Another visa denied

There are few things that frustrate me more right now than the U.S. visa system. I will begin with the newest disappointing story I heard. Yesterday after church, I was talking to Pastor Enrique about his family and asked where his wife was. He told me that she had gone to Mexico to get her 87 year-old father a visa to visit their family in the states. The old man's wife, Alicia's mother, is also living with their family in Chatham County. So Alicia took her old father to the U.S. embassy to say, "This is my father and I came back to Mexico to get him. He's coming home with me to visit the rest of our family and his wife." They denied him a tourist visa to visit his family. My assumption is that they figured he would go to the U.S. and stay. And even if he did? He's 87 and certainly not going to fill up a job that "belongs to an American." At the very most he might use health resources he's not paying for (although his family is through taxes). Although I believe he completely deserves that, simply because his daughter does laundry at a hotel, his son-in-law pastors a Latino church and makes $16,000 a year, and also he has probably worked some job in Mexico from which Americans have benefitted in the form of cheap labor or goods. I say, "Thank you, compadre, we would be honored to host you in our country and wish you and your family a happy reunion. Let me say this again, his son-in-law is a pastor. That means he's keeping young kids off the street and men out of bars and leading a healthy environment focused on God and positive family environments. And they wouldn't let him in.

I won't continue for tonight. I'll save similar stories, and my personal visa situation, for another day. I just wanted to bring back the blog because I'm a woman with a lot on my mind and not enough ways to sort through it all.

Buenas noches.