Essay: The Mental Health Toll Of Being The Lone Green Card Holder In Your Family

It took 19 years to return to El Salvador, where I was born in 1999 and immigrated at the age of nine. My father fled in 1991, a year before the end of the civil war, and I was only a few months old. My mother immigrated a few weeks after I turned 5 because, as a woman, she was harassed every time she tried to find work in "peacetime", which is a common practice in El Salvador.

His younger sister Malik extended her tourist visa in 2002 because she lost her job in 2001. During the earthquake, she and their younger sister Lupi fled from an abusive ex-husband to Batalon Atlacatl in 2005. our immigrants have received legal status from the US government and, by extension, from all of us. They weren't registered for some, if not all, of the years we called California home.

I have seen my country from afar for 19 years. First, we look at the Spanish news for a glimpse of El Pulgarcito de América.

Then, in the mid-2000s, Salvador was a full-fledged Primer Impacto. In the eyes of many Americans, we have gone from obscurity to parity with gang members. When he was young, the nation his parents and aunts left behind seemed to date back to a little-discussed era reminiscent of the Civil War.

When I graduated from college, I was undocumented, but like many Salvadorans, Haitians, and Nepalese, I had temporary protected status (TPS). Even with TPS, I couldn't return to my country because I didn't meet the 'provisional parole' criteria to legally return to the United States.

By 2014, El Salvador's homicide rate became English-speaking. In 2016, we were caught in the Iron Triangle and the Unaccompanied Children Crisis at the Border. It's disappointing how Americans learn about gangs, Central America, and child migration.

Every time I watched the news, my father, a civil war survivor, vowed never to return to El Salvador, even if he got a green card. In the meantime, my mother and aunt waited patiently while President Bush, then Obama, and everyone else passed immigration reform.

My grandparents didn't tell us exactly what they experienced in El Salvador. "Yes, it's bad in that country, but not here." Don't worry. “The only real update I received about La Situación came from my brief Facebook interactions with my cousin Julia, who was five years old when I immigrated in 1999.

“Here in La M.C. they control us, they don’t do anything for us, but we can’t go to the other side of the city because Los de la 18 controls it,” Julia said. A teenager, one might say casually.

My desire to see my grandparents and the city I grew up in is now treated with caution. I was angry and disappointed that I felt safe in the States, but that safety was a privilege that my relatives in El Salvador did not have. Do I want to go back to a place I've heard so many bad things about? But grandma and grandpa said it wasn't so bad.

Who was right?

Finally, when I was 28, I returned to La Herradura. My long-awaited return was not a vacation, but a forced “self-movement” for an interview at the US Embassy for an Exceptional Skills Visa (EB-1). My case was one of the first times TPS was converted to an EB-1 visa, so the lawyers had a lot of doubts that it would actually work.

I had doubts about El Salvador's security policy, especially when it came to tattoos (I have two large tattoos on my body). Maybe it's because the murder rate is still the highest in the world, or maybe it's because I've soaked up all the foreign media coverage, or maybe it's because my family says they need "tattooed killer gangsters".

I spent the first five weeks in my country mostly at my grandparents' house.

My parents knew people who returned to El Salvador and they were told: "It wasn't that bad, don't trust other people's children." What was my country really like? How has he changed in 19 years? I remember how they ran around the neighbor's yard, played outside without adult supervision and walked all night. The first five weeks were different. My grandparents locked the house at 7 pm.

Several nights I heard shots. Do you have something wrong? I feared for my safety. Has society really changed that much? Was my family alone? my city? This problem persists in immigrant communities. Most of us do not have the opportunity to go back and decide how our countries have changed.

So at best we listen to our friends and at worst we read Facebook threads. This shutdown of the outside world that we have left behind affects our family dynamics.

People are dark. dark. It has changed over time, but how? or why? What changed them? A regular video call or WhatsApp phone call can help you stay close to your family members. My green card win showed me that.

I no longer have an excuse for blessed ignorance or opacity. I can form my own opinion about La Situación and how and why my family ties fell apart. There are no rules for the transition from one immigration status to another.

My family's experience with the immigration system in this country has made us all special. I see this with my friends too. I don't remember ever talking about mental health expenses with a family member or friend who changed immigration status.

The conversation is about financial expectations affecting the only green card holder in the family. I know that I need to bring enough things to “tidy up” the house everyone has left, and I manage to bring enough polo campers for the return trip. This transaction is visible to everyone. But what about being the only "legitimate" member? It's a shame to give so easily
Sign in the United States.

I remember telling myself that a green card would solve all my problems, that this little plastic card would make me feel whole. “I wish I had a green card…” A lot of thoughts swirled in my head, and I felt that I had no strength, that I could not control my destiny. But now I can move freely between countries, and yet I am desperate about what immigration is doing to my family. I can see when I hug her I feel the distance between grandma and how difficult the conversations are.

Returning home six times, I found myself in the role of an interpreter for my family, which I could not even dream of. Not from the language, but from the life of El Salvador and the USA. In other words, a translator of trauma and pain. I explain to my cousin that her undocumented mother is not as wealthy and wealthy as she thinks. I explain to my family in the US that my grandparents didn't want a microwave, cell phone, or washing machine that they didn't know how to use. What they really want, more than a phone call, is for their family member to come back with love, not money.

I see how money is a survival mechanism. We immigrants need to make sense of our life in another country, and the easiest way to determine this is by a literal number and monetary value. Some parts of me still believe it. I received them.

I would like to point out here that I, too, have the honor of having a psychotherapist and devoting time and money to my own well-being. All I stand for, if anything, is more talk in our communities about how hard life is in this country. How hard it is to be away from loved ones. Let's take a moment to see how we see money, love, distance, and our home.

If you're reading this, I just want to start a conversation. Talking about it will help you understand family members better. After all, the hardest thing for my family to understand is that people who have never been to the United States cannot understand what it means to be an illegal immigrant in this country.

For those who are undocumented in this country, it is impossible to truly understand how the country has changed. There is an endless scope for nostalgia that can enter the equation from the Salvadoran mentality to the United States. Looking north from El Salvador, one can see a lot of unrealistic physical and emotional expectations.

Let's face it, how hard it is to be sick and love from a distance.

Solito by Javier Zamora is an award-winning memoir about his difficult journey from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine. Zamora will write an article for De Los every month.

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