Fourth of July makes my mom tear up — and me, too
This past weekend, I was chatting with a Mexican friend about her upcoming naturalization ceremony. I told her I wished I could go, since those ceremonies are beautiful and moving, often to the point of tears. Perplexed, she laughed and said she never thought of it that way: “Why would becoming a U.S. citizen make you cry?”
Just ask my mom, who tears up as soon as she hears the Houston Symphony play the first notes of “America the Beautiful.” Every Fourth of July, she drags me and my family to the StarSpangled Salute, an outdoor concert at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands. As a teenager, I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan. I dreaded the stifling humidity that made my thighs stick to the plastic seats, and I rolled my eyes at the Uncle Sams teetering on stilts.
For my mom, though, the music was a chance to celebrate a country she had long thought of as a second home. In Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where she grew up, there weren’t a lot of educational opportunities. Every day, like thousands of other students, my mom crossed the border to attend private school in El Paso.
She never imagined the country that had been so welcoming would one day reject her entirely.
In 2015, five years after we arrived in Texas and applied for permanent residency, we received a letter. I was out shopping with my mom, looking for the perfect homecoming dance heels, when my dad called us with the news. Our green card application had been denied. We were given 180 days to leave the United States or be branded illegal. My mom, who had filed our family’s application under her name, was penalized with a lifetime ban from the country.
We packed our bags and returned to Mexico feeling tainted, humiliated. Nothing pained my mom more than when I got into my dream college in the U.S. and she realized she wouldn’t be able to drop me off.
With nothing to lose, my mom made an appointment at the U.S. consulate in Mexico City. Blessed with an unusually patient immigration officer, she shared our story and, fighting back tears, pressed my Princeton University acceptance letter against the glass for him to see.
Clearly moved, the officer offered to apply for a waiver on my mom’s behalf. Thanks to him, we were able to appeal our case and remove the ban, allowing us to eventually move back to the U.S. and apply for a green card a second time through my dad, who works for an energy company.
We were lucky. Paperwork will always favor people with the means and time to fight cases and hire lawyers or accountants to do the administrative work. That’s true for immigrants and American citizens alike.
Don’t get me wrong. The bureaucracy here is far better than in a lot of countries, and that’s often why people come to the United States: They want strong institutions. Here, you know that if you mail something, it’s highly unlikely to be stolen en route. Yet even Americans know there’s room to improve.
Americans’ faith in their own institutions has plummeted to historically low levels. For years now, citizens have expressed dissatisfaction with government agencies — from the IRS, to the Veterans Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency — and the work they are doing. It’s not just that too many people have lousy experiences trying to access the services they pay for with their taxes. It’s also that even the best efforts to improve things move through the bureaucratic wheels at a glacial pace.
It might sound odd to focus on paperwork. But when you’re a veteran waiting for a kidney transplant or a disabled voter desperately trying to do his civic duty, you know that something as small as a complicated form can affect your entire future. And people’s lives shouldn’t depend on whether a bureaucrat had a good or bad day.
As Houston letter writer Hettie L. Folloder, who recently described her struggle with the IRS, put it, “Our government services are in such a sad state that the fissures in the Capitol’s foundation are being patched with Silly Putty and the tears of veterans, schoolchildren and old ladies on Social Security like me.”
High-stakes decisions such as adjudicating visas or granting SNAP benefits or unemployment insurance will necessarily require a thorough process. But that doesn’t mean a considerate service design can’t or shouldn’t be part of the equation as well. It’s in the United States’ best interests to do so.
With its incredibly convoluted, restrictive policies and immense processing backlog, the U.S. has made legal immigration nearly impossible. It’s left immigrants, the vast majority of whom want to come here the right way, with few options and more reasons to circumvent the law. My family never presumed that we were entitled to permanent residency just because we applied. But it’s the arbitrary and inconsistent path to residency that frustrates many immigrants, millions of whom will die waiting for green card approval that may never come.
At last year’s Star-Spangled Salute, my mom posed for a picture that still makes me laugh. Wearing a red-white-and-blue “USA” headband and an American flag tucked behind her ear, she crossed her fingers and told me to snap the photo to send to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Maybe this will convince them to give us a green card!” she joked.
Just two months later, our prayers were answered. After over a decade, we were finally permanent residents. We hugged and hollered, celebrating with tequila that we shared with my grandparents, aunts and uncles over FaceTime.
My family’s struggle to live in the U.S. has made me deeply value things others might take for granted — being able to study at an American university and write for an American newspaper, for example. But American patriotism shouldn’t have to be extracted from difficulty. It could also be earned. The government could restore faith in its institutions by showing that, while the outcomes it delivers won’t always be the same for everyone, the process is fair and accessible to all.
My feelings of patriotism will always be complicated, necessarily torn among the many places I’ve called home. But you can bet that, this Fourth of July, my mom won’t be the only one tearing up with “America the Beautiful.”
My tears will be of joy, yes, but also of relief.
Regina Lankenau is assistant op-ed editor and a member of the Houston Chronicle editorial board. This piece originally appeared in Thursday’s SaysHou newsletter, a subscriber exclusive dedicated to your letters to the editor. To join the conversation, sign up at: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/newsletters/opinion/