ADJAPON: It's awful to live in fear

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By Bisi Adjapon

Four years ago, I refused to help my cousin get into America. My reason was simple: I didn't want her to become an illegal immigrant like I was for 10 years.

Most Americans make the natural assumption that illegals enter the U.S. illegally. In fact, many come in legally. I did. I broke up a traditional marriage to a man who subjected me to repeated abortions, and fell in love with a U.S. Marine stationed at the American Embassy in Dakar, Senegal. The Marine arranged for me to come to America when he was transferred to the Dominican Republic and I was pregnant. At the time, Marines guarding American embassies abroad were not allowed to get married. The hair-brained plan, then, was to wait for him to complete his remaining 10 months of service to the Marine Corps and get married minus parental approval on both sides. Naturally, such plans tend to fail. We had a communication breakdown, and the relationship ended almost as soon as I arrived in America.

I had a tourist visa that was valid for six months and could be extended for a year. After that, I was supposed to leave the country, but I didn't. I chose to remain in America to escape my father's wrath and become an emancipated woman. My visa expired; I became illegal. That there were extenuating circumstances that complicated matters - a custody battle - is beside the point. I was still a lawbreaker, and I wouldn't wish my consequent lifestyle on anyone.

If I thought my life in Ghana was hard, America was worse, for I had exchanged second-class citizenship as a woman for an under-the-table existence as an illegal alien. It was no life for a girl from a middle-class home who attended a Methodist missionary boarding school and was taught to "live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King," the King being God. My life revolved around a catalog of darkly comedic Dickensian characters. For example:

I lived with a dysfunctional family where the husband harassed me into moving out for fear I would be called to testify against him for inappropriate behavior toward a minor.

m A man who offered to help me tried to help himself to my body.

m I babysat for a couple who offered to sponsor me for a green card only to be terrorized by their dog.

m I was a maid to a racist Taiwanese family.

m Even when I got employed as an interpreter/translator at an African embassy, his non-excellency lured me into his office and dropped his discolored long johns before me. I quit.

I tried to return home, but the family-court judge ruled against my taking my daughter out of the country because her American father would be deprived of his daughter. That made sense. However, I had no right to remain in the United States or work. It was a proverbial Catch-22 situation. Even when I managed to get a job as a teacher in a private school (they never verified my papers), I couldn't protest when I was paid a pittance. I ate poorly and often walked in bone-chilling temperatures to save money.

While most immigrants suffer cultural isolation and loneliness, it's worse when you are illegal and trapped. I missed the very home I had fled. I missed my father yelling at me because he cared about what happened to me. I missed out on my mother and big sisters helping me and teaching me how to be a mother. I missed communal functions like a naming ceremony for my baby. I lost touch with close friends. I wasn't there for my sister when she got cancer and died. I didn't even have the consolation of being able to send money home. My children missed out on reading with a funny grandfather and wading in the river with their cousins.

It took a lawyer, Sheila Starkey, to help me do the right thing. She made me turn myself in to the INS. The INS prosecuted me for violation of immigration law under the penalty of deportation. It helped that I had been teaching for seven years and behaving myself. The judge granted me asylum and I became a U.S. citizen.

If I had to do it over, I would never be an illegal alien, and I would never encourage anyone to become one. It's awful to live in fear. It's awful to live in poverty. It's even worse to endure cultural isolation. So, I want to tell all those people desperate to break the law and risk it all just to be in America: Don't.

Bisi Adjapon is a freelance writer and former international affairs specialist with the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service.