I met Veronica, an attractive young woman from El Salvador who works next door to my place of employment. What was so special about Veronica was her relaxed outgoing attitude towards me, a total stranger. I was not flirting or trying to score a pick-up; only being friendly as I enjoy interacting with monolingual Spanish speakers. She seemed to have greatly appreciated the gesture and was pleasantly surprised at my ability to hold a sustained Spanish-speaking conversation.
Veronica reminds me of the women I met in Venezuela who were open, relaxed, friendly, and conversational; even to strangers. Almost every time I'd smile at a woman, I'd get a happy, enthusiastic smile in return. Each time Veronica and I met, our conversations got longer and we learned more about each other. I told her about my visit to El Salvador a few years ago while on my way to Perú and this gave us more to talk about.
More recently, I asked about her weekend and her family and learned that she is single with no children. She immediately asked about my marital/parental status and appeared elated that my status was the same, and wanted to talk more. It was as though she was waiting for me to suggest that we move our acquaintance to another level. That's when an alarm went off in my head about her motive.
As a single man, I've been approached by women from Africa, Asia, and Latin-America who wanted to marry me or have a friend or relative marry me to obtain legal status in the U.S. I then asked her how she herself got into the country. She explained that she entered the US with the aid of a coyote, one who makes a living smuggling undocumented immigrants across the U.S. border for a fee that can be as high as $5,000.
Although I will not snitch and hope to enjoy a friendship with the very nice, and seemingly down-to-earth woman that she appears to be, romance is out of the question. I'm certainly open to a relationship with an immigrant, but not with legal baggage. You never know if a real attraction is involved or if it is just a scheme, a means to an end. The divorce rate among Americans is high enough, yet the divorce rate among Americans married to illegal aliens is much higher. After three years when the illegal alien becomes a legal resident, the American spouse generally gets dumped if there is no mutual agreement to part ways.
I learned my lesson from being once romantically involved with a Nigerian woman who treated me like the proverbial king with her cooking and everything else you can imagine. Then one day, she sat on my lap telling me that she inadvertently overstayed her student visa, and is now in the country illegally. She offered me a measly $6,000 to marry her so she can get her papers, then sponsor her—“real husband” and “three children” to enter the US. Naturally, I eased myself out of this relationship and told her to never call me again. Of course, I proceeded expeditiously to “lose” all of her contact information.
Undocumented immigrants (or illegal aliens) in the US are very diverse, and do not solely consist of Latin American people as so many of us are led to believe. There are people from Canada, Asia, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands who are in this country without papers, thus the original meaning of WOP, which was directed at Italian immigrants who at one time were stereotyped as being without papers.
Many of such immigrants go unnoticed by authorities because they are not Latino. Jaime, a Peruvian friend, also goes unnoticed by immigration because he is “Afro” Peruvian and does not fit the stereotypical profile of a Latino. I never knew that a girlfriend who comes from a West African country was also undocumented until she started pressuring me to marry her for a green
card. She even offered me a measly $6K to take her up on this charade.
In San Francisco, one of the many sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants, where social service agencies not only made a commitment to protect these immigrants from the US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), but to also provide them with various services, such as housing, food, and employment assistance. One such company hired me to assist all of their marginalized clients, most of whom are on some type of public assistance, with jobs and careers. However, the undocumented immigrant clients presented big challenge.
These immigrants were five times more motivated to find employment than the American-born clients. The illegals seldom displayed any of the flakiness I so often experienced from the others who were often no-shows for appointments. On one occasion, I organized a job search workshop, and bought coffee, pizza, and other refreshments, and no one showed. I ended up feeding to the rest of the staff. When the time came to give workshops in Spanish, however, I had a full house of participants, and this full house primarily consisted of undocumented immigrants.
Many of them found jobs paying under-the-table, and others became successful in building their own businesses. Silvia, from Brazil who speaks limited English, but fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, developed a successful housekeeping service where I helped with the marketing. Her last words as she hugged and saw me for the last time were, gracias por todo (thank you for everything)!
