There Is No Line
I BECAME A United States citizen on Friday, September 29, 2017.
If I wanted to put a romantic gloss on my story, I could note how I arrived 22 years earlier via a one-way ticket to Detroit on a student visa with just a small bag of clothes, some philosophy books, and $97 in cash. Or how I lived on $10 a week after the rent and bills were paid. How—in the tradition of all good immigrants!—I buckled down and worked hard and graduated with a Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University in three years. How I beat the odds and secured a tenure-track job my first time on the market and then met the woman who was to become my wife on the first day of faculty orientation.
To make my immigration tale even more compelling, I could throw in some of the challenges that I faced. Like how I ditched my useless, high-priced corporate immigration attorney for a man (an immigrant himself!) who shared an office with a taco stand. The new guy charged me a discount price of $80 after I showed I could identify the Dominican Republic on a map, and then he provided me with perfect visa-renewal paperwork within hours. I could recount the harrowing experience of having my work visa granted literally
