millyrocklikewho

Good question.

Citizenship is basically impossible to get. It is not easy at all, unless you get married, have a direct family member here who is a citizen, or have some extenuating circumstance like fear of persecution or death in your home country (so you're basically a refugee or an asylee). You can get sponsored through work, but that process carries so. Much. Baggage. And people are subject to a lot of abuse and manipulation very frequently because they're desperate.

It's also quite expensive. You can file the paperwork on your own, but there are so many different documents and directions and guidelines that all break down into such specificity that you need to follow everything to a T lest you get your paperwork denied or sent back for correction (and this takes months to work through sometimes). Most people opt to get lawyers, and those run into the dozens of thousands in some cases. Many people are manipulated by predatory lawyers who exploit their desperation for legal status and take their money, give them the runaround, then disappear or do nothing.

I actually could be a citizen right now. Parent to child naturalization is the quickest, most direct route there is outside of maybe marriage to a citizen, I believe. My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in my freshman year of high school (2008), so money and energy was very tight in the final few years of her life. My mother did file a petition for citizenship on my behalf, and it was approved, but she passed in 2013 before we could move to the next step.

Essentially, my petition went into limbo after she died. 3-4 years and several thousand dollars later, I'm back on the path, but it's only because of some clauses that were changed around during the Obama administration that extends certain exceptions previously only made for the surviving spouses of those that took the marriage route but then lost their spouse (as in, they died).

You can read more about it here.

Specifically? I've heard this and that from my dad but I just never thought about it really. It hasn't been really something I've had to think about. Overall I think it was just in pursuit of a better life. The U.S. carries a certain mythos in Trinidad (probably a stronger, more positive one then than now to be 100% honest).

He was in the U.S. when he got news that my mother was pregnant and from what I understand he fell in love with the place so he wanted to bring us here eventually. I can ask my father more detail when he wakes up if anything and I'll definitely edit this post later with what he says.

EDIT: Typos, it's late :D

I think so too. It really sucks to get caught up in the middle of these really complicated issues at this point in history. I didn't ask for any of this, but people direct vitriol at me like I'm sub-human or criminal.

Up until this point, I've just been going to school and coming home and pursuing hobbies, dreaming about the world, etc. the same as anyone else. I barely thought about immigration status.

This whole thing has just been very confusing and disorienting.

I didn't do anything illegal, I was a baby when I arrived here. I'm actually on the pathway to citizenship because my mother was naturalized, but she died before we could complete the whole process. Some changes made over the last couple years to some very specific immigration law allow me to continue the process with relative ease without the need for a sham wedding, a substitute sponsor (as in, someone willing to declare themselves financially responsible for me for the 5 years I'd be a permanent resident before I could become a citizen), or something else. Read up on it here.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think there's really any equivlency in this circumstance. I didn't ask to be brought here, but it's all I've ever known. I got dealt a shitty hand and now I'm getting caught up in the latest immigrant scare. I just want to live. Truly, I don't think there's any way to reasonably frame me as some sort of criminal deserving of a punishment or to be sent "back" to an essentially foreign, alien land for the actions of my parents. I have no connection to Trinidad and Tobago outside of it being where my parents were born and where my birth ceritificate was printed. I'm even on the path to citizenship. You have no basis for what you said.

Numb. Isolated. I bawled my eyes out election night. I had so much hope that Hillary would win, if only just to preserve my livelihood and place in this country. I have friends who are immigrants or know immigrants as well, but none of them really know what this feels like.

I don't know what's coming, but I'm trying to minimize the damage it's going to have on my future. I have such a strong zeal for improving this world and it hurts for people to tell me that I'm not working hard enough or that I belong somewhere else, or just tough shit. I didn't fucking ask for this.