Saedi - Americanized: Rebel Without a Green Card

Puberty is the equivalent of guerrilla warfare on your body. Society commonly refers to it as the awkward phase, but Ive always preferred to call it the everything totally sucks and I hate my life phase. I, for one, dont miss 1993. That was the year I naively thought my biggest problems were my underdeveloped breasts, the cystic acne that had built a small colony on my chin, and the sad fact that my prettier best friend and I had set our sights on the same guy. Would our friendship fall apart over a boy? Would I ever outgrow my training bra? Would my skin ever clear up? These were the dilemmas that kept me up at night. I thought there was no way my life could get worse.

But I was wrong.

What seemed like a mundane afternoon would go down in history as the day my world crumbled. My older sister, Samira, and I were hanging out in the kitchen, probably dining on our favorite light Entenmanns coffee cake. I worked on my homework while Samira pored over job applications for a dozen or so retail stores at the posh Valley Fair mall in our hometown of San Jose, California. Our parents owned a small luggage business about a forty-minute drive away, and they were never home before dinnertime. And so the task of watching over my younger brother and me fell to my sister. But I was cool with that, because in my opinion, an older sibling had two primary reasons for living:

Expose their younger siblings to the harsh realities of the world.

Protect their younger siblings from the harsh realities of the world.

This story covers number 1. I dont think my sister derived any pleasure from blowing my carefully crafted reality to pieces, but maybe she couldnt handle being alone in her teen angst. My parents told her things they thought I was still too young to know, but I was nearly thirteen and it was time I learned the truth about our family. It was time I learned the truth about myself. And it was her duty in life to be the one to break it to me.

No one will ever hire me, my sister said, frustrated. Im never gonna get to make my own money.

I wanted to tell her that as long as she could keep her somewhat problematic attitude in check during a job interview, I didnt think shed have a problem finding long-term employment.

Sure you will, I reassured her. You already have sales experience working at the luggage store.

Thats different. I worked for Mom and Dad. All the stores at the mall want a Social Security number, she vented.

At the time, Id never heard of the term Social Security number.

So? I asked.

So I dont have one, she responded. And neither do you.

Her response clarified nothing. Who cared if we didnt have Social Security numbers? We had a phone number and an address. What else did a person need to apply for a job?

Youre not getting it, Samira continued. The government doesnt know we exist. We could get deported at any time.

I heard the words as they came out of her mouth, but my young mind didnt know how to process them. Deported? I had trouble reconciling the definition of the word with the fact that wed been living in the Bay Area for ten years.

Like, they could send us back to Iran?

Yes, she said.

Even Kia? I asked. My brother was almost five years old then. He was objectively adorable. Why would anyone ever want to deport him?

No, she explained. He was born here. Hes a citizen.

That entitled brat! I glared at him, sitting in the next room eating Oreos and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, blissfully unaware that his sisters might get shipped back to the Islamic Republic. My anxiety tripled when Samira explained that not having a green card or a Social Security number also meant we were breaking the law simply by living in the United States.

Were illegal aliens.

This was before undocumented immigrant became the more commonly used (and politically correct) term. The words illegal aliens echoed through my head. Suddenly hormonal acne and microscopic boobs paled in comparison to the revelation that I was a criminal. And, apparently, an alien? How would I explain this to my law-abiding, human friends? Theyd probably want nothing to do with me once they learned I technically wasnt allowed to be living in the country. If this got out, I could lose everything.

But when my parents came home that night, they assured me that no one was going to deport us. We werent criminals or extraterrestrials. We were trying to get green cards. It would all work out and no one would have to go back to Iran.

So we wont have to leave America? I asked.

Na, Baba! my dad said to me. This sort of translates to No way, Jose!

But I wasnt exactly convinced. That night, when I went to bed, I was no longer worried about eighth-grade love triangles or whether it was possible that Clearasil was just an elaborate scam that gave insecure teens false hope. I was worried what my life would look like if I had to say good-bye to my friends and move back to Iran. My Farsi was rusty at best. Being forced to wear a head scarf would only accentuate my bad skin. Id already been living in the United States for a decade. How would I ever adjust? My sisters warning stayed with me like a refrain through the rest of my teen years:

We. Could. Get. Deported. At. Any. Time.

There was only one appropriate reaction:

Holy. Shit.