’ve been sick for 4 months, you have to accept the fact that you’re not going to get better on your own. So no matter how much you just don’t want to know, how horrid your health insurance is to you when you plead for their assistance, and how much more you prefer teasing a grizzly bear while dressed as a ribeye to going to the doctor’s office, you also accept that your only recourse is an MD.

Leo, of course, has been trying to drag me to the doctor since it started. I am, however, a very stubborn person. Cabeçuda! he calls me.

Of course, when I finally went to the doctor (a whole post in and of itself), he showed an unnerving amount of concern and requested more than US$2000 in exams – from blood tests to abdominal ct scans to (gulp) a colonoscopy. He then proceeded to list off a half dozen potential ailments that could kill me dead with terrifying efficiency.

Oh my God, I thought. I’m going to die. I proceeded to tell almost no one about my death sentence, and swallow my massive anxiety and mental images of my impending funeral over the course of several weeks, several thousand dollars, and several heebie jeebie-inducing tests.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the doctor’s conclusion was stomach ulcers.

So, for the time being, no waiver and no death – thank goodness. But it made for a really nerve-wracking couple of weeks. Although, I highly recommend general anesthesia; I want to always never remember my doctor’s visits.

The day that I got the good news (that death was not, in fact, imminent) I was ecstatic. But I didn’t feel better. I had a different gnawing sensation in my gut.

Guilt.

We’re going to actually do it, I thought. While most exiles watch their dreams crumble, their bank accounts dwindle, and their families pop and stretch at the seams, it looked like we’d get to go to Canada – healthy, well-funded, on our way to achieving our goals, and, above all, together.

I realized that I’d been so convinced that there was something seriously wrong with me because, well, no one gets this lucky!

With an (almost) clean bill of health and only a month to go, I couldn’t help celebrating a little, too; we just needed Leo’s FBI clearance on time, and we’d be as good as Vancouverites!

Well, you heard it here first: no one gets this lucky.

There’s a very good chance that Canada may not happen for the exact same reason that countless border-crossed lovers find themselves facing exile in the first place: with all of the good intentions in the world, we checked the wrong box.

The story starts 3 years before I even met Leo.

For undocumented immigrants in America, getting pulled over (and harassed for driving without a license) is par for the course. Everyone drives because essentially all of the jobs that undocumented immigrants do – from house cleaning to construction to, in Leo’s case, auto detailing – require that they drive from job site to job site. At least in Massachusetts, immigrants can buy insurance (indeed they are required to do so) and register their cars, but they are not legally allowed to drive because they can’t get a US license (which isn’t to say that they don’t have legitimate licenses from their own countries).

That they drive (in Leo’s case, around 200 to 300 miles per day) also means that they’re pulled over, like we all are from time to time. But for undocumented immigrants, a routine traffic stop can be the beginning of a family frayed, the beginning of a long journey hundreds of miles away, and, it seems, a routine traffic stop can also be the end of my dreams of professorhood, a middle class developed world lifestyle, and Canadian residency.

In 2005, Leo got pulled over, showed his Brazilian license, and was taken to the police station, where he paid a fine and left.

“Were you arrested?” I asked in 2009 as when we sorted out our options at our dining room table in Medford, Massachusetts, “Were you actually convicted of anything?”

“I have no idea!” he told me, “I didn’t speak English. I didn’t know what was happening; I just paid them and left.”

So before leaving the US, Leo and I solicited our Massachusetts criminal background checks, assuming both that we’d need them for our Canadian visas and that it would answer the question of whether Leo had been actually “arrested” or “charged” in 2005.

His Massachusetts record came back clean.

So, when we were filling out our Canadian visa applications, we checked “NO” next to the criminal record question.

Fast forward to tonight, when my mom received Leo’s FBI record letter in the mail stating that he had been “arrested for operating a motor vehicle without a license” in 2005.

Even before I met Leo or thought of going to Canada myself, I’d heard that surest way to get a Canadian visa denied is a criminal record. I’ve received anecdotal evidence to the same effect just this evening from a dear friend. No doubt, looking like you weren’t telling the truth probably just increases the swiftness and weight of the “DENIED” stamp.

It’s pretty humbling to watch your whole world and all of your prospects lurch and tumble on the foundation of a paper square occupying not more than a few millimeters on a bureaucratic form.

But there it goes: goodbye Canada. Goodbye grad school. Goodbye academia and water governance. Goodbye to my dishes waiting for me in the back of my Subaru. Goodbye living an hour from my mom’s cabin in Washington State. Goodbye to a lot of very comforting numbers, odds, and daydreams.

With no other ideas on the table, we’re just going to turn everything in and hope for the best, but a visa would be a miracle.

Press!

Journal do Brasil published a wonderful handful of articles today about the crackdown on immigrants in the United States.

The fabulous Jorge -- who, btw, has my permission to marry a very dear friend of mine -- wrote up a short piece about The Bar and the situation of Exiles who are forced to leave the US in order to stay with the person they love. I am very grateful to him for sharing our story!





*One small correction is that the waiver process takes several years (that couples must usually suffer apart) but not a decade. A decade is the amount of time those who have not applied for a waiver (or those to whom a waiver has been denied) must wait outside of the country before being eligable for a visa.

Belo Horizonte

For those of you who wonder where I live, here's BH from above! Not evident in this video is the abundance of pão de queijo (cheese bread), which is the absolute best part about living here.

Should I stay or should I go now...

Mallory, the incredible writer/baker/photographer over at The Salty Cod, left a great question in the comments section of my last post. She asked, “why do you want to leave here so bad!” which I hope means that she’s enjoying her new Brazilian digs!

The more I thought about her question, the more complicated my answer became. On the one hand, I truly love it here; being in Brazil makes me just plain happy. I would be perfectly delighted to live in Brazil forever—but...

And there are a couple of buts:

The biggest “but” is a question of stability, which is in itself multi-faceted:

Brazil is a great country to live in if you have money. It’s really not that much fun if you don’t. I know that we foreigners are always remarking on how less-well-off Brazilians are “so happy even though they ‘have so little!’” It’s true: this country has an inexhaustible supply of unbridled joie de vivre, but it’s more of a credit to the buoyant Brazilian spirit than it is a quality-of-life marker; being poor in Brazil is no enviable position, as much as we foreigners romanticize the notion.

Even though I am a white, educated American from an upper-middle class background – and therefore gain easy acceptance into the Brazilian elite – I’m also just some kid fresh out of college with a bundle of student loans and basically no safety net. In Brazil, that’s a little scary. Add to that my wonderful loving husband who – for all of his other assets – never pretended to be my sugar daddy, and what you’ve got is a slightly precarious position. I’m not saying that it couldn’t work, but it gives me pause.

Next, we carry – whether I like it or not – some responsibility for Leo’s family, who are for all intents and purposes actually poor. Earning in reais, we would be able to contribute little, but earning in dollars – in this case Canadian – we would be able to help more. On top of currency conversion, Leo’s work is worth more in North America. Leo does not have the education or experience to make significant sums in Brazil, but he always earned well in the US through honest labor (what he earned during one month of work in the US is equal to about 4 to 6 months of the same sort of work here).

On top of that, Brazil is rather pricey. Once again, earning in dollars makes life here fairly reasonable, but earning an average salary in reais can mean that – especially when it comes to big ticket items – you have very little buying power; a nice laptop, for instance, can put you out R$12,000 even though the same one in the States would cost a mere US$2000 (R$3520 would be the direct conversion). Even if you’re earning a reasonable Brazilian salary, those are some daunting numbers. Buying goods isn’t everything – and I would argue that the American disposable, price-obsessed paradigm is not healthy – but if buying a nice computer would cost me 3 to 6 of gross monthly income, imagine buying a car, a house, and all of the accompanying accoutrements.

I don’t know how much any of this will change given Brazil’s economic growth spurt.

As an aside – from someone totally untrained in economics – I take personal risks, but I’m not an investor. When I see a booming economy like Brazil has right now, I don’t get bullish; I get nervous – especially when talk shows hawk TVs, appliances, and credit cards like plastic is going out of style. I’m not saying that this massive economic expansion won’t work out for Brazil – I hope it does! – but I prefer to take smaller risks and reap smaller rewards. Boring, I know.

The next “but” is somewhat linked to stability, seeing as how I will be the main breadwinner in our family – just due to my level of education and fluency in English; however, it’s also a question of fulfillment. In Brazil, I would not be as able to pursue my passions at this point in my life. As much as I like English, I don’t want it to be my career, and many of the well-paid jobs open to foreigners involve ceding a bit of your soul to multi-national corporations; I don’t have what it takes to be corporate.

So, what could I do in Brazil?

Well, in my fantasies, I am a writer wearing chunky necklaces, owl-eyed sunglasses, and an outsized floppy hat as I bang out enchanting vignettes from a breezy beachfront balcony that overlooks Rio’s black-and-white pedras portuguesas. Just for the hell of it, let’s put a hammock in there, too.

In reality, I would like to be a college professor working on issues of water governance, so subtract the sunglasses and substitute bifocals. The balcony might have to be replaced with a burdened wooden desk and a protesting old file cabinet, but I do hope I get to keep the chunky necklaces.

Between the two options, I’d opt for professor over writer because I’m pretty sure that being an astronaut or a secret agent would be a more promising career path than “real writer.” Who actually makes it as a writer?!

To make the professor gig work, Canada is a better option. For one thing, I’m still a lot smarter in English and doing my Master’s and PhD in Brazil would test the limits of my love for the Portuguese language. Second, Canadian schools have more world-wide recognition than Brazilian universities (although Brazil does have some excellent universities and a very, very strong academic community; Canadian degrees are just more transferable for now). Third, Canada offers more flexibility in the long term: after a Master’s and PhD and some post-doc whatnot, “The Bar” would be very nearly over. We would likely be eligible for permanent residency in Canada, could go back to the States, could look for work at a Brazilian university, or could end up in a whole other country.

All of this is to say that right now Brazil might not be the perfect option when compared to Canada. I would consider very strongly moving back to Brazil at some point.

But there is also stability in other parts of life; while I find terribly exciting the borderline insanity that Brazil can sometimes dish out, there’s something really heartwarming about a country where a bear with his head in a pickle jar is front page news.

FBI, You've Made Me Quite Happy

So, we had some progress on the Canada front. I called the FBI today to see whether Leo’s record request had been processed yet. The kindly customer service woman on the other end of the line started by asking, “when did you send in the forms?”

“Oh, about a month ago,” I said, stretching the truth; we did send it about a month ago, but it arrived in their hot little hands only about 3 weeks ago. I had written in every blank space on the forms that the request was for Canadian Immigration Purposes – pls return by 7/20 in the hopes of legitimizing the request and speeding it up.

“I’ll look up his request to see if it’s in the system,” said the representative, “but I have to tell you that current processing times are between 10 and 12 weeks. There’s a good chance it’s not even in my computer yet.”

“Ok,” I said, trying to remain cheerful in case that somehow won me extra rush-points. I started working on the perhaps you can help me line about how a delay could complicate things and was there any way to speed up the process…

“Alright,” came the reply after a short pause, “it actually is here!” She sounded surprised, “you’re not going to believe it, but we’ve begun processing it today!”

“Great!” I was totally shocked.

“So, once we begin processing the request, it usually takes a week or two to complete. If you call back next week, we’ll probably be able to tell you when you can expect to receive it.”

“Wonderful!” I said.

“I hope that helps,” she said.

“A whole lot,” I affirmed, “thank you very much for your help! Have a wonderful day!”

I did a little happy dance, complicated by my Skype headphone cord.

Ok, so, they haven’t exactly complied with my very rushed timeline – please return by 7/20, not please begin processing by 7/20 – but there is movement, and I am therefore a very happy camper. True, this means that we’ll still probably only know about our Canada visas weeks – if not days – before we hope to leave, but at least it looks like we’re on the right side of our departure date!

Thanks, FBI!

Nom, nom, nom.

I believe that if I were to sit down to dinner with my worst enemy – although we might never walk away as friends – we would find commonality and empathy by dessert.

Food is incredibly humanizing; we eat in response to our mortality and vulnerability, and layered over top are all of man’s most poignant acts and emotions: anticipation, care, recognition, remembrance, welcoming, appreciation, tradition, gathering, sharing, belief, worship, etc…

When I am afraid of, annoyed by, upset with, or otherwise put off by someone, I find that they are considerably less maddening if I imagine them eating. I’m quite sure that if I had to give an address, I wouldn’t imagine my audience naked but rather snacking. We are grateful to those who feed us, protective of those we feed, and are somehow made vulnerable by the need to eat and the pleasure we derive from it.

Little wonder that our celebrations, ceremonies, and salutations are accompanied by the preparation and consumption of food. Many of our struggles are also marked by food – and it is no surprise that in the most extreme anguish we desire not to eat.

When Leo’s little brother was picked up by the US immigration authorities (another non-criminal), the most distressing minutes of their phone call were when his brother said “on the counter in my apartment is a bag of shrimp; I set it out to thaw. I don’t want it to go to waste. I would like you to eat it.”

His plea felt like requesting rites, and Leo seemed profoundly disturbed. No doubt, he was imagining his brother working throughout the day, anticipating coming home to a special shrimp dinner – expensive, something out of the ordinary, a little treat he’d allowed himself…

Of all of the items in his brother’s apartment – most of which Leo disposed of or willed to others dispassionately – the shrimp was sacrosanct and cursed; he was burdened with eating it – something he would not deny his brother – but he was pinned between not wanting to enjoy it for himself and trying to savor it for his brother.

I prepared the shrimp for Leo almost ritualistically, and he ate in silence. The meal was the level at which all three of us connected in that moment.

I believe that food can join any two people no matter where they are from. I never reject food when traveling; the flavors are the essence of a people, a culture, and a history. When you eat food from outside of your own background, your body is literally being sustained by new experiences, old traditions, and foreign customs – this is why I have no patience for picky eaters; I am convinced that they’re the worst sort of imperialists.

So when my friend and fellow exile, Jane, posted this wonderful article* on Facebook about food, love, and immigration, I had to post it here – especially since if I close my eyes and imagine Brazil, I can smell that garlic sizzling in the rice pot.

*Thanks to Daniela Gerson for writing it!

Again?

Well this is scary as fuck. So, we have law enforcement in Arizona demanding to see your documents, anonymous residents of Utah spying on their neighbors and submitting lists to the government... anyone care to take a stab at what police state measure will be the next to be emulated in the "land of the free and the home of the brave?"

2014!

So there's some sort of World Cup final today or something, but just to get you guys excited about the World Cup that'll count -- 2014, obviously -- here are some lovely shots of the home country of the winning team!



and this:



But watch out; once you "go Brazil," you never go back. Consider yourselves warned.

Fulbright.

Oh, my dear friends!

I am sorry that I've been neglecting you! The truth is that I have 7 more weeks here (if Canada comes through), and I needed to get crackin' on some of my Fulbright obligations! This week has been full of interviews (today I sat down with a certain Dr. José Carlos Carvalho -- the current Secretary of the Environment and Sustainable Development in Minas Gerais and the former Minister of the Environment... for all of Brazil! What?! I also interviewed this feisty seraph of woman named Dona Ivana who is something like a Brazilian amalgamation of Mother Teresa, the Dali Lama, and Neytiri from Avatar… hang tight, because she’ll get her own post).

After this week, I'll be in solitary confinement while I attempt to bang out a handful of coherent conclusions in article form!

Needless to say, my Fubright project is going well, but it's interrupting the hubbub and hullabaloo you come here to read! Please forgive me! I promise to update as often as I can.

(You can probably expect a bunch of updates mid-week next week when re-visiting my recorded interviews feels like a daunting and disagreeable task... procrastinaaaaaation!)

The World Cup is Over

I've been a Brazil soccer fan since my earliest YMCA league days when I was bunched around a size 3 ball with 10 other kids -- kicking wildly at one another's shins; wearing oversized, reversible blue-and-red t-shirts; and smiling dopey, gap-toothed grins at our enthusiastic parents who recorded the entire spectacle for posterity with shoulder-mounted 1990 video camera technology.

In other words, I've been a Brazil fan about as long as I can remember.

And so while I could fill this post with observations and vignettes about what Brazil is like after yesterday's loss to the Netherlands, I just don't feel like writing anything. I feel deeply let down, treacherously betrayed, and a little like showing Robben what a real foul feels like...

Here's hoping that yesterday's loss makes winning at Maracanã in 2014 just that much sweeter.