Family’s Hard Choice: Stay, or Go to Mexico
now 2 and 4, during the day and worked nights as a waiter.
When Rachel told Irvi they would move if Mr. Trump won the election, Irvi agreed a little too eagerly, and in the ensuing weeks, began to joke that he was encouraging friends to vote for Mr. Trump.
On Election Day, Rachel voted at 6 a.m., confident, like many others, that Hillary Clinton would prevail. She went to bed early, as she normally does, so she could wake up at 4 a.m. to prepare for the school day.
In the morning, the results hit her like ice- cold water. When Sara woke, she found her mother on the living room couch, crying into her coffee.
Later that week, the couple began making preparations. They took the girls to the dentist and stopped submitting preschool applications for Ana. Rachel bought them each half a dozen new pairs of shoes — which tend to be more expensive in Mexico — in sizes they would need over the next several years. She also began to quietly worry: Would she find work that allowed her to continue paying off her student loans? Would the girls adjust? Would she?
Rachel had struggled the last time she went to San Lorenzo Cacaotepec, the Oaxacan village Irvi is from. Before marriage or children, they had moved there for six months.
The village was insular and poor. Women there were expected to spend their days cooking and cleaning — far from what Rachel, with her elite American education, was used to. Even t hough she spoke Spanish, she felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness. “I cried a lot,” she remembered. After the election, they decided to meet with an immigration lawyer one last time. As the December appointment drew nearer, tension at home grew.
“I feel like we feel differently,” Rachel said to Irvi one evening. “In this weird way there is this weight lifted off your shoulders ’ cause you’re like, I get to go home.”
Irvi tried to defend himself. “I feel like for immigrants the fact that Donald Trump is going to be the new president is really bad,” he said. “But on the other hand I feel like it gives me a push to go back.”
Rachel responded: “But isn’t that what he wants? And shouldn’t we try to fight that?”
The morning of their appointment, when their names were called, they walked into a noisy one- room office. Cubicle walls carved out not-so-private meeting areas in each corner.
Irvi was still not eligible to apply for legal status through Rachel, the lawyer explained. But, because Irvi believed that he had been shorted pay at two previous jobs, the lawyer said he could try to apply for a visa that is typically granted to human trafficking victims.
Rachel huffed, and asked whether that was just more false hope. The lawyer stumbled through an indirect answer. Sara screamed, “I want to go home!”
“In the meantime do you think that he’s at risk for deportation?” Rachel asked, and received another unsatisfying response from a second lawyer who joined the meeting, Angela Fernandez. “The government does not have enough resources to go after the 11 million undocumented,” she said.
Rachel asked what would happen if, “God forbid,” Irvi were to be arrested when he was alone with the girls during the day. “What would happen to my kids?”
“Take our information,” said Ms. Fernandez, handing them business cards with cellphone numbers written on the back. She turned to face Irvi. “You should probably memorize one of those numbers, too.”
The family walked across the street to a Mexican restaurant, then bickered.
“Do you want to go to Mexico?” Rachel asked.
“Sometimes I do,” a tearful Irvi replied.
“If you want to go, then just say it,” Rachel shot back.
Irvi said in Spanish that he was afraid Rachel would decide to come back to the United States with the girls and that he would be stuck in Mexico.
In the following weeks, they continued making arrangements for a move so that if it was forced on them, they would be ready. They went to the Mexican Consulate to apply for dual citizenship for the girls. At the end of the appointment, the consular officer shook the girls’ hands and congratulated them on their new nationality.
“Felicidades. Ahora es Mexicana,” she said to each one.
Sara and Ana looked back at their parents, as if to ask what exactly that meant.