Bob CollinsYou can view this weekend’s story in the Rochester Post Bulletin as primarily a love story or a primarily a political story, but there’s no question that the heart is involved.
It chronicles Mary and Carlos Mejia, who were married in 2011. Carlos is an undocumented resident who came to the United States at age 17. Mary is a native who speaks no Spanish. Her family and friends are here. And she’s moving with her family to Mexico to escape the uncertainty of the U.S. crackdown on immigration and be reunited with her husband.
“It is our choice,” Mary tells the paper. “He wasn’t deported, but the lifestyle and the quality of life living here under the radar was horrible. So this kind of thing had to happen or something had to happen.”
So she’ll start over in a new country, wait 10 years, and then see if she can get her husband back into the country legally when she’s allowed to apply for a waiver for her husband.
It’s unlikely her job will be waiting for her when she comes back.
“I have been an office manager for over nine years for this company. I made a good living. I had great benefits. What happens when I come back?” she said.
After three apartment buildings near where the couple lived in Burnsville were raided by immigration authorities, Carlos left for Mexico.
She told her family at Thanksgiving that she and their children are leaving too.
“You catch us at the right moment, we’re going to melt on you,” Lois McGuire, Mary’s mother, said. Her husband recently burst into tears while holding his two-year-old granddaughter.
“We had not thought about all of this stuff. And how it is almost impossible for a Mexican person to get citizenship in the U.S,” Lois said.
“A couple of my friends have talked about how they view this as an incredible love story,” Lois said. “Mary likes to have things. I don’t know if she’s materialistic, but she likes nice things. And she has sold everything she owns, other than their clothes and toys, and is moving away from her family, which she is very close to … and to do this for this man.”
“That’s what is happening to a lot of families. They are being broken up,” Lois McGuire said. “I just don’t think that a border … Many of these people (supporting the immigration policies) are Christian, which I am, too, but I just don’t see where God would support all of this.”
Don’t read the comments.
