Breath

-How do I know what I want? Really want?

We are walking side by side on the sand, near the waves that break softly in white foam. We are alone between the ocean and the dunes. The woman next to me answers.

-Shut wide your eyes, and even hold your breath until your lungs empty and your stomach contracts. If it’s still there what you think you want when you’ll grasp for air, you probably really want it.

Although her old voice sounds familiar I can’t recognize her face, because her features are blurred. Then I ask.

-How do I go and get what I want?

A dream.

I don’t hear her answer because I wake up under water.

I can’t see the bottom nor the floor nor walls all around. It is just me inside infinite water and I need to breathe.

And the lungs get emptied and the stomach gets tight and I grasp for air when I am waking up.

For real this time. I hope.

…

Once upon a time I thought life would be like an Ingmar Bergman film, maybe Cries and Whispers, with a face that was beautiful, a face that was strong, and a face that was dying.

But life turns out more like the opening of Millennium Mambo. A woman stomping over a long and elevated passageway.

…

At the end of the passage people wait for the train. The train stops and I get in. I walk pass a woman with a baby towards the end of the wagon. Then I lock eyes with the most beautiful man in the world. Just for a second.

Baudelaire has that poem, À une passante.

Un éclair… puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté
Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître,
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité?

Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!
Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

I open my mouth, but I feel the voice trapped in my throat. The most beautiful man in the world looks at me for one more second before stepping out in the stop before mine.

…

I am blocking a number from my phone. We have met four times for language exchange at the library. But the fifth time makes me anxious.

I block a number because a “no” answer is ten times better than a lingering question.

With odds I can play, but possibility is a bitch.

…

I stand on the edge. High up. Under my feet, a steep wall of stone and then water. An old quarry turned deep pond. I can’t see the bottom nor the place where the stone wall meets the water. I know I can jump from the higher spot because I already survived a dive before, holding a hand.

I jump alone.

Under the water, I swim towards the surface. One, two, three. The lungs emptying and the stomach contracting right before reaching the surface.

And I breathe.

The story I didn’t write

In 2004, in May, Audioslave was in Havana. It was the first ever rock concert, real rock n roll concert at least. People came from all over. The record says we were 70,000 souls gathered that evening in the square, but it felt as if we were so many more, hundreds of thousands.

Chris Cornell was wearing a black tank top. I remember that in the middle of a song he slid his hands under the clothe in a very sensual way and a scream burst out of the lungs of a thousand feverish girls.

I was there, close to the stage, feeling a love for metal that was never quite strong before, or ever again. Before that evening I haven’t heard much more than Black Hole Sun, Be Yourself and Like a Stone. And wouldn’t make much fuzz in front of friends of not liking Rage Against the Machine, or liking Soundgarden better. But that night I liked Gasoline, and Out Of Exile, and his Ave Maria.

I liked Can’t change me, too. She’s going to change the world, But She Can’t …Change… Me…

I spent years trying to build a story out of that concert, out of that night. A story of music and drugs, of sex, of sweat, of salt, of noise, of mourn… And for some reason, an image of a spider walking over my hand, my belly, and entering my navel.

I wanted to write about a young woman getting lost in music and a trip of her senses. I wanted to find the words that described feeling of existing without being, of desire, climax and regret. I was in love then, and with a heart freshly broken, and my story should have said something to someone that should have felt the pain and come back to me.

But I didn’t. I started many times through the years and never finished.

And now Chris Cornell is dead. Cornell is dead and looks like I will never write that story.

Cornell killed himself in May 2017, thirteen years after he sang that concert in Havana.

I loved again. And once more fell out of love. I traveled, lived in six cities, got a passport from a new nationality and I settled in a new home.

It took until 2016 for another proper rock band to go to Cuba. It was the Rolling Stones but they played more demure, in a closed venue instead of the open square by the sea wall… I hear, I wasn’t there.

ABC de naturalizarte como USA citizen

Hace casi seis años que llegué a EE.UU. Ya me naturalicé como ciudadana estadounidense, ya tengo pasaporte y me registré como votante.

Es así como se hace. (Solo para cubanos, mientras el CAA esté vigente)

Para gente DIY, acá el link https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship

Para los temerosos, acá el know how.

Plazos:

Se puede enviar los documentos de la ciudadanía hasta 90 días antes. Piensa con anticipación que no coincida un viaje con la potencial fecha de la cita para los biométricos.

Costo:

Lo que sea que cuesten fotos, mail shipping, y lo que indique el website de USCIS que es el costo. Puede variar de año a año.

Papeleo:

La forma es la N-400. Es simple de llenar, asegúrate de que las fechas estén bien, de no omitir detalles relevantes sobre viajes previos, y busca la aplicación a la greencard para asegurarte que todos los detalles coinciden.

Luego de enviar los papeles, entre 20 o 30 días después vino la cita para los biométricos.

Luego de dar los biométricos, viene la espera por que llegue la cita a la entrevista.

Esto puede ser un período que va de un mes (como he oído de algunos casos recientes) hasta un año. Acá se puede revisar el estatus de la aplicación https://egov.uscis.gov/casestatus/landing.do

La cita a la entrevista puede llegar con tiempo de hasta un mes de anticipación, o incluso diez días como me sucedió.

Para la entrevista, las apariencias importan.

La ceremonia… cada cual tendrá su versión y experiencia. Pero si es en una corte de justicia, preparar para estar offline y sin teléfono por horas.

Con el certificado de naturalización, al día siguiente incluso puedes ya ir a pedir el pasaporte. Sacar cita en una oficina de USPS es sabio.

10 días laborables antes de ir a la oficina del SS para pedir actualizar la tarjeta. No tiene costo. Acá se encuentra https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp

Con la tarjeta nueva, muéstrala al empleador.

En NYC, no es necesario ir al DMV. Pero quizás cambia de estado a estado.

En NYC, registrarse para votar se puede hacer online. Pero también la ley cambia de estado a estado. Este es el punto de comienzo https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote

¿Chile se vuelve imán?

Hace un par de días, estuve buscando datos sobre la inmigración cubana en EE.UU, y tratando de entenderlos en su contexto. Me llevé al hacerlo más de una sorpresa.

Hoy los números me vuelven a demostrar que la evidencia es lo que más fuertemente confirma una percepción, o la desmiente absolutamente. Para este post estuve mirando las cifras de residencias permanentes dadas en Chile a extranjeros, entre los años 2010 a 2012.

Los chilenos son organizados. Como tal, no me sorprende que sus bases de datos migratorios sean sencillos de encontrar y muy fáciles de entender. En la página del Departamento de Extranjería y Migración chileno está toda la información que un extranjero puede necesitar, y las estadísticas.

Inmigración de países latinoamericanos a Chile (2010-2012)

Mientras viví en Santiago, mis colegas y amigos chilenos me repetían que son parte de una sociedad cerrada, todavía no adaptada a la presencia o convivencia con extranjeros, sobre todo si provienen de culturas muy distintas.

Las estadísticas sugieren que la realidad les está imponiendo un cambio, porque lo cierto es que sólo en esos tres años un total de 63.194 permisos de residencia permanentes fueron concedidos a personas nacidas en otros países del mundo.

El resto de la tabla registra únicamente a estados de América Latina. España está incluida como detalle interesante de referencia, y porque llama la atención ver que los españoles están tomando rumbo a donde sea que los llama el trabajo, incluso en la otra esquina del mundo.

Eso implica que no incluyo a Belice, ni a las Guyanas, ni al Caribe anglófono y francófono. Sí a Brasil. Implica también que no digo nada de los latinos que recibieron un permiso de residencia temporal, o de las personas del resto del mundo.

Esto significa que por cada 100 mil habitantes que se cuentan en Chile, unos 158 tienen residencia permanente pero nacieron fuera del país.

Si bien los 23.553 latinoamericanos que recibieron residencia permanente en 2012 representan la mayoría (86,23%), todavía muchas nacionalidades están representadas en los inmigrantes que se establecen en Chile. Por ejemplo, el documento registra en 2012 a 1 afgano, un armenio, uno de Arabia Saudita que recibieron el estatus en Chile, por solo mencionar países que comienzan con A.

Otra curiosidad es que las cifras en sí mismas pueden ser arbitrarias fuera de contexto. Mientras de Argentina llegaron 1642 personas en 2012 y de Cuba fueron 317, las tasas reales indican que el flujo de inmigrantes es bastante semejante por parte de los dos países: Argentina (3,85); Cuba (2,83). Luego, quizás dice más de la persistencia de los emigrantes el pensar que a Argentina y a Chile los separa sólo una cordillera, en tanto los cubanos tienen mucho mar, tierra y montañas de por medio.

De Perú llega el número de lejos más grande de inmigrantes latinos. En segundo lugar está Bolivia. Estos son números oficiales. Deja mucho para reflexionar los inmigrantes indocumentados. Ambos países comparten fronteras terrestres con Chile, y entre los tres aún están querellando el legado de la Guerra del Pacífico, la cual aconteció hace más de 130 años.

¿Tendencia al futuro?

Sea cual sea el carácter pretendido de los chilenos y su mirada como sociedad a la presencia de forasteros, la tendencia demuestra que a menos que cambios drásticos ocurran, la llegada de extranjeros continuará, cada vez más abundante.

Recent patterns for Cuban Immigration to the USA

I am really loving this Data Journalism Course. Here I am bringing more data into context. For this post I gathered a some numbers from the 2012 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, published by the Department of Homeland Security in July 2013.

Note: Not that I could scrape any data, because it’s difficult from a PDF. If someone knows a faster way, I’ll appreciate the clue.

My newest chart puts into perspective some figures referred to the arrival of Cubans to the USA, and their later adjust of status to legal permanent  residents (LPR), between 2003 and 2012. I landed in Philly on October 2012. So I am one fraction of those numbers. (If you actually clic on the link to the chart, the numbers will be there and you’ll get more detailed info).

I find some patterns that contradict my initial thoughts.

LPR Status: Legal Permanent Resident Status stand out with the highest numbers because they are the sum of: 1. Cubans that won the migration lottery, 2. Cubans that come as direct relatives of US Citizens, 3. the refugees and asylum seekers that arrived at least a year ago, 4. those who came as non-immigrant who decided to stay and wait a year and a day to request adjustment of status.

In a perfect world, the numbers will show that specific pattern, but real life is messier. Bureaucracy and human behavior challenge maths. On the one hand, applications can take different times to process, variations depend on the office that processes each case, the time of the year, the number of actual applicants, etc. On the other, humans are full of surprises. I know a Cuban who took 2 months passed his deadline of one year plus one day residing in the country, before sending his application.

– Naturalization: Cubans don’t hurry to naturalize as US Citizens, at least they delay it more than I expected. I knew older generations of Cubans are still linked to their Cuban roots, and try to avoid naturalizing as a resource to preserve somehow that Cuban identity. But younger generations -which I would think are the bulk of immigrants for recent years- are more practical, less romantic, and in general makes way more sense to become a citizen of the USA as soon as possible. But if you follow the yellow line, and compare it to the blue line four years before, it will show that the number of Cubans who got their LPR status is much higher. The fact that I’m indicating to count back four years will strike many of you. Well, there’s something called the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) that adjust my status as LPR in this country to the date I actually arrived, not the date I applied for documentation or was actually granted the LPR card. But that’s a story for another day.

It is interesting that the number of those obtaining LPR status is declining since 2008, while the number of naturalized Cubans has been steadily increasing, with that spike in 2008. I wonder whether there was any influence from the presidential elections that year. Could that yes-we-can spirit influence over Cubans who felt compelled to become Americans?

– Refugees arrivals & Apprehensions: In a report from 2009, immigration specialist Ruth Ellen Wasem points out that most apprehensions happen in the open sea. Few Cubans are caught crossing the borders, Mexican or Canadian. That remains true today. I would really like to know something I could not find in the numbers, how many of those refugees actually succeeded in crossing the Florida Strait?

What are the odds for a Cuban who intends to “sail” his/her way to the USA to actually make it?

– Refugees vs I94: It is even more revealing to find out that more Cubans are arriving with non-immigrant status than those who come as refugees. I am one of those I94, as I was granted a visa to come for a Seminar at the Wharton School of Business. But the majority of those Cubans are relatives to LPRs or Cuban Americans that come invited by their families. Some of them stay, many of them go back.

To finish the post, I also compiled data about different bases Cubans use to support their claims to become LPRs.  From a total of 32.820 Cubans that were granted LRP in 2012 – which you can see in the previous chart- that number breaks down into 917 family sponsored (the family member doesn’t necessarily has to be naturalized as US citizen), 3.402 Cubans  who were immediate relatives of US Citizens, 28.346 refugees and asylees, 74 applied for “diversity” – which I have no clue what it is-, employment based is 13, so insignificant that the pie didn’t see it, and that weird item “other” that sums 14.