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The leading Copyright |
Affidavit Of An Immigration Attorneyby Beatriz Ana Sandoval, Esq.
My name is Beatriz Ana Sandoval The old line in the sand was still in the memories Of the older ones who had seen the way people came and went Before the days of Operation Wetback in 1954, days of brown workers rounded up and carted off newborn babies not even baptized Long before the bracero program and its ten percent wage withholding, millions of dollars so many sun-chapped ex-braceros sitting in the shade of useless old-age still haven't recovered from our goverments but in 1970, papeles were so much easier to come by, before NAFTA, before Bush, before the Department of Homeland Security with its UnPatriot Act. In El Salvador somewhere There’s a two-room structure of straw, wood and mud, A home I can’t let Yesenia, my client, return to Not just because as a single mother she will find no work Not just because there’s no school lunch—free or otherwise No school cafeterias at all, no new books no electricity in the house to light a lamp for her daughter to study No family left to help her learn how to live in a world Where the land no longer sustains as it used to. Everyone left during the war, even her father Left to get away from the guerrilla and paramilitaries Eating his food, sleeping under his simple roof and laughing At his baby girl playing with spent grenade casings Seven years is how long it took them to get back together. I listen to father and daughter, I think of my family and our stories, and find a way To interpret what he says, and what he doesn’t say About his baby granddaughter’s future With no school lunch, coming home to a two-room shack Immigration lawyers are interpreters more than anything Going between robed judges and pencil-pushing bureaucrats And the ones they call alien and illegal Translating something even more subtle than language Uncovering the truths between the lines Interpreting the stubborn silences Or muted responses Of those resigned to sacrifice I listen to this father, grandfather, patriarch This man still working the midnight shift at 62 years old And I hear a man afraid to leave his baby alone all over again. This is what I try to tell the Judge In between the tax returns and the medical records, Postoperative reports of acute pancreatitis and Eight other emergency room trips over two years time Each with corresponding, dated index descriptions Next to a capital letter compartmentalizing As many different types of hardship I can piece together In a two-hole punched filing for the judge To flip through during a three or four hour hearing Where he will decide How a granddaughter will get to grow up In which ways a family will change Which journeys will end or begin and at what cost and I don’t know which is harder to see in my dreams and nightmares the little girl crying without her father the man powerless to help his children a family on the verge of separation or the volumes and exhibits with their alphabet tabs and indexes and the inescapable feeling that I can’t keep them from becoming just a nine-digit number beginning with the letter A I have prepared this affidavit To explain In great detail That no human being is illegal Or alien That there’s no such thing as amnesty That green cards aren’t handed out With marriage certificates But that, despite all this, The wall-building minutemen and Right-wing political appointees and pocket-lining politicians cannot stop this movement. The people will keep coming Landing here on the tides of globalization, exploitation Monopolization of opportunity, Degradation of humanity, And the insanity of more than half Of the people in the world Living on less than $2.00 a day. I have prepared this affidavit To attest That no matter how much I feel Like a stop-gap, A dutch-boy with a finger in the dam, A medic on a warfield of casualties, I am in this because we all are Because this country is all of ours Because a land where I, The daughter of a wetback steel worker Can graduate law school and Seek the chance to live up to the names I carry Is something worth fighting for. So I put on my good suit Go to court, go to work To set Yesenia apart from All the other single mothers That file through the judge’s courtroom In the end she wins her green card, I get a small victory, and the judge Gets to cross a nine-digit number off his never-ending list. But I never know why. If it is the baby girl, or the fourteen different Evidences of physical presence, school ID’s and paystubs Vaccination cards with scribbled dates and dog-eared corners Jammed somewhere in between Tabs A and V So I have to keep on explaining, Documenting, Interpreting These things I hope Someday We all will see.
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