While the names of the characters in this story have been changed, the story actually happened. The consequences of the story have had permanent effects. Some of them are social. Others are political. No one actually violated any laws in this story. They did bring incompatible people, religions, and cultural values together to create problems for themselves and their future generations.
This is a permanent residency identification card, often called a 'Green Card.' It is a symbol of legal acceptance in the United States. It protects the holder from deportation. It's the penultimate step before naturalized citizenship. While there are many viable paths to permanent residency, the fastest and simplest is to marry a U.S. citizen. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement department remains in the news headlines. ICE, as they are colloquially known, has become a source of fear for illegal immigrants and for those who are in the process of becoming legal residents. I call this era of American history the 'ICE' age. Mass deportations are breaking families apart, separating spouses from each other, parents from their children, and even forcing the elderly and infirm to return to their nations of origin after years of separation, under brutal physical conditions.
If I found myself confronted with deportation, what would I do? Some consider simply self-deporting. Others avoid ICE entirely. Then there remain those people who are willing to exchange their marital status for the privilege of staying in the United States. On the surface, these transactional relationships seem benign and victimless. Some of them appear to have happy endings. However, transactional relationships often result in emotional, financial, and family trauma that lasts for a lifetime.
Consider the case of Anna, 24, and Salim, 28. Anna is Black American, and Salim is a Yemeni national. One has grown weary of the American dating scene and wants to settle down. The other is ready to get married, but in his culture, he must pay a dowry that he cannot afford. He also desires to become a naturalized American citizen but needs to obtain a Green Card. They meet at a local singles bar and grill on the border of their respective cities. Despite cultural, religious, and racial differences, they became a couple. Within 2 years, they are engaged, and in the third year of their relationship, they marry. After one year, they have one son named Naseem.
There are cultural and religious differences that make raising a family a challenge. Salim is an orthodox Muslim, while Anna was raised in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, though not devout. Salim follows a Halal diet, but Anna is flexible enough to adopt a partially Halal diet; she is not consistent. Salim would rather raise his only son Muslim, but Anna wants to expose him to the AME church. Because Anna’s family is here in the U.S. and Salim’s family is in Yemen, he realizes that he has to yield to Anna’s wishes in order to keep peace in the home. Salim’s friends tell him that he needs to establish a firm masculine presence in the home, but his wife earns more money than he does, and she’s college-educated. Salim wants his son to learn Arabic and English, while Anna, who only speaks English, doesn’t see the need for her son to learn Arabic because, after all, he’s going be raised here in the U.S. and won’t need to use Arabic that much anyway.
While Salim wants to raise his only son as a Yemeni, Anna notices that Naseem is not considered a Yemeni by Salim’s family. So, to emotionally protect her son, she tends to expose him to her side of the family, who also don’t see him as a Black child either. On the other hand, Salim’s family, particularly the women, is far more helpful with Naseem, especially when Salim and Anna need to go out. However, Anna’s family earns more money, so they can expose Naseem to private schools and other experiences that Salim’s family cannot. Then there’s the matter of residency. Salim periodically has to go back home to Yemen and then return to the U.S. This makes it difficult because Anna and her side of the family have to take care of Naseem. By the time Naseem is 6 years old, he has forgotten the little bit of Arabic that he used to know as a small child, and he rarely attends salat anymore. However, he’s doing very well in school and is almost a straight A studient.
Salim eventually obtained a green card, but his marriage to Anna deteriorated. Because of the separations, Anna’s father became a surrogate father to Naseem, and because Anna’s father is a successful physician, he can afford to enroll Naseem in a private elementary school. This undermines Salim’s authority as the father and husband in his home. Anna loses a certain amount of respect for Salim as a father and resents him. Salim and Anna divorce, and Anna gets primary custody of Naseem, who eventually goes to live with his maternal grandfather full-time. Salim realizes that he has gained a green card but has lost a wife and a son in the process.
Now a permanent U.S. citizen, Salim returns to Yemen to marry a Yemeni wife and start a new family while leaving his firstborn son with his mother and her family. On the surface, it appears as if each party is doing well, but appearances deceive. Naseem never fully integrated into a Black American family, and he’s been alienated from his Yemeni family. Anna, now a divorced single mother, is back on the dating scene again, and it’s brutal. She winds up with a second son out of wedlock and a string of broken relationships. One consisted of an affair with a corporate executive, and she lost custody of her son to her father.
Today, Naseem doesn’t have a relationship with either of his parents and isn’t really completely comfortable in either world, Yemeni or American.