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About 6 years ago, I interviewed for a job in the U.S. I had come to the conclusion that, as our kids were aging out of the house, it was time for us to start planning our return to the States ourselves. The interview went okay—I was a finalist but not selected—but the process made me realize I needed to commit to an immigration path. I’ve now come to the next waypoint on that path.

When I had applied for that job, I had been thinking about using the NAFTA or USMCA exemption for librarians. The TN Professionals visa is a three-year entry point for professionals, including librarians, to enter the US. For Canadian library students considering working in the US, it’s a great way to test the waters. It could also be a good alternative for more seasoned professionals who just want to try a different work environment for a few years, or to join an international organization at a US office.

Well, perhaps not at the moment. (There is a similar pathway for American librarians to emigrate to Canada. Just saying.)

Starting Getting Started

I’m married to an American even though I am not one. After my talk with the decision-maker in the role, it became clear that they were leery of the TN visa. There’s a temporary quality to it, admittedly. At the same time, it’s a visa that can be extended. The right employer may be amenable to that uncertainty. In the end, I decided to go the normal permanent resident route.

So, in 2019, I filed my papers and hunkered down to see what would happen. COVID had thrown all the timing off and it took much longer to get the paperwork done. Much longer, in fact, than I or anyone else might have anticipated. In the end, I had a stroke of luck by being offered a job in the United States. That luck was slightly tarnished by the fact that I did not yet have the ability to go to work in the U.S.

In one of the kindest, most fortuitous outcomes I could have hoped for, the law library that offered me that role said they’d wait for my paperwork to be completed. Even now, I can hardly believe it. You can imagine what it is like for an immigrant: they have to get a piece of paper to enter the country, which is only good for 6 months. But you can’t leave your employment (unless you have financial means that are unusual, I would think) to do that. It means needing to have a job on the other side, so that you can continue to earn and eat and live.

My wife and I had discussed alternative plans, including just getting any old job until I could find a new professional one. That would have been hard, because we had financial obligations in Canada, including a house. Also, I would be leaving the family in Canada. I had made a promise to our kids that I wouldn’t move them again and I wasn’t going to do that. It meant having to make some choices about what would or wouldn’t work.

Anyone who believes in generational similarities will know that Gen Xers like me always have a plan B. It’s part of our DNA. Or so the marketers will have you believe. In my case, it tends to be true. In most cases when I make a decision, I have a spare one that is sufficiently formulated that I can pivot in an emergency.

In the end, the job stayed open, my paperwork finally come through and I headed out to California. Our eldest and I drove an SUV through the US, stopping regularly to see parts of the country we’d never seen. I arrived almost exactly 3 years ago in San Diego, living lean and learning how to live in the U.S. again.

Immigrant Aware

I have lived about 40% of my life outside the U.S., mostly in Canada. When I was a kid, I was hyper aware of how different our family was from our neighbors. We gravitated to a lot of things British, our national heritage, and, I expect like many immigrants, found Americans who were open to what we took for granted. Similarly, as the first generation of our family born in North America, we were looking for ways to assimilate as well. Some were voluntary, like clothing and music and slang. Some weren’t, like speech therapy to lose an accent or to avoid being teased.

It was on this second return to the U.S.—which interestingly resulted in me getting the same immigrant number on my permanent resident card as the one I’d yielded when I left for Canada in 2007—that I was much more aware of being an immigrant. Call it age or wisdom or changed circumstances, I don’t know why. I think having seen our children try to adapt to Canadian culture, where they were also teased for how they spoke or where they straddled two cultures, the one in our home and the one outside of it, probably had a huge impact too. As a kid you may not be aware of the process of adaptation. You just get on with it, because, whether you’re an immigrant or not, you want to fit in. A parent sees more of the efforts (and failures) and is probably more attuned to the process as it’s happening.

I don’t for a minute think my experience is like most immigrants. The racism that is inherent in immigration discussions would mean someone who looks like me, who works in places like I work, would never be seen as other. As one of my students said when I introduced myself to my class, “You don’t look like an immigrant.”

Still, I can see the parallels. I have often thought about the remittance men, the people who leave their homes to go to the U.S. for years on end. At one point I was talking to someone in San Diego about my family being in Canada and that it was hard only seeing them every 6 months or so. “Six MONTHS, ” he exclaimed, “I haven’t seen my family for 2 years!” Talk about a lesson in humility. In the U.S., we are surrounded by people making sacrifices we can’t possibly imagine having to experience.

When I first went out to California, it was with the assumption that, like so many immigrants, most of my pay cheque would go home to Canada. These remittances are a huge financial flow from more wealthy nations to poorer ones, but entirely non-commercial, non-governmental transfers. I had originally known the term remittance man but that was someone who was sent away and paid to stay away!

This experience and many others made me a lot more aware of my own immigrant experience as well as those experiencing it with less privilege. It has been a key motivator as I re-immerse myself in American law librarianship. And what a great field to work in to help people who are navigating all sorts of legal issues just to secure a footing in the U.S.

Getting the Band Back Together

Our youngest was finally ready to fly the coop last year. It became time for me to fish or cut bait in California. It had become clear that it wasn’t a place that we wanted to land for the long term. My only family in North America is in the Midwest, including all of our kids. As the household in Canada dwindled to my wife and our dog, it became clear that a more central location would be a wiser choice.

This weekend, we finally moved into our U.S. home. I’ve been doing an 1,100 mile round trip drive to Canada most weekends since the new year started. Sometimes just to visit and do chores as we prepared our house for sale. Sometimes to bring things back in preparation for the move. Then, finally, last week it was time. I flew up and the three of us drove south to take the next immigration step.

I have felt like, this semester, I have bitten off more than I could chew. The reality is that sometimes your circumstances change. When I agreed to give a presentation last week on legal information access, or when I took on a course at the last minute, it was before I knew we’d be moving house as well. While I have learned over the years to live with ambiguity, the last 3 months have been a doozy.

Unlike my process, which took nearly two years, my wife was welcomed home with no delay. We processed our car as an import, let them know that our dog might be bananas but was otherwise healthy, and we were through. It was a bit anticlimactic considering the experience we’d gone through. We drove into Chicago the next morning and let the dog loose for the first of many runs around the back garden.

I’m still working towards becoming an American citizen but at least I am back with my family. The weekly video calls we have had for the last 3 years will continue as a ritual, but I will be able to call with my wife in the same house. It’s funny to be sharing housing with someone else (and a very clingy dog!).

It’s also a weekend where the U.S. government has announced it is re-animating the Alien Enemies Act. It has been used to deport hundreds of Venezuelans because the government claims the U.S. is at war with their gang. It seems to me that is a test case to decide what type of wars—”Whenever there is a declared war“—qualify to expel immigrants other than kinetic ones. Does there need to be a declaration of war? Or is an executive order saying “we are at war” enough? What about a trade war with, say, a country like Canada?

I’ve experienced some reactions of incredulity at learning that I was returning to the U.S. It’s a simple case of availability bias: two things happen at the same time and there must be some connection (or, in this case, I must be making a choice without knowing what I’m doing). But I think, again, it’s something you may not understand if you haven’t been an immigrant.

This isn’t a spur of the moment decision. It’s not an attempt to embrace perhaps the darkest U.S. government in its short history. It’s a decision years in the making and is not even the culmination of all that I hope for, which is eventual citizenship. Families plan for this sort of upheaval, of years spent apart, and dream, I expect, the same dream, of their family being reunited in prosperity and with their fortunes improved.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t unnerved by what’s happening. Seeing other visa holders, including permanent residents, being detained and deported has me concerned. I think most immigrants already try to keep a low profile. I am glad that, whatever comes, at least I will have my family close by. For everything else, we’ll just have to wait and see. And have a plan B ready.