Make a decision and make it fast. Stay or run. Local cops stop you, you stay, talk, hope they’ve got some piece of humanity in them, rattling around like the perfect glass ball in a can of spray paint.
Pray, pray, pray your immigrant ass is a bigger headache than they are willing to deal with. If it’s INS—youfuckingrun.
If you’re going to run, know your exits. Plan your route. The adrenaline is going
to kick, so you’ll have that to work with.
Boss is tired of Americans. Calling in late, calling in sick. You do neither and do it for less money. Cash.
1) Make sure one person knows your status so if you get caught they can call your family, get a lawyer, and tell your scuzzy roommate he’s not getting that roll of bills you normally hand over a few days before rent is due, because you’re good like that.
They call it, Immigration and Naturalization Service, like they’re going to help you out. But you’ve heard about Krome Detention Center on the edge of the rotting Everglades. Alligators have the decency to stalk you because it’s in their nature, hiding in plain sight, their unkind eyes, like marbles, above the water as they slowly approach, giving you time to see them.
2) When you run, you’ve got to have a spot that would make it hard to find you. Low profile, no profile.
Boss hires you because he’s cheap. Trusts you because he knows you're scared of law enforcement. Laughs when he pays you your measly weekly, and can’t say shit because you’re the one who’ll be in trouble if someone finds out.
3) Speak—good—english. Pronounce everything exactly. Yes, not yea. Pardon me, not ‘scuse me. You realize this in high school during a Business Leaders of America meeting, before you start looking for your social security number. Language is your first line of defense. The speed you can run is your last.
4) Stay clean. No drugs. Drink only to fit in.
Laugh like you have nothing to fear, the way you’ve heard Americans laugh when you’ve ordered a cheap beer and let it sit on the bar after three sips. Laugh like it was a joke when you got into a bunch of Ivy League schools and then were told you couldn’t go because you didn’t have papers. Be afraid of everything, including the hospital. You’re not worried about a bill. You’re afraid they’ll see that passport ID and call your ass in.
5) Fear is your friend.
Lay low until you can move on. Move out. Have a plan, motherfucker. No planes. Look for that next job. Become a hunter of human sympathy. Play the Green Card Lottery every three months. You have no luck, but they don’t know that.
If you can outrun them, you’ll have another day out of the detention center and away from the deportation judge. You can’t go back to the country you came from because you don’t know how to make money there. Your good American English scrubbed too much of your homeland out of your mouth and you’ll be a man without a country when you can’t even sound like you belong there.
You thought Clinton would be a cool president. Your parents tell you, Bush is better for us, but you don’t understand what they’re trying to say and won’t for years. When Clinton declares war on your immigrant ass, you’ll start to think they were right. You don't think it now, but you are brave.
You look at the door all the time, ready to bolt out the back. You see black shirts, white men, dark glasses, you pause. Police? INS? A fraternity? You play that game everyday. You don’t know how long it will last. Roll the dice on the Immigrant Diversity Program.
Boss is all Rush Limbaugh, this guy on the radio that really speaks to him, and says things he’s been told not to say. Revels in hearing about how hard it is for immigrants the way children realize ants have no defense against their dirty sneakers. He connects nothing to you. The good English and subservience make it easy for him to forget.
When it’s INS, and you’re young, you’ve got to have a plan, no family to look out for, you run.
6) Stay away from women if you’re a man, stay away from men if you’re a woman.
If you’re gay, keep that secret as tight as your status because they’re keeping a secret too, and that—my friend—is too many secrets for one home to hold.
7) If you find love; the kind of love that won’t report you when they get jealous, the kind of love that doesn’t repel when you tell them why you pay for everything in cash, the kind of love that offers to marry you and help you get your papers even if they fall out of love with you, the kind of love you kiss in front of the justice of the peace as you hold your precious passport and anxiously wait for someone to say you can’t do this, or love that holds you at night and makes you feel like you belong somewhere, then hold on to that because you won’t have much to hold on to.
Until the day you are told you don’t have a social security number, a green card, a chance, you never know yourself as anything but American. Learn all the history including the dirty parts. More history than your own home country.
8) Learn to quote all three Star Wars movies and this will help more than you know.
Say the Pledge of Allegiance everyday in school like you meant it, and finally cry when you say it at your citizenship ceremony in 30 years. Follow these instructions and you’ll make it. Where? You don’t know, but you sure as hell won’t be in Krome Detention Center.
Arvin Ramgoolam is the co-owner of Townie Books in Crested Butte, Colorado. His words can be found in The Normal School, the Jellyfish Review, AAWW, and ANMLY.
