Why & How We Left the United States & Our Current Plans (From a Mixed Status Family)

1.2K

Okay guys, or VALE as the Spaniards say, I am about to go down a very personal road here, so buckle up!

Here is the briefest way to say this: I used to live in the USA and was married to an undocumented immigrant. Those people some like to call ahem, illegal. After many years, we finally left the country, aka we “Self Deported”. The term << mixed status >> refers to families in the United States who have a mix of people with different immigration statuses in them.

Here is our story:

Let’s take it back to 2010 when I married my husband in the state of Florida, USA.

Within two years, we filed for an adjustment of status for him, but it was denied because he did not have an i-94 paper. This is a piece of paper they give you when you enter the USA through customs.

So why didn’t he have this piece of paper? BECAUSE HE CROSSED THE BORDER WITHOUT INSPECTION at 17 years old, in the 90s.

After this denial, we filed for the 601A on THE DAY that it went into effect in March 2013. I wrote a very detailed and well researched hardship letter, which was the basis of this waiver. Oh how I do not and can not get into all of the different forms and what they are for in this post, but believe me, it was a lot! The day the rule began, we mailed in our packet. We must have been one of the first files they received.

But it was denied. Why? Because he had a “deportation in absentia”.

Yea, I had no idea what that meant at the time, so off to the immigration lawyer we went. After paying thousands of dollars to him, filing a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), etc etc etc ETC ETC, we finally determined that through some unfortunate events, my husband had been taken advantage of by a fake attorney just after crossing the border. He had applied for asylum, but did not receive any documents after that…. hence the deportation in absentia. At some point, he was sent a court date, which he never received, so he didn’t go to….and thus was “deported in absencia” at that time. This was in the MID-90s!! Way before I ever came into his life AT ALL.

So here we were in 2014 with this new information, and no other steps to take. President Obama was in office and the motto was and always has been and will continue to be “wait for reform” (reform which never comes, by the way). I was also pregnant, and very, very desperate for a sense of stability, and to not live in fear of my husband being removed, I would say deported, but forget it- that had already happened right? LOL. Now, I had a new concern- enforcement of the order- REMOVAL.

Ironically, over the years, he had applied for different reliefs with immigration, but never had he ever been bothered or followed up on by them. It’s very interesting to say the least- he was not in hiding, but yet he was never pursued by immigration in any way. We blended in perfectly with the local community. No one around us knew anything about our situation, unless we told them.

I also want to insert a little factoid here about how he is educated, a higher earner because of his field, he is very intelligent, he paid taxes, he spoke (& speaks) english fluently, and he blended in very well. He did not fit the “stereotype”.

Finally, in 2014, President Obama threw one more thing our way. It was called DAPA.

Deferred Action for Parents of Arrivals. It’s name came from the similarly named DACA, except it was going to offer a type of legal status to parents of US citizen children, which is different from DACA. This was going to help us, because we had a child now, who was a US citizen, birthed by me- and NO he is not an anchor baby, so you can spit that word out of your mouth, thank you!

We had obtained the forms, which had been published, and were already filling them out, when everything STOPPED the day BEFORE the new executive order was to go into effect. CUE THE MOST ULTIMATE LEVEL OF FRUSTRATION!! Many governors of various Republican states had sued the government and put a BLOCK on the executive order.

We were now officially stuck and we had a child to now think about. {& I was STRESSED}

Obama eventually left office in 2017, and Donald Trump was voted in.

He had run his campaign on removing ALL “illegal immigrants”, and by using a lot of rhetoric against them. I can not explain to you the level of anxiety, and yes FEAR that I felt every single day. I had no idea when or if immigration would come to our door. Any time someone knocked at our door unexpectedly, I immediately felt sick and pushed my husband upstairs, insisting to open the door myself…and always checking first…and always afraid it would be THEM.

I read tons of stories about immigration coming in the wee hours of the morning, and we lived with multiple copies of our immigration package prepared and stored in different areas of our lives, like our home and car- just in case he was to ever be pulled over, he would have something to show his ties to the country (this was an Obama thing, that was recommended by advocacy groups at the time).

I was one of those people who said we would leave the country if DJT became President in 2017 (my husband was not really on board with the idea), but WE DID IT. Our son was now 4.5 years old, and the long and short of it was that I was just sick and tired of living in such constant stress and anxiety. I was miserable!! I was scared for my child, that he would wake up one morning to find his dad gone. I was scared that we would be stuck with limited resources and no knowledge of where my husband was, if he were to be picked up by immigration. Terrified doesn’t even quite cut it, I was sick, literally SICK all the time, nervous, anxious, flighty, etc.

Ultimately, we left in September of 2018.

I am not going to get into the details of the visa processes and what not, but we obtained residency visas for MEXICO, and that’s where we moved to on our remote work income, which was enough at the time to qualify for temporary residency in Mexico.

Unknown to us, there was a pandemic just around the corner.

By March of 2020, the world was shutting down, and boy oh boy did that make living in a new country very difficult, especially a country that for me was very challenging to be in already, pandemic restrictions did not help.

By April of 2020, we had a second son, born at home in Mexico- that’s right, I gave birth during the pandemic, in a tub, in my bedroom, in Mexico to an almost 10 pound baby! This was not on my agenda either LOL, but I can’t even begin to imagine life without him now. We also now had a 6 year old, had been living in Mexico for just over 1.5 years, and were getting to the point where we just felt like there was not going to be a change in immigration policies in the USA. We were also growing very frustrated with the pandemic restrictions in Mexico, and the shut down of worldwide travel.

Through research, we learned that if we could get a residency visa to a different country, then we could travel there.

By now, my husband had obtained Mexican citizenship through his birth dad, he had increased his digital income to qualify for residency visas in various other countries (no longer was Mexico our only choice of where to live), and we were antsy to get out and explore the world. When you are undocumented in the USA, you can literally not go anywhere else, or else you very likely will not be re-entering the country, so once we left, we really wanted to TRAVEL, but the pandemic had severely messed up those plans!

After hours, days, weeks, and months of research, in November of 2020, we finally decided on trying to make a move to SPAIN.

There were many benefits to this move- obviously we wanted to “see Europe” (find me an American who doesn’t!), but we also wanted to get out of Mexico, hopefully get citizenship in Spain for my husband and kids (through the 2 year IberoAmerican pathway), and thus open up many doors for them in their future- doors that my husband had not had as a child in Honduras or an adult living an undocumented life in the USA. When we left the US, we did so with the intention of traveling as much as we could. We wanted to be digital nomads, and this was before it was an “every day term” like it is now. We were determined to turn our lemons into lemonade and live the life we were dreaming of in the US, but couldn’t do because of his status.

By March of 2021, we had accumulated all of the documentation that we needed to apply for the non-lucrative visa at the Spanish consulate in Guadalajara Mexico, and that is just what we did!

By this time, we had already decided to have the faith that it would happen- and we were aggressively selling everything, once again. We had done this just 2.5 years prior before our move to Mexico, but this time- going across the ocean- there was more to let go of! I did take some things to storage in the USA, but other wise, we moved to Spain via an airplane, and only with items that would fit in our 15 suitcases! Our visa was approved in 21 days. We left as fast as we could manage to leave after that day.

In April of 2021, we arrived in Madrid, Spain. We initially moved to Zaragoza, then to Murcia city, then to Madrid, then finally, back to Zaragoza. One day, I hope to write about our stays in all three cities, but if you are interested, I have already written about why we initially chose and returned to Zaragoza.

SO IT’S THE FALL OF 2024 & we have lived in Spain for over 3.5 years– what does life look like now?

Everyone wants to know- on the other side of the ocean, they all want to know “when are you coming back??” on this side of the ocean, they all want to know, “Why are you here? What are you doing? Will you stay? Do you like it?” ETC. To be honest, the questions are endless from both sides, and the more people learn about us and our very unique set of circumstances, the more curious and inquisitive they become!

So here are the current facts:

1. All goals of moving to Spain have been achieved:

• Husband did get Spanish citizenship this year (2024). The kid’s have been registered at the local registro, and we are just waiting to receive their Spanish birth certificates, after which, they will also be official. We do not have to live here for that part to happen.

• We have traveled extensively: Our kids have been to 22 and 20 countries, 17 of those are in Europe. That number does not include Spain.

• Our kids are bilingual. The youngest one is still working on it, but he is four, so he is also still working on english haha. This is normal for his age. He understands all Spanish and is responding to Spanish independently more and more every day. My Spanish level has quadrupled as well.

2. Our kids go to Spanish schools.

• This was a tough one and it was never in our plans. Yes we wanted our kids to become bilingual, but we had no intention of ever giving up our goals of home education. However, that is very difficult here for many reasons. I have already shared extensively on this topic, so I won’t dive into it here.

• We have started the process to return to the USA. We did this in 2022. The first step had a very long wait time, and it was essentially to verify our marriage. We were approved at that step and went ahead and did the next step, which was to pay the fees for the financial support forms fees. That step is done and that is where we sit today. Each summer, I have to log into my NVC (National Visa Center) account to keep everything “active”, which I do based on a yearly calendar alarm.

So let’s get into future plans.

Here we are at our preplanned turning point. This is the phase where we said “when/if we get THERE, we will make more decisions, because we will have more options”. We were and still are skeptical of planning too far out into the future, because you just never know what is going happen..what circumstances can come up, what country you might not be able to go to or what visa you might not receive… when you live a life in secret for so long, it becomes a part of who you are, and it’s difficult to let go of that, even when you finally have freedom. We are also Christians, and have made each choice as it has NEEDED to be made, not looking too far down the road, but always considering the positives and negatives with prudence. When things are tough to decipher, we sit and wait.

The Spanish passport opens up a lot of doors because of the EUs freedom of movement.

We are keeping this benefit in our back pocket, while we continue to assimilate to Spain. It is a process, and it has been difficult- mostly because we moved three times in three years. That does not give you a lot of opportunity to create relationships, friend groups, be settled in school, learn the language well, etc. Neither of us have managed to obtain driver’s licenses yet. We are still using only private health care- we have barely scratched the surface of the process to get into the public system. Our kids are generally happy here. This is home to them, it is what they know. That makes it difficult obviously to think about a future that would involve going back to the US. So, let’s talk about that...

In order to return to the US, my husband first has to complete TEN years outside of the country.

You may have heard there are waivers available if you are married to a US citizen, and this is true. What is also true, is that you have to prove HARDSHIP to the US citizen spouse (that is me in this case). Since we opted to leave Mexico, and move to Spain, we obviously lost a lot of our basis of hardship. Spain is a great country to live in. It is a healthy country to live in- great quality of life, great medical care, long life span, very safe, etc. I knowingly gave up the hardship waiver option (known as the 601) when we decided to move here, & I am STILL okay with that (& glad I did so!).

We are currently at the 6 year mark of being outside of the USA. We are on step 3 of the immigration process of going back to the United States, but we are at a stand still for 2 reasons:

1. We need to get to 10 years, but we can do some things before that, like get all the way through the immigration process- to the point that we get an visa interview for my husband. At this interview, the expectation is that they will officially give him a ban, then tell him he will be done with the ban in 2028, etc. We already know this. The downside to getting to this interview is that he has to do a medical check.

Once the financial part of the immigration process is approved, the next step is to get an appointment at the consulate for a visa interview. Just before that happens, the applicant has to go to a specific doctor to be checked for various illnesses. Part of this is an exhaustive list of of vaccines, many of which he has already had.

• The vaccine list includes the covid vaccine. It was added to the list in October of 2021, which is while Trump was still in office. In 2022, Biden went into the White House, and kept the requirement. Essentially, this vaccine is no longer required for travel, it is no longer taken as a serious vaccine that someone should have. MANY people are against it and won’t get it, including us.

2. So that brings me to my second point about where we are now with the US immigration process. Essentially, until the covid vaccine requirement is removed from the immigration medical check, we are not going to move forward in the process. I am hoping that MAHA does something about this requirement!

For multiple election cycles, I voted for the democrats, based LARGELY on their promises to fix immigration, this year, I voted for Trump, because of the team he surrounded himself with, which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He wants to MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), and I am asking him to remove the covid vaccine from the medical requirements for immigration, so that I can return home with my WHOLE family after the 10 year ban… that is in 4 years. I hope that’s long enough to do SOMETHING about this

There is a small chance that we will do the process of getting a waiver for the vaccine, but I am first going to play the waiting game and wait and see what happens over the next year- our year 7. If the vaccine is not removed, then we will move forward with possibly trying to get a waiver for it, or maybe even petition the government to remove it. I have many different ideas and dreams about how to go about this- and this blog post is step one- coming out with our situation, telling our story, and seeing what happens from there. This post is my <<Call To Action>> Maybe it goes nowhere, or maybe it helps to get the word out on an important part of our story called “Our Return to the United States”- If you know someone who is in the same situation or could help us to make changes, please share this post with them. I want to raise awareness about this topic, and I am starting here.

I will update you when I have more to share,

Ashley

For more on our day to day life follow me on IG and YouTube. To support my efforts, share this post and you can buy me a coffee if you’d like.

Update # 1. This post was published on the night of November 8. It is the night of November 9th and I have just sent a message to Robert Kennedy Jr asking him about whether a update to the CDC immigration vaccine requirements is being considered for the new Trump Administration.

Update #2. It is the night of November 10th and I have just found sent a copy of my IG message to RFK Jr to “someone who knows someone” who knows him. To my count, that potentially puts me four links away from him right now. This person is a long term client of ours, and he is someone who wants to get involved in the health stuff that the Trump Administration is wanting to do. If he has the opportunity, I am hoping he will bring up the topic on our behalf.