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This will probably bore you, if it does I apologize, but I had to write something about this trip or else I will forget, so no big deal for me, but if you want to skip it all and know the bottom line, it is this: God is amazing, and every single human life is under His direct control, just as the bible says. You can get back to work now.
My mom's immigrant visa has been approved and we are now waiting for the documents to arrive to the local DHL office near her house in Mexico City, (kind of near), they will be there tomorrow according to the tracking information; so the process is not over yet, I will consider this adventure finally over when I pay another 165.00 dollars and see her green card arrive to my house in the mail.
My mother is a true saint, I don't say this because she is my mother but because she really lives her life in a way that glorifies God, as far as I can see; it is a blessing to see her attitude, and to hear her words; it blows my mind that she does not complain about anything, not a single thing. I'm a blessed man and very grateful that I can still spend time with her.
Ciudad Juarez was a strange experience; we stayed at a hotel (The Quality Inn Juarez) located about a block away from the US Consulate and it was completely occupied, in fact it was sold out until two weeks in the future. The price of the room included a continental breakfast, which is good, fresh fruit, cereal, toast, etc. During that time I had the chance to talk to different people, there were people from all parts of the U.S. and all of them were there to go to an interview at the Consulate. There were people from New York, Arkansas, Los Angeles, Texas, Chicago, etc.
Some people had been there for a week already, and most of them had their medical exams and finger prints taken in Ciudad Juarez and were just waiting either for an interview, or for their visas to arrive at the local DHL office; we could have done the same thing, wait there for the visa to arrive, but I ran out of money, my eternal problem is the lack of it, but even then, I had just about the right amount of money for all the tickets, the medical exams, the hotel, taxis, and food. When I run the numbers they make no sense to me, but it has been enough; God is awesome.
We had an appointment for my mom's medical exam last week on Tuesday in Mexico City, and another one for fingerprints on Saturday morning in Ciudad Juarez, then another appointment on Monday for her interview at 10:45 at the consulate.
At 10 o'clock, after the medical exam, her obligatory vaccination and paying another fee of 330.00 dollars, we had to go back to the medical office to get the results after 1:30 PM, they delivered them to me in a sealed black plastic envelope, with instructions not to open it and to bring it to the interview along with the rest of the documents she needed. We made two trips to the center of Mexico City in one day, and I had enough of it, the traffic is insane; I was fried when we got home.
We flew to Ciudad Juarez on Friday afternoon, then on Saturday morning we went to the fingerprint appointment, but it turned out that some other 50 people had an appointment at the same time as ours; security was ridiculous, we couldn't take any battery operated devices including watches, nor any make up, hair pins, ear rings, necklaces, belt buckles, matches, lighters, chewing gum, pens, pencils, etc. In order to get in to get her fingerprints I needed an appointment letter, which the security guard was checking to let people in, if you don't have an appointment letter they will not let you in the building (a totally different building than the consulate), of course I didn't have this letter with me, I forgot it; but when the guard came to check mine, he just walked past me as if I didn't exist, even though he looked me straight in the eyes. I had prayed one minute before for God to let us in. My mom and I had just been discussing how God controls everything, and here was proof of it.
Our interview appointment was at 10:45 in the morning, along with about 50 or 60 others; we got there at 10:00 AM and waited in the waiting room filled with about 400 or more people with their accompanying odors, I found out later that the waiting room had been filled to the max since 6:30 AM. It all was a test of patience for me, we had to wait in line for about 2 hours, then they finally let us in the consulate, once in there we had to wait again about 2 more hours so we could get in line and wait some more so we can go to window 34. We stood behind some people behind a red line on the floor as we watched all the other windows flow, but ours was not moving.
Let me backtrack a little; after you leave the waiting room to go into the consulate, you have to go through security first, same kind as the fingerprint place, at this point they give you a ticket with a number on it and they staple it to your documents, then they tell you to go through a door and walk through a yard to the end of the building, which we did, and then we went into another building. I have never seen anything like it; the building is really a bunker, the walls are reinforced concrete about two or three feet thick, all windows are bullet proof glass, and the doors are solid steel, as I pushed it open I estimated it to be at least two hundred pounds, maybe more.
After we got in, a fat Mexican dude ( and by the way, all the employees there are all Mexican and they were all fat and rude, they all wore blue pants and shirts and each wore a name tag with some business name that I made an effort to forget, which really irritated me because it was obvious to me they took advantage of the fact that we didn't have any cell phones or pens to take pictures or take notes of their names), said to everyone sitting there that he would announce who was next and that we were supposed to walk to the appropriate numbered window with our documents on hand, then the consular officer would check the docs and use a green, blue or black highlighter to make a line on the ticket they gave us when we got in; then after knowing what color the line was, we were supposed to go and sit on the green, blue, or black chairs and wait to be called to the next window where we would have our interview.
Ok, back to the red line in front of window 34. As I stood there I could hear the next window dialog through the intercom, "when is the last time you went to the U.S?". "How long did you stay?". "Why did you go?". "Who were you with?" And so forth and so on. Our window was not moving because the three people who were in front of us at the window were applying all at the same time and the guy behind the window was actually joking around with them making them laugh, which irritated me all the more; but then I looked at my mother, and I repented and thought, The Lord is in control of all things, He has demonstrated it to me countless times, so relax, and I did.
When our turn to come up to the window came, I slipped our papers under the window, the guy behind the bullet proof glass looked at us, opened the black plastic envelope, gave me back some of the papers I gave him, asked who was the petitioner, I said I was, closed the manila folder, and instead of making a line on the ticket, he drew a smiley face with a green highlighter; I'm not kidding, we were the only ones with a green smiley face on our ticket. The whole process at window 34 took less than 30 seconds. I thanked God once again.
We went to sit on the green chairs, but the fat lady told me to stand in line behind the mother with the crying, starving baby, so I did while my mom sat on one of the green chairs; I'm going to skip the next 45 minutes because nothing noteworthy happened except that I had to reassure the guy next to me that he didn't have to go to the border bridge to have his passport stamped as everyone else was telling him to do, even after he paid six thousand dollars to some lawyer he was still lost and had no idea what the next step in the process was; his jaw dropped when I told him I did the whole thing by myself and never hired a lawyer; imagine that, everyone I talked to had used a lawyer, and they charged them from 4 to 6 grand to fill the forms, I'm thinking about starting an immigration business.
We finally got to the interview window, the consul there asked us to raise our right hands and swear we would tell him nothing but the truth, so help us God, and we did, and God did. He looked for her case number on a table filled with lines of yellow folders, asked my mom if she had any tattoos, and if she had ever been in jail, she said no of course; he then made her put her fingers on a fingerprint screen, which wasn't working correctly so he had her clean her fingers with an alcohol wipe and do it again, he asked me if I was the petitioner, I answered in English but he kept on trying to speak Spanish, he asked for her current visa so he could stamp it with the words "Cancelled without prejudice"; and then he gave us a green sheet of paper with an American flag on it and the words US Consulate General-Immigrant Visa Section- Ciudad Juarez- Mexico, "Your Visa has been approved", and some instructions as to what to do next. All this took about one and a half minutes total, it was as if someone was telling this guy to get us out of there as soon as possible, so after about 5 hours of waiting we walked out of the 200 pound door unto the yard, back through security and then to the street and went back to the hotel. We both said "Thank you Jesus".
I'm only skimming the surface, I could write down several pages with all the little details, and all the little ways God helped us in this trip; from finding seats next to the window in the airplane, to going through stand still traffic jams in Mexico City; but I'm tired of writing and thinking about the whole experience. One thing is really burned in my brain though, and in my heart, and this as never before, God is awesome, and He reigns and directs the hearts of men as rivers of water, and takes them wherever He wants; our God is in the heavens and He does whatever He pleases. Praise His holy name.
Have a nice day.
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