Immigration Papers

Immigration Papers by Jennifer M. Ortega

May 30, 2010

The Arizona Law SB 1070 requiring anyone to show their immigration papers if stopped by police. Well, what if you don’t have any because you were born in the U.S.?

I often leave my apartment in Greenwich Village to go on my morning walk or to the deli to pick up some juice. I leave with twenty bucks in my pocket, my iphone, and keys to my apartment. My exercise clothes don’t have pockets, so I stuff the money into my bra, clip my phone to my pants and carry my keys. I usually don’t take my drivers license when I do these activates. Usually leaving my I.D. I can’t buy liquor, get into a secured building, or risk being found in the Hudson River and buried in potters field because no one can identify my decomposed body. It’s a risk I choose to take. However, lately I’ve become a perturbed if I do not take my I.D. I might be shipped to a deportation center and or harassed in general by the police. I know this really kind of outlandish to be thinking coming from a MAP (Mexican-American Princess) like myself, but it’s what crosses my mind now when I prepare to leave my home.

Like I’ve said in previous postings I am brown, as brown as they come. I love being a brown beauty, but it doesn’t stop me from being identified as “other”. For example if I hangout with my niece and nephews in the park, I usually am taken to their nanny. Last year when I escorted my mother-in-law to a cocktail party at Pretty Brook Tennis Club in Princeton where her parents were founding members, a friend of hers Mr. Buck (who owns the Philadelphia Phillies) asked me “how long, have you worked for Ms. McGraw?” I politely answered, “I do not work for Ms. McGraw, she is my mother-in-law”. He said “Oh yes, that’s right I went to your wedding”. I was somewhat daunted but felt sorry for him because he didn’t remember me and embarrassed himself by asking me if I was the hired help.

Three weeks ago I lost my wallet with my ID and credit cards. I had to go to meeting in Irvington, NY. I decided to take the train, when I could have taken our car on the twenty-six minute drive from Manhattan because I didn’t have my license. This was a true precautionary tactic, because I just didn’t want to have to explain to an officer why I didn’t have my license. Fortunately, I live in New York, but still, I carried my passport with me on the train just in case I got asked to show my papers.

What a surprise! Someone nicely mailed back my wallet to me, of course, after I ordered my replacement license online. What a relief, I could drive again without feeling paranoid when I saw a cop. I can’t tell you how freeing it was, to be free again. Now, when I leave my apartment I take my license because you never know who will ask you for your immigration papers.

Death Match vs Jen's Blog

I sent out invitations to my blog yesterday to my friends. Today, at dinner with some very dear friends, they laughed at because I started a blog. They thought it was a joke. I said I started it to get myself in the habit of writing, but they just laughed and thought the whole thing was ridiculous. I started to laugh with them too, once I figured how, stupid I was thinking blogging could help me write. Blogging is self –indulgent and egotistical. Really? Does anyone give a dam? I don’t.

Hoarding and Purging My History

I’ve decided it’s time to purge my home of stuff. It is usually this time of year when I change from winter clothes to my summer time clothes. However, this year it’s a bit different. I’m giving away a house full of things I’ve haven’t used for a long time. Twenty years of collecting, traveling, shopping, impulse buying and gift exchanges have left my apartment full. I would keep my stuff, but I’m about to begin inheriting stuff from my mother and mother-in-law and they have finer, nicer stuff than I do.

My husband and I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. It’s perfect for us. Enough room for our selves but when you get, get, get or buy, buy, buy and receive, receive, receive, the stuff begins to pile up. My greatest fear is becoming the Collyer brothers and being literally buried alive by stuff. Not only that but I have to admit my mother is a hoarder and so are all her sisters. They can’t get rid of anything because they can always use it. My mother won’t even throw away a coke bottle she found under her house because “it’s worth something, it’s valuable, people collect bottles”. In January I went to visit my mom in Texas and as I waited for her in the car I noticed that the walls of her little red house were literary bulging.

Did you ever watch the sitcom Sanford and Son? Well, that’s how my mom lives times ten. Her front door is unusable because she has stuff in front of it on the inside and the outside of the door. I haven’t been inside my mother’s home since 1998, but when I was last there pathways connected the rooms of the house. From the living room you can vaguely see the front door because she has a sofa, linens, and boxes of unopened mail piled in front of it. On the outside of the front door she has very large plants which block the door, you have to navigate your way from the curb to the front porch where the doorbell and mail box are located because the yard has so many plants randomly planted. I think my mom just digs a hole whatever she is standing and plants get planted right there. She has accomplished making a seventeen-foot wide cactus barrier between her house and her neighbor whom she despises.

My mother-in-law is very similar to my mother, but she has more money for storage places and people to help her organize her stuff in an orderly fashion. My mother and mother-in-law even collect houses and cars to store their stuff and now that they are getting up in age, they have to consolidate their stuff. My mother-in-law is moving into a smaller house and selling her proprieties. So, alas I am cleaning out five houses and one apartment. If I haven’t started clearing my mother’s junk before if she dies, I might just light match and set it all on fire. I bet it will be one of the best bon fires in South Texas.

Hopefully the organizing will take shape into a home with minimalism at its core. I only want things that are useful and being used, or at least that is my goal even if it may be unreachable.