Reform opinions

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.

Shitstorm

Watering the dirt does no good if there aren't any seeds. But what if all you want to do is just water the shit out of it. Make mud and fling that at everything you don't want to look at. A mad mud mess.

Things to not say to someone with immigration problems (specifically deportation or voluntary departure of a spouse):
"When are he/she coming back?" Oh. well. Let me check the calendar. I don't fucking know!

"I thought you guys were married." or "You guys have a kid together." Yes. We are/do. AND?! It changes NOTHING! If it did do you think we'd be in the situation??

(After you tell them a VERY approximate amount of time this kind of shit takes) "Oh 6 months isn't bad! I thought it'd be longer." If it isn't so bad, why don't you try it? Please tell me how not bad it is.

"How are you?" If you ask this too many times, maybe one day I'll snap and really tell you how I feel. Keep trying if that's your goal.

"He/she shouldn't have been sent away. I think your lawyer messed up." Or that inferred you messed up. OKAY PLEASE TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW ALL ABOUT IMMIGRATION LAWS/ISSUES/CASES I'D LOVE TO HEAR

(In voluntary departure cases) "What did he/she get deported--" STOP RIGHT THERE. IT WASN'T DEPORTATION

"Be patient" OH IS THAT WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO? Like a friend said to me, we shouldn't have to wait for our family to be together.

I may be harsh here but in "real life" I am polite. I wouldn't really reply as above, unless I didn't like you in the first place or you pushed me a bit far. Yea I understand it's mainly ignorance driven. I didn't know immigration info before but I hold hope that I wouldn't have asked or said these things.

Unvoluntary

Can't stop thinking about him leaving. What it will do to me. What it will do to her. What it will do to him. What it will do to us. There is nothing voluntary about voluntary departure. He is forced to leave. Immigration reform can't happen quick enough. There is too much to worry about in the same time period. Her first birthday. The immigration interview. His (in)volunatary departure.

These are important growing times for her. I would think at least. She's still learning a lot. But she will have to live with a father in a different country. Hearing him on the phone. A bodiless voice. Will she forget his face? Even skyping, will she connect that he is her father? That it wasn't his choice to leave us. That this isn't what having a dad normally is like. That normally he would be there to hug her, kiss her, love her. Will she see me sad/upset and wonder why? Will this mess her up? When (and hopefully not if) he comes back will there be alienation? Stupid irony, he is an alien here and will come back alien to her?

I worry about her first. Priority worry. First her, then him, then me. What if something happens to him? I hear it's dangerous. It's yellow on the travel list! Not that I know what that exactly entails.. but USA is green. Will I be able to send him money or only have enough for us here? He will be separated from us, missing us, feeling anxious, while I'm in the states trying to get him back. He says it's hard to find a job there. They don't get paid as well as people do here. What if his living arrangment falls through?

Am I going to become a recluse? Whenever you say "no", "no thanks", "can't make it out", "sorry I don't feel like it" to friends enough times, you fall off their list. Is that going to happen? I'll corner myself off? I don't want to but sometimes you can't do what you want. I have the most amazing best friends but it's understandable if it happens. They have their own lives and worries.

What if I start crying and can't stop? How can I function if I cry all the time? I have responsibilities.

A lot of what ifs, whys, questions. I'm not going to know until it's happening.