MY MOTHER'S HOUSE by Francesca Momplaisir — USA Today 'I am a Haitian American. Brutality at border nothing new. My success is part of deception.'

USA Today | September 24, 2021

Mine is not an easy story to tell. I have been crying for days as I've watched history repeat itself at the border. I try to process emotions that are as complex as my identity – Haitian, Black, immigrant, woman, mother, daughter.

Throughout my childhood, my mother repeated the narrative of our journey from Haiti to America countless times: how her father vanished, presumed murdered by the Duvalier regime; how my father maneuvered to sponsor our visas and scraped together money for our plane tickets; how my mother made the journey to a foreign country where she knew no one with two toddlers in tow. We weren’t fleeing political persecution, although our country was rife with that plague. But our plight was still dire. We were pleading for a reprieve from poverty, for relief from hunger and hopelessness.

And we had immigrated to the United States the “right way,” as American politicians and immigration agents insist. They flippantly refer to the arduous and excruciating “alien” registration process with no understanding of its deliberately invincible obstacles. The route to legal immigration is barricaded by stacks of complex and undecipherable application forms atop impossible-to-find documentation to prove our existence. It is mired with the condescension of U.S. Embassy examiners, the irrepressible disdain of racist officials and the insult of rejection. After many failed attempts at seeking entry via normal channels, after being turned away from the golden gates by doing things the “right way,” my people risk their lives on more dangerous routes to America.

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