How terrible do you think it is to enter the United States illegally/without consent/undocumented?
Could you consider it on a smaller scale, a comparison, of trespassing on someone's property? Or trespassing somewhere you are not supposed to by law?
What do you think the punishment should be? What is reasonable to you?
Are these reasonable punishments to you?:
Being detained, (sometimes poorly treated), unable to see your family/friends
Have a $3,000 or $5,000 (real examples, there are other real amounts, I have experience w/ $3,000) bond to be paid-in-full to release you
Sent back to a place you might not have visited in years, 2-,3-,5-,10-years?
Wait in worry and anxiety for your family and yourself on whether or not you'll ever be back
A couple to a few thousand dollars spend on a lawyer
There are no guarantees.
A couple to a few thousand for the immigration paperwork/fees/etc.
Your family minus the income you made. Maybe they have to go on welfare now, lose your home, &/or lose the car.
Going from a place that international travel advisory is "Exercise normal security precautions" to "Exercise a high degree of caution; see also regional advisories"
From barely any WHO risk areas to Hep A, Hep B, Rabies, Dengue (CDC typhoid, malaria, yellow fever)
Comparison:
Let's say you trespassed
Then you get arrested and kept waiting, days-weeks, to hear a bond that has to be paid fully (no bail bondsmen) of $3,000. If not paid then they transfer you to a different facility to be held until they process you. (Say you live in Texas now but used to live in South Dakota 8 years ago) They send you back to South Dakota, where some of your family still reside. You have to restart your life there. You are not allowed to leave. You are banned for 10 years from going back to Texas, where your daughter is, or where your son is, or where your wife is, or where your husband is. They are allowed to try to get the ban waived but it takes time & money and it isn't guaranteed. Or maybe you had a bad past or misunderstanding where you were arrested, the ban is non-waivable. You have to wait in South Dakota. Your child sees pictures of you. Can video chat with you. Grows up only seeing you as an image on a screen. Instead of kissing your face, they kiss a hard glass screen.
Does it seem a bit much for your offense being that you trespassed illegally?
Also, don't you think they left their country for a reason?
Some reasons:
Didn't have shoes growing up
Can't afford anything
Always eating rice & beans
Mother had to put you in an orphanage for a year or so because she couldn't afford you
You get paid way less for jobs
Very hard to find a job
Since you had a hard life growing up, you had to quit school to work
No degree, then even harder to find a job
Violence, gangs, being targeted, threatened
Things to consider: (empathize this)
Daughter starts getting separation anxiety, she cries when you leave the room, she claws her way to you. She has trouble sleeping.
She at first looks around for her father. She can't find him. He's not there. Where is he? Where did he go?
She at first ignores when she sees her father on a screen of a phone or computer, she shakes her head no at the man who fathered her and loves her.
She is forced to be accustomed to her father being an image on a screen. She waves to his face ON A SCREEN. She kisses his image on the screen. A SCREEN.
The father doesn't experience her first anything; first steps (luckily not in our case), first words after mama & dada (dada: which she says less of now. she used to say it to him all the time), first (two) bites from another kid because your daughter had to be put in daycare because it is hard to afford a babysitter &/or your wife/her mother no longer can be a stay-at-home mom because she has to make money for everyone.
P.S.: "Oh, it hasn't been that long."
Oh, it hasn't? I didn't realize that not having a good night of sleep, having constant/insistent anxiety/depression/worry/uncertainty, watching your child lose touch with her father, struggling with money, facing family drama, for 3 months isn't that long. Please. Please share your experience with that in order to help me with my journey.
