Editor’s Note: This is the first issue of a Prep News series called Immigrants of SLUH.  So far, news editor Noah Apprill-Sokol has interviewed over ten members of the SLUH community about their immigration experiences. These stories will be featured in the coming weeks.  This first one tells the story of Spanish teacher Maria Paz Campos, who moved to the US from Chile after falling in love with her husband.

Campos was born in Santiago, the capital of Chile, and lived in a village 45 minutes north from the capital for much of her childhood. Chile is her home, but after living in the United States for six years and teaching Spanish at SLUH since the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year, she has come to call the United States her second home.

While attending Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, she met her future husband, a native St. Louisan who was working in Chile at the time, and fell in love.

“I was in college when I met my husband, we were dating back then and he's from St. Louis. We dated for two years there,” said Campos.  “Then he came back to the US, and we decided to continue our relationship long distance.”

It was this long distance relationship that would lead her to travel to the United States for the first time, and ultimately what would cause her to stay in the United States and become a permanent resident.

“One summer, I just came to visit him over the summer.  I had only brought a suitcase full of summer clothes because I was planning on going back, but he proposed,” said Campos.  “We hired an immigration lawyer to guide us through the process because I really did not know how this would work. We had, of course, talked about marriage before but I didn't know that that was going to happen during my visit.”

Because of immigration procedure, Campos had to get married in St. Louis and could not leave the country for a year, which meant that her parents were not able to be a part of their civil wedding. Yet, this was not the only hurdle that Campos would have to clear in order to get her green card.  She would also have to pass through a lengthy process full of paperwork and a series of interviews.  For Campos, the ordeal was stressful and expensive.

“The process of leaving your country and coming to a different country was hard for me,” said Campos.  “Everything happened so fast, and I was very close to my family. Looking back, I do remember crying a lot and trying to manage this—like the emotional weight of the change.  Even though I really wanted it, it was emotionally draining.  The process itself was also very expensive.”

Campos had to hire an immigration lawyer to help her through the process.  She also had to prove to government immigration officials that her marriage was genuine, which required her and her husband to go through an interview process and submit many photos of them before and after their marriage.

“I had to basically prove that our relationship was real. We had to go through that interview process. They would ask you personal questions about your relationship, when you met, and we had to submit pictures of us dating before pictures of him meeting  my family.  We basically had to show that I wasn't paying him to marry me so I could have become a resident of the United States.”

After three and half years of being in the immigration process, Campos was issued her permanent residency, or green card as it is more commonly referred to, which allows her to stay in the United States indefinitely as long as she renews it every ten years.  Yet, Campos has her eyes set higher.  She wants to be an official citizen of the United States, a process that sometimes takes even longer.

“I really want to continue to learn more about the community, the political side also. I want to be able to vote, and when you have a green card, you cannot do that,” said Campos.  “So now I'm going to start my process of citizenship, so I can become a citizen, get a passport, vote as well.”

Yet, living in the United States but being born in Chile, comes at a greater cost than just the effort and money put into the immigrantion system.  For Campos, her emigration to the United States has really complicated her identity. She feels like she is constantly navigating between these two cultures.

“I am not sure who I am,” said Campos. “I am not going to be American, because I am a foreigner, but when I go to Chile, I feel like I am not Chilean anymore because I'm living in the states and have become Americanized. So you're in like a limbo. But you have to embrace that limbo.”

Despite all these difficulties, the United States is still a place she calls home.  It is where her husband and she can live out her passion of being a teacher.

“The personal side—the friends of the many people that I have connected to and my husband's family—and in my professional side—the opportunity that I have to work—have helped me find my place here and feel better about this new life that I've started,” said Campos.