Undocumented - illegal immigration in NYC

American Dream Deferred

By Shomial Ahmad

Andrei stowed away in the trunk of a car on a freight ship to New York. Now, 14 years later, jaded and disillusioned, he awaits deportation to his native Bulgaria.

Sitting in the glass-walled coffee shop in the German port city, Bremerhaven, Andrei didn’t know how close he was to his seemingly distant dream of finding a way to America. After days of searching for ships to stow away in, he and his friend Angel stumbled their way into an idyllic coffee shop, with indoor flowers and trees, as dawn was just setting in.

An unshaven Andrei ordered a coffee, and listened to Lisa Stanfield’s voice, playing in the coffee shop, singing, “Been around the world and I can’t find my baby,” and he began to imagine all the places in the world he would go to, too. He fell asleep to the music, and awoke hours later to the sound of high school students shuffling in before the start of their school day.

It had been thirty-three days since 21-year-old Andrei left his parents and girlfriend in Bulgaria, jumping on a train to the Czech Republic. It was twenty-seven days since he followed a rope in a pitch-black elk forest to find his way to the West, and it would be a few hours until he would board the ship that would take him to America. He would land in New York City, where he has now lived for fourteen years.

Seeing Andrei today with his black Puma sneakers, backpack, curly brown hair and trimmed sideburns, one would think he was an everyday European backpacker. His smile does not betray the desperation of someone who has received his deportation papers, the result of a failed political asylum case.

In the next months, he will overstay Uncle Sam’s invitation, staying almost two years after his final deportation letter, trying to make his stay a neat fifteen years. In those few months he might still find a satisfactory definition for that which eludes him: the meaning of the American dream.

“The truth is I never had a chance to experience the American dream,” Andrei said. “To be American one hundred percent, I didn’t have a chance, so now I still don’t know the answer.”

Andrei’s story is a familiar one. A person with an ambition for a better life immigrates to America, and ultimately, through hard work and struggle, attains a college degree, a car, and a well-paying job. But sometimes dreams come to an end. After seven years of fighting an immigration case, which he perceives to be an injustice, Andrei will return to his country of birth, Bulgaria.

Four thousand miles away from the skyscrapers of New York City, growing up in Bulgaria, Andrei imagined the American dream with clarity not muddled by reality. Ever since he was seven-years old, Andrei wanted to become an electrical engineer like his grandfather, but in Bulgaria his aspirations would be limited. America proposed limitless possibilities. “Why do it in Bulgaria, when I can do it in America on a bigger scale,” asked Andrei. “I wanted to be on the 60th, 80th floor and build something.”

Born in 1969, Andrei grew up in communist Bulgaria, and leaving the East seemed an impossible wish. At twelve, he was learning military tactics in school, and he spent his fifteenth summer learning to shoot a gun. By eighteen he was in the military, and two years later he was questioning its dogma. He anonymously critiqued blind deference by scratching short phrases on military building walls with messages like: “How we lick the Russian’s ass”, “Why do rich communist people always drive capitalist cars?” He was discovered and spent thirty days in a military jail.

There was no official record of Andrei’s jail time, since it happened during his military service, but there was a black mark on his citizen number—the equivalent of a Social Security number—marking Andrei as a political dissident. This record was permanent, so whenever he would apply for a job, his time spent in jail would appear. He decided he wanted to start a life somewhere else with a new number and real opportunities for his career. What drove Andrei out of Bulgaria was not an escape from poverty, but a hope that he could stop pretending to be someone that the state would accept.

Andrei and Angel left the coffee shop with their backpacks, containing a two-liter Coke bottle filled with water, chocolate, bread, salami, and a jar of honey. That day they would repeat their routine at the harbor. They would board one giant freight ship after another, asking each time if the ship was looking to hire anyone, secretly spying a way to sneak onto the boat as stowaways.

That morning, Andrei and Angel asked a Filipino guard on a ship their usual question, pretending they were searching for work. He saw through them and decided to help He told them to board the ship, but made them promise that they wouldn’t mention him if they got caught.

Passing the gate, they saw the twelve-story ship up close, with floors filled with cars-- Mercedes, Volkswagens, Beamers, and Volvos--and on the windows of the cars were little slips of paper, labeling the car’s final destination: Jacksonville, Miami, Newark. The two tested the trunks of different cars to see which was the most spacious, and decided their cabin would be the trunk of a Volvo: Andrei in one, Angel in the next, their luggage in the third.

Andrei slept in his trunk, and when he would awake, he would knock on Angel’s trunk. They would sit under the open sky and sip their water, drawing lines to mark the amount of each of their sips. When the sun was out, they would walk over to one of the ship’s interior walls and draw a line for each day that passed. When they drew the fifth diagonal line, they ran out of water. When they drew the sixth line, Andrei lost feeling in his legs and his saliva dried up. When they drew the seventh, they searched near the cabins for water, found water bottles in trash cans and a sink in a laundry room, and filled the bottles for their remaining five-day journey. On the twelfth day, they heard the ship’s siren, passed the Verrazano Bridge and docked at Newark. When he stepped off the boat, Andrei kissed the concrete of the parking lot.

*******

Two weeks into America, Andrei applied for residence as a political refugee. It was 1991, an escape from communism and his time in a military jail were still fresh reminders about why it would be difficult for him to build a life in his home country. For the next seven years, with his asylum case pending, he was legal in America. In those years, he began to climb up the ladder.

“My highest point was in that parking lot,” said Andrei.

He was homeless, and collected tin cans off the Brooklyn Promenade. He worked as a bus boy in Little Italy and cleaned apartments, eventually moving into his own apartment. He worked as taxi driver on weekends while he went to school to become an electrician. He drove across the country five or six times. His first American girlfriend taught him English. He had other girlfriends: Russian, Polish, Colombian, Czech, some of them had papers, and some didn’t.

In February 1998, his life changed. After seven years, an immigration judge heard his refugee case. The judge asked Andrei if it was dangerous for him to go back to Bulgaria, Andrei did not answer a definitive yes or no, so the judge decided to deport him. Six years, $36,000, and many appeals later, Andrei received his final deportation papers. In those years of waiting, Andrei lost the optimism he first came with to the United States. He was nervous, angry, antisocial, and felt constant pressure, like he was holding some unknown weight inside him.

All this pressure contributed to his already transitory state. No women would marry him, because they were suspicious he was marrying for papers. He had a well-paying job as an electrician, and he could spend money, but not build a life. With each appeal he had a renewed hope of staying, but with each loss he felt defeated.

“The government system fucked me up big time,” Andrei said. “The government here is worse than communism, and you know why, because in communism they will come and tell you [whatever] straight in your eyes, right away.”

In the past few years, he’s realized that even with money, as an undocumented New Yorker, he has no power and voice. He can’t live a full life, with a family and freedom to travel anywhere. To him, living his life as an illegal immigrant means living as a criminal. “It was meant to be for me to come here, but it’s not meant for me to have [immigration] papers,” Andrei said fatefully. “It took a very long time to figure out why, and now I realize there’s no reason why. I guess I have to go back to Bulgaria.”

When his final deportation papers came last year, he decided to give in and go back to Bulgaria. Suddenly he began to experience life again, without shame. Now the weather is more beautiful. Andrei laughs more, and after fifteen years in America, he can’t wait to go back to Bulgaria, where without communism, maybe the real life is real.