Each time I’ve sat down to write this post over the last month or so, the opening paragraphs have altered dramatically in terms of emotion and newsworthiness.

At one point the update kicked off with:

“Surprise! We’re excited to share that this update comes to you from sunny Florida, the launching point of our newest adventure: life back in the U.S.A. Yes, you read that right…we moved!”

And then there was:

“Life in lockdown—that was about the last thing we could have anticipated throughout the immigration process over the last year as we prepared to move back to the U.S. Yet, here we are. Within a week of moving internationally with our one-year-old, we find ourselves in a standstill with the rest of the country and the entire world wondering, “what the—.”

And some time later I deleted it all and left it at:

“Uncertain, uneasy, but not undone.”

Before COVID-19 hit hard, 2020 was shaping up to be one epic year.

At the end of December ’19, we packed up our home, sold the majority of our belongings, and distributed the weight of what means the most to us among 8 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, a diaper bag and a backpack. It doesn’t seem like much, but 450 pounds is quite a load when lugging it through the airport.

I experienced a rebirth of motherhood somewhere between Mendoza and Mt. Fitz Roy where I struggled with a newfound loss of independence and identity, trying to find a middle ground between my former solo-traveler self and traveling with a toddler.

It was the quietest trip I’ve ever been on. Sure, Niko was noisy and the stereo turned on high fueled our drives, but we mostly kept to ourselves and to nature.

We unintentionally self-imposed social distancing just before it became a tactic to fight a global pandemic.

Flash forward to the end of February where we went from exploring the isolated Southern Patagonian Ice Field to partying with thousands of people in the streets during carnival back in Bolivia.

And just a mere week later, we were en-route to move our family back to the U.S. on the brink of a total shutdown.

Immigration in the time of COVID-19

Over the years, our immigration journey has been…colorful (to say at the very least). When I moved to Bolivia 8 years ago, I honestly didn’t view it as immigrating to another country. At the end of 2012, I hastily packed a couple of suitcases and hopped on a plane within a week of making the decision to fly to South America and live indefinitely with my boyfriend in his home country.

Backstory #1
My husband and I met a decade ago (!!) in Hawaii where we both worked on the small island of Molokai. In telling our story, it reads like the opening sequence from a reality dating show where, “two twenty-somethings from different continents unexpectedly come together in the tropics and navigate a cross cultural relationship in the middle of the ocean. There’s passion in paradise, but can their relationship stay afloat despite their differences?” Cute, but cue the eye roll.

Before stepping foot in Bolivia, I didn’t think twice about what kind of paperwork I needed in order to stay and play out the love story, despite all of my experience with visa runs and special permits from other previous work abroad.

I’ll skip the specifics as I’m sure you can deduce that it all worked out in the end considering I’ve been in Bolivia for so long. I’m a permanent resident and our son, who was born in my husband’s hometown, is a dual U.S/Bolivia citizen.

So in my experience, immigration was gradual. I entered a foreign country on a tourist visa, crossed the border to Argentina in order to renter with a special purpose visa, declared my desire to work in the country and that (plus a ridiculous amount of photocopies and time wasting) was about it. It wasn’t overly complicated, nor expensive. I did everything on my own, and without much forethought or planning.

Skip ahead to 2018 when we decided (for the second time, but that’s another story) that we were ready to move our family of three to the States and return to the islands of Hawaii.

As you can imagine, the immigration process looks a lot different for my husband than it did for me. Up until this point today, it has taken exactly one year from the time we decided to move to actually step foot in the States, and we are still not in the clear.

Backstory #2
When we initially filed the petition for a family-based immigration visa in April 2019, the given timeframe until our visa interview at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia was between 6-10 months. Immigration lawyers we worked with throughout the process expressed that cases have been much slower to progress with the Trump Administration than they have been used to seeing with the past few presidencies, we should expect delays.

The visa interview surprisingly crept up on us quicker than expected and was scheduled for sometime in October, a few days before the 2020 Bolivian presidential elections.

You may have heard that the (fraudulent) elections caused a social uproar across Bolivia, sparking a revolution that effectively shut down the country for 21 days and ousted socialist Evo Morales was exiled to Argentina.

Our interview was rescheduled twice within that period due to embassy closures and general public unrest that led to rioting in La Paz. On the brink of our petition expiration date, my husband decided to risk travel despite the ongoing strike, and fly to the capital where reported mobs had sequestered the airport.

Thankfully, the interview went smoothly and despite the chaos, Jay made it there and back without any real issue, but not without an insane amount of stress and worry.

For me, the uncertainty and inability to know how and when our life would unfold in the near to immediate future was hard to accept during the first part of the immigration process, especially with a new baby under one. Would we be moving internationally in six months or one year from filing the paperwork? When would we quit our jobs? When could we plan to pack, sell and move out of our apartment? How long will we be unemployed?

Well, we made it. We are here now, and although the future is just as uncertain as ever considering the current global health crisis, I can’t help but feel the timing of our case couldn’t have been any better.

We touched down Miami at the beginning of March, two weeks before Bolivia’s borders closed to all international travel. We scheduled mandatory doctor appointments for Jay’s visa in Florida just before patients were told they would have to wait for any non-critical visits. We hightailed it to Minnesota as more business closed doors and coastal states started to lock down.

Scenes from quarantine in MN.

We are extremely grateful to be here together with family, healthy and safe above all.

My husband’s green card is still processing, and could take anywhere from 8-16 months until this phase two of immigration is finalized. We still don’t know exactly where we will land once we are able to get moving again (Hawaii is still our first pick destination), and we may be fun-employed for a bit, but of that’s all ok.

The past few months have given me so much more perspective on adaptation and flexibility. I find a lot of comfort in knowing that our situation is not unlike that of thousands of other Americans who now face a new reality. In some way, it makes me feel like less of an outsider coming back to my own country.

So cheers to a new chapter—for me, my family, and for all of us!