We're Giving Away Free Copies of Amor and Exile—Jan 23 & 24th—Don't Miss It!

In case you still haven't read my book Amor and Exile: True Stories of Love Across America's Borders, coauthored with Nathaniel Hoffman, now is your chance! We will be giving away free copies of our Kindle version this Thursday and Friday, January 23rd and 24th. Just click here to download your free copy or gift a copy to a friend.

Why should you read Amor and Exile? There are so many reasons.

There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of U.S. citizens like myself who are separated from their families or forced into exile due to harsh U.S. immigration laws. Those people could be your family members, friends, neighbors, or coworkers—and you might never know it. Amor and Exile explains why families like ours are in this plight.

Immigrants play a huge role in American culture and the economy, but every year it gets harder for people to legally immigrate or adjust status in the U.S. Amor and Exile exposes the draconian immigration policies that have slowly been put in place over the last century, how misguided politicians are attempting to freeze demographics (remember that most of our ancestors once enjoyed relatively lax immigration laws), and how this is negatively affecting America today.

Congress will be debating immigration again in early 2014 and in order to get humane immigration reform passed, we will need informed citizens letting their elected representatives know where they stand. Amor and Exile helps demystify much of the hype behind immigration rhetoric.

And many others...

Let us know what *you* think about Amor and Exile after you've read it, visit our blog at http://amorandexile.com or like our Facebook page at http://facebook.com/amorandexile. No more excuses—check out Amor and Exile THIS WEEK, and SHARE widely with your friends! Thanks!

Where I've Been for the Last 5 Months

It's been a long time since I've posted here, but not without good reason. I finally had my first full-time job since living in Mexico. For those of you who don't know that was seven years ago.  I was lucky enough to make it on savings for the first couple years here. But since then, it's been a long string of short-term part-time jobs, mostly teaching English, writing and editing, and the occasional environmental workshops and consulting gigs.

But this most recent professional experience was something else. It was the kind of job I've been wanting to have for years, a unique position that combined my background as a non-formal environmental education expert with a solid, successful, long-term, U.S. government program to provide American volunteers for environmental projects across Mexico. I'm talking about the Peace Corps Mexico Environment Program.

I can't say enough good things about this program. I got to work with volunteers who dedicate 2 years of their lives to advancing positive social change, who contribute their backgrounds in the environmental sciences, their other related skills, cultural curiosity and general goodwill, in a foreign nation that embraces their arrival and seeks to learn and collaborate. As if that weren't enough, the program also boasts a talented staff of trainers and administrative support, many of whom are experts in their fields, who are dedicated to the program's growth and development over the years. This fall, I was able to call these fabulous folks my coworkers. 

I was lucky enough to become a part of this stellar team 5 years after I first learned of the program in 2008, through friends. I'll never forget that night—I was invited to the election night celebration when Obama gave his victory speech, which was at the home of a former volunteer. I met the director at the time, and then during the summer of 2009, I volunteered in their library. From there I made the acquaintance of the Environment program manager, who learned of my professional background as an environmental educator in the U.S. and Mexico. In the years that followed, in my daughter's infant years, I returned to give workshops during their pre-service and mid-service trainings. I made more contacts with volunteers and learned more about what their service entails. This past summer, right around the time we were delivering Amor and Exile to Congress, I learned of a one-of-a-kind opportunity to serve as the interim Environmental Education Training Specialist from July to December of this year. Unlike the permanent position, this position did not require travel, as it would essentially be limited to 2 trainings in Queretaro. It didn't take me long to make up my mind. I applied, and I got the job. Like any new job, it had its special learning curve—and in this particular one with the U.S. government, I had a new acronym-based language and the "Peace Corps Approach" to learn. But beyond that, I was in my element. 

I could go on and on about how great a fit this position was with my skills, passion, and background. I was able to draw on many elements of my experience with sustainable development and as a curriculum developer, and my time as a teacher. I was finally able to take everything that I'd learned during my whole Mexico culture-shock experience and apply it as something helpful toward new arrivals' adjustment to the Mexican culture process. I could draw on my experience as a non-formal educator in order to prepare a team of non-formal educators. And best of all, even though I am bilingual, I got to polish my Spanish thanks to my coworkers. 

Running an environmental education training was A LOT of work but also a lot of FUN. We took field trips to local natural areas, botanical gardens, and sustainable learning centers. We met with local teachers, schools, and students, and the trainees devised environmental education activities and an EcoFair in Mexico state. We reached over 200 schoolkids in our 3 visits to schools. We laughed, we danced, we built a wood-efficient stove, a garden, a compost, a solar dehydrator, a solar oven, and a greywater filter. The volunteers I worked with were experienced, positive, and motivated. Everyone shared, learned, and grew. I could go on and on.

With PCM volunteers and staff at the top of Parque Nacional el Cimatario

But sadly, this incredible experience had to come to an end, this past week. It was to be expected, in fact, it was planned—to coincide with the week after the last training of 2013. As I mentioned before, the reason I could pursue this position was that it was based almost entirely in Querétaro. Almost as soon as I entered, a hiring process was underway to select a permanent training specialist, which I was invited to apply for, but the downside is that it requires a significant amount of travel (estimated at nearly 40%)—in order to visit volunteers at sites and develop new sites.

At first glance, this seems ideal—see dozens of natural areas in Mexico as part of your job. And the truth is, if I didn't have a child, it would be. In fact, I did apply for the position once before, in the Fall of 2012. But when I found out about the travel requirement, and that policy does not allow minor family members to accompany staff during travel, I had to pull out of the running. I simply couldn't make the commitment to being away from home for that amount of time with such a small child. 

So while the interim, Querétaro-based position was near-perfect, the permanent, travel-required position was not a realistic possibility for me and my family. I chose not to apply this summer, since the policies had not changed, and made up my mind to give these 5 months my all while I had the chance. I am happy to say that it was worth it. I feel a strong pull to be as present as possible in my daughter's life, and we all feel happy to be together more. As for the job, beyond all the wonderful environmental education and resource conservation work that volunteers do, the best thing about Peace Corps Mexico (PCM) are the people themselves. The relationships I formed with both staff and volunteers, and the experiences we shared are irreplaceable. 

I feel very grateful to have had this professional opportunity where I both learned and contributed a great deal. I'm obviously looking forward to the possibility of going back someday. In the meantime, I will be rededicating myself to past projects, so hopefully you will be seeing more of me here, and hear about new developments as well. And if any volunteers or former coworkers happen to read this, good luck, and thanks for all you do. You're doing amazing things!

On our way to a local school with Environmental Education volunteers

Winds of Change | On the Current CIR Debate | Amor and Exile

**Note: This is probably more subject matter than should have gone in one blog post. Time is more precious than ever, and I've been more exhausted in the last 3 weeks than I can remember being since college over 15 years ago. There's so much to say, too little time, and some trains are fast departing from the stations of my life that I can't afford to miss. But I wanted to simultaneously speak to recent accomplishments with Amor and Exile and going to D.C., the perspective of many years having observed and been a victim of immigration politics, and also acknowledge that my intense involvement in this issue, to the exclusion of other, more earthy parts of my life, has taken a toll, and I'm in the process of achieving a new equilibrium.**

Cycles are being completed and new chapters are opening in my life, and for this I am grateful. But in many ways, some things are as they always were.

I recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to deliver a copy of the book I co-wrote with Nathaniel Hoffman, Amor and Exile: True Stories of Love Across America's Borders. The trip, which in essence launched the publication of our book, was many things to me at once: a dream come true to tell my story to our nation, a collaborative vision seen through to completion, an eye-opening experience about the way politics are done in my country, and a reminder that I must continue to find grounding in my daily life back home.

Nearly 12 years ago, I began dating my husband and discovered what we were up against in terms of immigration laws that effectively shut out a large number of North Americans from access to legal immigration to the United States, even when married to American citizens.

Almost 6 years ago, despite the successful protest of the passage of even harsher immigration laws (HR 4437), which would have made it a felony to merely be in association with my husband, we came to the conclusion that the only way for my husband to obtain legal status was to move abroad to his home country of Mexico. We packed our belongings and moved south, where we've been ever since.

A few years after we moved here, I began seriously contemplating the possibility of writing about my story. Everytime I told our story about why we'd moved here to someone, they'd respond, "But you're married!?" as if it was a no-brainer that my husband should have U.S. papers. It drove me crazy that nobody understood why things just weren't that simple. On one hand, part of me wanted to wash my hands of the issue entirely, just focus on my field (ecology) and pursue my dreams of a green business or non-profit in a country that sorely needs environmental conservation work. I did restore a good part of our land with greywater and organic vegetable production. I did publish a short collection of regional recipes using Mexican native food plants (The Bajio's Bounty). And I remained tangentially involved in the environmental movement here in Querétaro. But the pull of fate in the direction of writing a memoir and adding my voice to the millions of disenfranchised by U.S. immigration law was too strong. I kept adding to my many notebooks of visions I was having about "telling a story about migration."

In winter of 2011, only a few months after my daughter was born, I began writing my part for Amor and Exile. Ever since then, my life as been drawn inexorably deeper into the path of advocacy on behalf of families like mine. Starting with the story that is now part of Chapter 9 of Amor and Exile, entitled "Alienation," in which I tell of our passage south to Mexico, I began the laborious task of encapsulating my most painful struggles and my lofty ideals (of the ones that still remain) into prose, exposing them to my coauthor's critiquing and making them universally understandable, as opposed to making sense only to me. The first years were an internal struggle—overcoming the fears and anxieties with making our story. I first received great support from family, friends, my coauthor Nathaniel, and then from a therapist who helped me creatively work through my trauma and heal many hurt parts of having to leave my country to keep my family together, essentially against my will.

Our manuscript was finally done in December 2012. It represented two and a half years of writing and collaborative editing. In the first few months that we began "shopping around" our manuscript with our agent, was when all the Comprehensive Immigration Reform debate hit Congress. I'd written my story without any specific political language, mainly because it was telling a past story, also because it was anyone's guess as to when actual reform could happen. Moreover, as I tell in the book, part of my personal peacemaking has had to do with separating my political hopes from my own personal goals and motivations—in other words, I can't pin my personal happiness on political outcomes.

That being said, I'm well aware of what the current debate represents and I would be amiss to not be a part of it. It's been satisfying to be able to make contact with many individuals who are advocating on behalf of families like ours. Coming in contact with dozens of families like mine has renewed my resolve to continue speaking out on this subject—even though the "best" reforms available (waiver reform) really would only allow my family to apply for a waiver a couple years earlier. It's too little too late for us—but it could be a lot for some families.

Being in D.C.—getting the community support to go there as a result of our Indiegogo campaign to "Send Amor and Exile to Washington"—was an incredibly uplifting experience. Going from totally disempowered, silenced for so many years due to my family's lack of legal recourse—to dialoguing with Capitol staffers and representatives themselves was to come full circle in terms of where I was and where I now am. We have no guarantee that our efforts will actually make any difference in the long run in terms of policy, but I am convinced that at least in terms of personal views, dozens of individuals have been affected as a result of our work. And I can only pray that it will continue to have an impact in the long term.

Because ultimately, as things are currently being played out in the Senate, it is truly a political game in which our lives hang in the balance. A game whose players have no problem sacrificing billions of taxpayer dollars for even higher and more electrified fences in the name of immigration reform—always with the risk that every compromise will never be enough to satisfy the most extreme negotiators. I'm personally more skeptical about the long-term positive impact of the most recent version of SB 744 (if the Corker-Hoeven amendment to spend $30 billion in additional "border security" is included) compared to the original version. It's the product of compromise that might get some of us home a little sooner, that might prevent some of us from having to go into exile, but my question is, how will it affect generations of migrants, citizens of both countries even, to come?

It's really easy to fall in the trap of thinking about only our own families' problems, I did this for many years as I pitied myself and couldn't imagine how I was going to make my life work in a foreign country. I saw myself as somewhat different than the rest, when in reality, we're all in the same boat. I am so thankful to my fellow friends in exile for opening my eyes about that. What I dread happening is that we, the exiled or separated, forget to think of those who will come after us, as we are thrown a bone, while draconian regulations continue to be passed.

What concerns me about the passage of an SB 744 with extreme border militarization clauses is because of the reasons these regulations are being written in. Does this version of immigration policy engender cross-cultural understanding and reduce the likelihood of attempted illegal immigration to the U.S? Probably not. Would using that money instead on international programs that improve the standard of living in foreign countries, create programs for individuals to more easily access legal immigration channels to the U.S. have more positive effect in the long run? Most likely. But those type of answers aren't as politically sexy as more choppers and barbed wire, when catering to the xenophobic crowd in the U.S.

Much of our populace is still stuck, lamentably, in a culturally insensitive rut that is costing us the ability to move forward as a nation, embrace our immigrant roots, our immigrant present, and our immigrant future. We welcome those who have the financial resources (or luck in the lotteries) to make it across the border "legitimately," but we reject many who are the salt of the earth. Those of us who have acknowledged the migratory and highly adaptable nature of our continent will keep working toward true change, at great personal sacrifice, sorrow, and even joy sometimes, no matter what the outcome on Capitol Hill.