US Visa and Green Card Forum

Female immigrants find that U.S. citizenship has its price: An STD vaccination that critics say has a troubling record.

Almost three summers ago — she won’t say exactly when — 24-year-old Catalina and a cousin finally crossed the border.

She was happy enough, she says through an interpreter, back home in Mexico working at a fishery by day and clubbing by night. A regular, working-class twentysomething. But when her father took ill late one year and had to leave his job for nearly 19 months, her family — that’s her dad, mom and two younger sisters — needed more money than she could earn in Mexico. The state took care of the medical bills, but living expenses for the family of five added up fast.

Like millions before her, Catalina headed north to the United States in search of work and the money to help feed her family.

Today, nearly 650 miles separate her from life back in Guaymas, a sizeable fishing town and rising tourist mecca that rests where Mexico’s Sonoran beaches meet the Gulf of California.

Here in Las Vegas, Catalina says she’s worked the jobs typically reserved for a woman in her position: waitress, nanny, maid. Without documents, her choices are limited. But the money she wires home each week is more than she earned in Mexico and has kept her family afloat. Now, with dad in recovery and back at work and one sister bringing in cash from a new factory job, Catalina has options.

If President-elect Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress also bring change to the nation’s immigration laws, this petite woman with solemn eyes and a reserved yet determined manner says she hopes to stay here while applying for citizenship through some sort of amnesty program. If not, Catalina says she might go home and try to re-enter legally. Option No. 2 takes longer, she says, but being an American citizen will make it easier, eventually, to bring her parents to live with her.

“I’m here for the money, this is not what you call a normal life. I think about my family a lot. I miss my friends, and I miss my home. I don’t have papers, so I need to decide whether to go back. The longer I’m here, the higher my chances are of getting caught and deported. My mom says that, anyway,” she says.

On a recent weekend, the weight of her decision has led her to a swap meet near North Las Vegas. Rumor has it that official work documents — green cards, IDs good enough to fool the DMV — can be had here, if Catalina can afford it. After that, it’s a short path to a valid Nevada driver’s license and a chance to slip, unnoticed, into the great American melting pot.
Continue reading U.S.A. Citizenship STD Vaccination Requirement