Yo fue un illegal
When I moved to Argentina for a two year religious mission, there was a tension in the air. The Kirschner government had tangled up visa applications for United States citizens; and waiting for word on my visa while in Provo; rumors were swapped of missionaries who were sent stateside waiting for approval to enter Argentina. Some were even stuck in Utah, only a few minutes drive from their childhood homes serving as a missionary, the Latter Day Saint culture's ultimate rite of coming to age; mockingly a stone's throw from their parents.
Then word came, we were being sent in on tourist visas. Three months of legal occupancy, it would get us straight to Argentina and avoid wasting any time of our two years stateside. So I and a batch of other missionaries, almost like a pilot program were sent straight to Argentina legally as tourists. My last time in Utah was aboard the new Frontrunner train from Provo to Salt Lake, watching familiar scenery whisk by. The next day, I would be awaking on a flight approaching Buenos Aires. Within my time in Argentina my legal status would be codified with a year long visa extension, and receiving an official DNI or Argentine identification card.
Then after three months as a "tourist" and 12 as a legal long term residence... all my documents expired. My US Passport was locked away in a safe in Salta at the mission offices, and I was living several hours away in a suburb outside San Miguel de Tucuman at the time. 15 months in, and with nine more months to go; I was an illegal resident. It was out of my control, and I was told the offices would "handle it" although I never received a new DNI card.
On bus trips between Tucuman and the offices in Salta; I would get nervous at the occasional stop roadside by the gendarmerie, armed guards in olive uniforms who would sometimes take people off the bus. When I had been a legal resident my Spanish was too poor to follow their instructions other than the words from a senior missionary telling me to act normal and just go along with it as we'd exit the bus and wait for a minute as the gendarmerie searched the vehicle. I didn't yet speak the language, and these men in olive uniforms brandishing guns were combing over us and other vehicles traveling on the road. Over a year later though, as an illegal I bristled at the fear that the gendarmerie would question me as to why I was there and without documentation to prove my legality would be stuck in an Argentine jail cell. The stories had happened of course, closer to the Bolivian border were tales of missionaries who spent the night in jail before someone from the mission offices arrived with their passport. Maybe I would be one of the unlucky ones, stuck in a jail cell waiting for somebody to find evidence I could stay in the country.
In Salta though for the final seven and a half months I lived in Argentina, I was away from the gendarmerie and the road stops out on the intercity highways. I lived in the city, my final home in Argentina; and appreciated the culture. I ate locro and empanadas, watched patriotic celebrations on national holidays, my Spanish improved, and would on a free Monday ride the teleferico to overlook the city. I glossed over that pesky wording in the mission manuals about the importance of maintaining my legal documents and tried to enjoy the final months of my mission until I began to slow down in the final months due to a chronic untreated case of pneumonia.
Thin, sickly, in a tattered suit and with shoes that were falling apart; looking less like a brochure perfect example of a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and more like a wandering vagabond in rags; on a June day I left Salta. In Buenos Aires a church official handed over a stack of passports and money for fines for each illegal missionary to an official at the international airport... and then I self deported on Delta Airlines. I didn't view it as such, I was on my way home; after living illegally for 9 months in South America I was on my way to my homeland. I am sure though if a record exists in Argentina of my exit from the country that day though, I wouldn't be shocked if my name had the word "deporte" next to it.
At the international airport in Georgia I was afraid I had landed in the wrong country when I struggled to understand the customs officer due to their thick southern accent. It was one of the first times in years I had my own passport on me again, and I handed it to the customs officer for an entry stamp to mark my return to America. I fortunately realized in a few hours I had lost nothing of my English vocabulary though when I made it to Salt Lake City where my family was waiting at the bottom of the escalator in the old international airport (in an odd case of coincidence and a complete side track of this whole piece, former Utah governor Olene Walker was there as well to see her grandson who had served in Salta with me, her and my grandfather both suffering from pulmonary fibrosis were in wheelchairs off to the side on oxygen tanks, and they would both pass away within short time following that).
I hadn't noticed right away, but gradually as the topic of immigration came up in the United States my own opinion was different than it had been before my time in Argentina. I had viewed myself as conservative in high school, but found myself with a more liberal bent once I made it home. I would be a hypocrite to ever speak ill of the illegals again, for I had been for just a short time of my life been one. There were certainly other things following in 2016 (and the ten years since in the seeming groundhog day of American politics that has dominated my adult life) that pushed my politics more towards the left, I can hardly say my time in South America left me as some wild radical; but I sometimes tell myself I need to pick up a copy of Che Guevara's "The Motorcycle Diaries" someday to remind myself of that culture of Argentina and the communities along the foothills of the Andes. When I watch the news and see ICE raids in America, a small part of my brain whispers "gendarmerie" and I am a 21 year old kid again in a foreign country, surrounded by a tongue not my own, holding an expired visa, and living life and hoping by God and luck I am not noticed by the long arm of the law.
Yo fue un illegal
When I moved to Argentina for a two year religious mission, there was a tension in the air. The Kirschner government had tangled up visa applications for United States citizens; and waiting for word on my visa while in Provo; rumors were swapped of missionaries who were sent stateside waiting for approval to enter Argentina. Some were even stuck in Utah, only a few minutes drive from their childhood homes serving as a missionary, the Latter Day Saint culture's ultimate rite of coming to age; mockingly a stone's throw from their parents.
Then word came, we were being sent in on tourist visas. Three months of legal occupancy, it would get us straight to Argentina and avoid wasting any time of our two years stateside. So I and a batch of other missionaries, almost like a pilot program were sent straight to Argentina legally as tourists. My last time in Utah was aboard the new Frontrunner train from Provo to Salt Lake, watching familiar scenery whisk by. The next day, I would be awaking on a flight approaching Buenos Aires. Within my time in Argentina my legal status would be codified with a year long visa extension, and receiving an official DNI or Argentine identification card.
Then after three months as a "tourist" and 12 as a legal long term residence... all my documents expired. My US Passport was locked away in a safe in Salta at the mission offices, and I was living several hours away in a suburb outside San Miguel de Tucuman at the time. 15 months in, and with nine more months to go; I was an illegal resident. It was out of my control, and I was told the offices would "handle it" although I never received a new DNI card.
On bus trips between Tucuman and the offices in Salta; I would get nervous at the occasional stop roadside by the gendarmerie, armed guards in olive uniforms who would sometimes take people off the bus. When I had been a legal resident my Spanish was too poor to follow their instructions other than the words from a senior missionary telling me to act normal and just go along with it as we'd exit the bus and wait for a minute as the gendarmerie searched the vehicle. I didn't yet speak the language, and these men in olive uniforms brandishing guns were combing over us and other vehicles traveling on the road. Over a year later though, as an illegal I bristled at the fear that the gendarmerie would question me as to why I was there and without documentation to prove my legality would be stuck in an Argentine jail cell. The stories had happened of course, closer to the Bolivian border were tales of missionaries who spent the night in jail before someone from the mission offices arrived with their passport. Maybe I would be one of the unlucky ones, stuck in a jail cell waiting for somebody to find evidence I could stay in the country.
In Salta though for the final seven and a half months I lived in Argentina, I was away from the gendarmerie and the road stops out on the intercity highways. I lived in the city, my final home in Argentina; and appreciated the culture. I ate locro and empanadas, watched patriotic celebrations on national holidays, my Spanish improved, and would on a free Monday ride the teleferico to overlook the city. I glossed over that pesky wording in the mission manuals about the importance of maintaining my legal documents and tried to enjoy the final months of my mission until I began to slow down in the final months due to a chronic untreated case of pneumonia.
Thin, sickly, in a tattered suit and with shoes that were falling apart; looking less like a brochure perfect example of a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and more like a wandering vagabond in rags; on a June day I left Salta. In Buenos Aires a church official handed over a stack of passports and money for fines for each illegal missionary to an official at the international airport... and then I self deported on Delta Airlines. I didn't view it as such, I was on my way home; after living illegally for 9 months in South America I was on my way to my homeland. I am sure though if a record exists in Argentina of my exit from the country that day though, I wouldn't be shocked if my name had the word "deporte" next to it.
At the international airport in Georgia I was afraid I had landed in the wrong country when I struggled to understand the customs officer due to their thick southern accent. It was one of the first times in years I had my own passport on me again, and I handed it to the customs officer for an entry stamp to mark my return to America. I fortunately realized in a few hours I had lost nothing of my English vocabulary though when I made it to Salt Lake City where my family was waiting at the bottom of the escalator in the old international airport (in an odd case of coincidence and a complete side track of this whole piece, former Utah governor Olene Walker was there as well to see her grandson who had served in Salta with me, her and my grandfather both suffering from pulmonary fibrosis were in wheelchairs off to the side on oxygen tanks, and they would both pass away within short time following that).
I hadn't noticed right away, but gradually as the topic of immigration came up in the United States my own opinion was different than it had been before my time in Argentina. I had viewed myself as conservative in high school, but found myself with a more liberal bent once I made it home. I would be a hypocrite to ever speak ill of the illegals again, for I had been for just a short time of my life been one. There were certainly other things following in 2016 (and the ten years since in the seeming groundhog day of American politics that has dominated my adult life) that pushed my politics more towards the left, I can hardly say my time in South America left me as some wild radical; but I sometimes tell myself I need to pick up a copy of Che Guevara's "The Motorcycle Diaries" someday to remind myself of that culture of Argentina and the communities along the foothills of the Andes. When I watch the news and see ICE raids in America, a small part of my brain whispers "gendarmerie" and I am a 21 year old kid again in a foreign country, surrounded by a tongue not my own, holding an expired visa, and living life and hoping by God and luck I am not noticed by the long arm of the law.