Hello, and again, welcome to Bit Depth. I’m Santiago Ramones.
I'm undocumented. I came to Oklahoma from Venezuela in 2001 on my 6th birthday. Fun facts, "Oklahoma" means "honored people" or "courageous nation" in Choctaw, and "Venezuela" means "Little Venice" in Italian. Anyways, I grew up undocumented until college. Through DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is how I've been here legally since ~2014. In November of 2020, I finally got all the paperwork together and applied for permanent residence (also colloquially known as a green card) through an immediate citizen relative (my wife, Sable). When I applied, I qualified for employment authorization while I waited for my green card to process. To further elaborate on the rest of this story, I have to now explain three levels of immigrant legality status.
Employment Authorization
An EAD (Form I-766, Employment Authorization Document) grants exactly that: ability for an immigrant to be *temporarily* employed in the United States. This separates an illegal, undocumented worker from a legit, *taxable* employee. It also allows the immigrant to have a temporary driver's license. It literally says "temporary" on it. In order to obtain the driver's license, the immigrant (Santiago) can't go to any tag agency, they have to go to the Department of Public Safety (DPS) itself. I've had my EAD through DACA. There's other ways of obtaining an EAD, but they're kinda difficult to obtain, yet not impossible.
Permanent Residence
Also known as a "green card" (Form I-551), this grants the immigrant permanent legal status in the United States. They can live here, work here, travel in and out of the US, and most importantly, pay taxes for an extended period of time. Permanent residents can't vote. The green card itself works as an EAD. Which means that the immigrant can go to the DPS and obtain a normal driver's license, without the "temporary". There are qualifications to maintaining the green card, like being in the US every 6 months, I believe. It's also EXTREMELY difficult to obtain a green card. You have to be an immediate relative to a US citizen, a refugee, irreplaceable to some US company, or a literal genius recognized by the US. I'm exaggerating for effect but not inaccurate, I feel. You can't just come here and stay. That would mean that the US actually cared about foreign people. The process is lengthy and expensive. It involves giving them practically all informational output from your life up to that point, interviews, biometrics, and a medical exam. I applied in November of 2020. I had an interview involving my Green card last week.
Citizenship
In order to become a US citizen, or naturalized, the immigrant has to be a permanent resident for a long period of time. 3 years through marriage, 5 years otherwise, if I remember correctly. They have to take a test, pay a fee of $725, and make a public announcement of alliance to the US during a ceremony. Once the immigrant is a naturalized citizen, they have all rights anyone born in the US has, except becoming president. They can vote, obtain a normal driver’s license, go to jail instead of being deported, work here, and most importantly, you guessed it, pay taxes. For me, specifically, it means I can actually leave the country because I would be able to obtain a passport. I don't have a valid passport from Venezuela and I can't obtain one because Venezuela is in the unfortunate position of being Venezuela right now, and I imagine it's not an easy task locating documents pertaining to someone that was last in the country in 2001 at the age of 6.
Okay, so now I have to explain DACA.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security announced that people who came to the US as children could apply for deferred action and employment authorization. Deferred action means that they acknowledge the immigrant’s undocumented status and are not taking action (such as deporting the immigrant), and even allowing them to work (and pay taxes).
“We see you’re illegal but out of the kindness of our hearts, we won’t deport you because you were a child when you came here and had no choice on the matter.”
Some people don’t like DACA and want to get rid of it completely, and therefore, don’t like me and want to get rid of me. I find it difficult to consider those people as friends or even as family. Some people support politicians that want to get rid of DACA. I find it difficult to consider those people as friends or even as family.
Recently, on July 16th, 2021, a District Court in Southern Texas ruled that DACA was illegal. This ruling means that USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) is currently not approving any new DACA applications. They are still taking renewal and initial applications, but they cannot approve any initial applications, only renewals. This decision is still up in the air and being appealed, so there’s a chance that DACA could be reinstated in the future. But for now, anyone that would qualify for DACA that may have been saving up money and preparing all their material for some time can’t currently be approved for their initial application. Those individuals are forced to continue to live in the United States while undocumented, unable to work legitimately and are still at risk of deportation, even though they were not adults when they came to the United States. As of March of 2021, “there were 616,030 active DACA recipients”, and another 44,171 with renewals pending. A fear I had during the Trump presidency was that they would have been more likely to get rid of DACA, take this list of 600,000 people and all their information - addresses, phone numbers, family members, workplaces - and round us up like cattle and dump us all in Mexico, stripped from our lives in the country we actually grew up in. This didn’t happen. But it was always in the back of my mind as a possibility. The Center for American Progress estimated in 2020 that around 200,000 DACA recipients are “essential critical infrastructure workers”, like in healthcare, education, and food-related industries. Can you imagine removing hundreds of thousands of people that grew up in the US, Americans, immigrants only in status, and ripping them from their lives because rich white politicians believe that Obama didn’t have the authority to create DACA in the first place? *deep breath*
Getting back to me: I married my lovely wife, Sable, on October 10th, 2019. On that day, I was eligible to apply for permanent residence. Here’s a list of the things I had to file, slightly modified from the USCIS website:
Each of those forms have a great deal of other information required with it, including bank statements, marriage license, spouse’s birth certificate, proof you live together, previous addresses and workplaces, parents’ names and birthplaces (of both the relative and the applicant), tax returns, and most importantly, $535 for form I-130 and $1,225 for Form I-485.
After sending all that stuff in November and receiving form I-797C confirming that they have received my application, I can apply for a new employment authorization to hold me over in the meantime. By the way, form I-797C is just a white piece of paper from USCIS, also known as a notice of action. It can contain trivial information like “we got your form”, to more important information like “your request has been rejected” or “you have an interview on this day at this time”. A notice of action I received said that they received my request for an EAD and that my old EAD was extended by 180 days IF the classification status of my previous EAD matched the EAD I was applying for. My previous EAD was through DACA, classification C14, and the EAD I applied for was for requesting a change of status, classification C09, which means that the notice of action I received in January would not extend my employment authorization, which would expire in April. I’ll explain that stupid sentence after this next segment.
A Day in the Life of an Immigrant
I shall now recount the morning of July 16th, 2021. I decided the day before that I should probably go to the DPS and deal with the fact that I have an expired driver’s license. Yes, I’m dumb. I waited way too long to renew my license and I was hoping they would have sent me a new EAD by now. I had a notice of action that, the way I understood it at the time, said that my employment authorization was extended by 180 days, so I figured I could renew my driver’s license for 6 months until my new EAD came in.
I show up to DPS at 7am, per their website’s suggestion. (By some way of transportation that definitely doesn’t involve me driving a car.) They inform me and lots of other people waiting outside that, due to training new hires and being greatly understaffed at their location, all license renewals are being done at 1000 NE 10th St, not there, and that it’s only been this way for the past two days. Sorry.
So I headed to that address, which turned out to be the Department of Health for the state of Oklahoma, which is right in the middle of the OU Medical campus with hardly any signage showing me where to park, and NO signage outside the building showing anyone where to go to renew their driver’s license. I sat in my car that was somehow driven there, definitely not by me, and tried to see if there had been anything online that mentioned where to go in the building. I tried calling DPS to see if they could inform me where to go, but their offices actually open at 8am, and it was 7:30am.
Okay, fine. I wandered into the building, looked around for any signage pointing me to anything involving driver’s licenses to no avail, went up some stairs, looked around some more, and saw a woman standing outside a door.
“I’m very confused.”, I say to her.
“Are you here for a license? Through that door.”, she said.
I went in. I sort of explained my situation to two different people. I’m offered to get a REAL ID. I don’t have two proofs of residence on me, so I’ll have to get a normal license. I was led to a makeshift booth with blue curtains, like what you’d see at a convention. There were many of these booths in this concrete room. I sat down and handed a lady my documents - my driver’s license, my employment authorization, and my notice of action with the 180 days thing on it. She typed away at her computer, waited, and let me know that their system was being slow. She then had to go get her superior because my situation was complicated. Maybe this was the training they mentioned before.
This new lady came in, read my letter, read it again, and told me that she couldn’t give me a new driver’s license. The way she understood it, this was a flimsy piece of paper that doesn’t grant immigration status. She saw the 180 days part and understood me when I said that I should have a driver’s license extension because of it. I explained where I was in the process - marriage, green card application, employment authorization request. She said that, by state law, she couldn’t accept that piece of paper as official documentation and that I, Santiago Ramones, had to contact USCIS and request that they send me something official, like the green one that they see other times. I, Santiago Ramones, had to get a hold of USCIS and tell them that they messed up and that they needed to send me an official document in order for the state of Oklahoma to give me a driver’s license for 6 months. There was nothing she could do for me.
I went to my car. I called USCIS. I spoke to an automated system ten times. All ten of those times ended in their automated system failing to connect me to a human. She said she could understand complete sentences. Several of those ten times, I specifically said “let me speak to a human” in response to their prompts four times in a row, resulting in their automated system hanging up on me. USCIS’ automated system is deliberately designed to NOT connect anyone to a human representative. I was home by that tenth call (by some way or another, because I definitely didn’t drive a vehicle with an expired driver’s license). On that tenth call, I had figured out that if I tried to schedule an in-person appointment with some USCIS representative, their automated system would connect me to a human.
She asked me, “The hold time is 30 minutes. Do you still want to wait for an agent?”
“Yes!”, I said.
A pause.
Three tones.
On the eleventh call, I finally got to speak to a real human being after waiting 35 minutes. I gave him the receipt number of the notice of action that mentioned 180 days. I explained my situation - DACA, green card application, etc. He said that, actually, because the EAD I requested was classification C09, and my previous EAD was C14, the 180 days did not apply.
Now I’m back to the stupid sentence I said I would explain. In terms a human can understand, my employment authorization, and therefore my driver’s license, expired in April of 2021 and there’s nothing I can do about it until they send me the employment authorization I requested.
“What can I do?”, I asked him.
“I was thinking about it. We can make an expedite request.”, he said.
I won’t explain the rest of the call other than to say that it’s really up to USCIS whether or not the evidence I provided meets the criteria in order to expedite my EAD request.
Right now, I can’t drive. I’m technically not allowed to be employed in the US. This isn’t every immigrant’s experience. It might be one of the mildest and most privileged immigrant experiences. But it is my immigrant experience. I hope it gives some perspective.
The thing is that this is the best possible outcome for an immigrant. Can you imagine what it’s like for someone who doesn’t speak English? Or if it’s their second, third, or fourth language? Someone that doesn’t have the support community around them that I do? Someone that hasn’t received the education I have? I won’t be coy about it, I’m at least of above average intellect. And the fact that I had to puzzle around with the robot 11 times to be able to speak to a human means it’s effectively impossible for anyone to get ahold of USCIS to deal with a specific problem like this, or something even worse and more dire and more specific that searching around their website won’t solve.
Now, I have to balance the rest of this out with an actual positive experience I had. On Wednesday, August 18th, at 7:45am, Sable and I met with a USCIS representative. This meeting is a necessary step in the permanent residence process. In preparation for the meeting, the letter they sent me requested pay stubs and bank statements from the last two months, letters from my employers stating that I worked for them, and other identification like my birth certificate, Sable’s birth certificate, and other identification.
When we arrived that morning, we spoke to a kind, helpful, and humorous man that was a breath of fresh air considering the lack of humanity I’ve experienced my whole life from the US government. I don’t know what sort of protocol they have at USCIS involving publicity, so I won’t say more descriptors about him to respect his privacy. He informed us that the meeting was basically for Sable and I to prove our relationship. He asked about how we met and how I proposed. We rambled on, adorably, about our relationship and reminisced about how it began. The packet of things I handed him involving all the money stuff was useless to this meeting, so he handed it back. He needed more solid evidence proving our relationship - I missed that amidst all the other forms that only valued me as a taxpayer. So pictures of us together, documents we’ve co-signed on, stuff we pay for jointly… cute stuff. While it’s incredibly strange and dystopian that we have to prove our relationship to a government entity with printed out documents and pictures, especially considering that we live in a digital age now and they could easily find our social media, it’s oddly nice that the final piece for my legal status in the US is a fun one. It’s like if this were a college class and the mid-term project was absolute hell, and the teacher is kinda cool and made the final project a fun personal one. Anyways, the guy gave us some bureaucratic heads up. For example, I can apply for Citizenship 90 days before the three years are up. And that we’ll avoid paying a $700 fee for a Green Card extension if we wait until AFTER our two year marriage anniversary in October to submit the additional evidence he requested because the Green Card won’t be based on a short marriage, so I’ll receive a much longer lasting Green Card. It’s all this nonsense surrounding Green Card by marriage since people will fake marriage in order to obtain a Green Card. Honestly, if people are willing to fake a marriage on top of doing all the other stuff necessary to obtain a Green Card, you might as well give it to them.
He also informed us that the potential reason why I haven’t received my Employment Authorization, even though I requested it in January, is that they probably saw that I had a Green Card meeting in August, so, you know, “he’s about to get his Green Card anyways, so it’s only several months without a Driver’s License and Employment Authorization.” Basically, he thinks it got stuck in processing because I won’t need a temporary Employment Authorization much longer. This is what happens when people are separated by bureaucracy. I’m not a human being that needs to work or go places. I’m a number, and that number has a relatively small amount of time between when it gets one card and when it gets another, so why even give the first card? If I wasn’t so lucky to be able to run my own business from home, or to be married to someone that can drive, or to have a desire to learn how to skateboard, I would’ve been trapped at home without a job since April. And since it’s looking likely that I’ll get my Green Card in November-ish, it’s only 8 months without employment authorization. Imagine what that would do to anyone else. No employed income or driving for 8 months. Under different circumstances, I would’ve died. Or turned to crime. Because that’s basically what happens to people when they’re given no other options. I’m very, very, very lucky. Roll the dice and you’ll see someone very much like me faced with a much more dire situation.
So here’s the contrast: A complicated logistical process involving documents and technicalities and fees and rules versus a nice, human meeting with someone that actually cares and wants the best for my wife and I. Consider that this is only one story of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, entangled in the US immigration system. Consider these stories when you hear someone talk about lazy immigrants or illegals stealing jobs. Consider that we’re trying our best, and that it’s not the immigrants stealing jobs, it’s the corporations that would rather hire undocumented immigrants to save money. Consider stories much worse than mine, where people had to trek across the desert, escape cartels, leave behind their families, and make the impossible wager between certain death or potential exclusion. Consider stories less difficult than mine, where even the spouses of the wealthy still have to wait months to receive their documentation. Immigrants are a large foundation of what the US was built on. Immigrants are the past, present, and future of America. Together, we can make it a place worth living in. Si se puede.
An update: On October 31st, 2021, I received my permanent residence, also known as my green card. On November 1st, 2021, I received my Oklahoma drivers’ license. On July 27th, 2024, I will apply for U.S. Citizenship.
It took about a year for me to receive my green card. From April to November of 2021, I was not legally allowed to drive or be employed, and now I am. This is the first time since coming to the US in 2001 that I have legal status. I’m a real boy. It still hasn’t fully sunken in. My entire life has had an ever-present paranoia - paranoia surrounding the government, paranoia surrounding law enforcement, paranoia surrounding any institution, really. I was to remain a shadow. All the while, I was expected to excel in all my endeavors because I represent a model minority. Shine bright, but not too bright. Be great, but don’t draw attention. This wasn’t something instilled in me by my parents or my community. It was a message I subconsciously constructed because of the systems affecting my existence. I always drive the speed limit because of this. I shudder at the sight of law enforcement because of this. I always sat at the front of the class, did great on tests, and became a leader in many groups and activities, in part, because of this. Because I knew, in the back of my mind, that my life was on thin ice. That opportunities weren’t going to be handed to me, and that I had to work for the right to remain here. I couldn’t just drive, or work, or travel, or go to school because every one of those things had an additional process in front of it. Sure, that pressure didn’t motivate everything I did, but it was always there.
And now, the real, credible reason for that fear is gone. Aside from some gentle tears while first looking at my green card, I still haven’t fully emotionally processed the absolution of my immigration status. A lifetime of worry will not be undone so easily. And there’s still a couple of steps to go - citizenship and passport. With those, I really will be a real boy. But the damage is done and I am who I am now. My story is not that of an outlier, overcoming outrageous odds. I am the example, not the exception. My family came here in hopes of a better opportunity. We did the work. I have my green card. That’s the process. Millions of people go through this.
Is this damage necessary? What can be done to make the process less painful?
I don’t know. I’m a musician. You tell me.
Love never fails. It’s going to be okay. I might be wrong.
Citations
“Oklahoma” meaning
https://medium.com/@alhakofi/no-oklahoma-doesnt-mean-red-people-36bde3294417
Employment Authorization
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/employment-authorization-document
Permanent Residence
https://www.uscis.gov/green-card
(and the pages within)
Citizenship
https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship
(and the pages within)
DACA
https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/consideration-of-deferred-action-for-childhood-arrivals-daca
DACA Stats - March 2021
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/Active%20DACA%20Recipients%20%E2%80%93March%2031%2C%202021.pdf
DACA Demographics
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2020/04/06/482708/demographic-profile-daca-recipients-frontlines-coronavirus-response/
Expedite Request
https://www.uscis.gov/forms/filing-guidance/how-to-make-an-expedite-request
