Part Six: Brissa's day is here
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In Part Six of A Home for Brissa, the day is here. Will Brissa be granted a visa? Or will all of her mother's work be for nothing?
BY CINDY LANGE-KUBICK | Lincoln Journal Star
JUAREZ, Mexico — A cool breeze teases the curtains at the open window.
The story so far
In Part Five:
Traveling to Mexico brings back memories for the girl from Acapulco and opens her mother's eyes to a whole new world.
In Part Four:
Brissa goes to the mall for a prom dress and her mom gets a present from a United States senator: a date in Juarez.
In Part Three:
Jessica refuses to give up. After their first petition is rejected she files again, and tries to keep life normal for Brissa and her three little sisters.
In Part Two:
Her friends away at college, Brissa must stay home watching cartoons with her little sisters, while her mom takes on the United States immigration system. She loses heart when their petition for an immigrant visa interview is rejected. But she doesn’t quit.
In Part One:
Brissa Placek turns 18 and a clock starts to tick. The girl from Acapulco, adopted by a Wilber family, has 180 days to get an immigrant visa or risk a three year ban from the United States. Her mom puts her life on hold to make it happen.
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Brissa?
The smoke from Nacho Mauricio’s cigarette floats into the dark bedroom.
Brissa? Are you awake?
This is it.
When Brissa Coral Hidalgo Banos went to live at the farm near Wilber, her new mom made the house rules clear.
No more short skirts. No sassing back. No more Ds and Fs.
Today, she needs an A.
It has taken nearly two years, hundreds of calls, thousands of dollars, more heartache than they can measure and the help of a U.S. senator to get to this place: a 7:30 a.m. appointment at the U.S. consulate in Juarez, Brissa Placek’s chance for a new life.
If she is approved for an immigrant visa today, she can go home to Nebraska. She can apply for a job. Get a driver’s license. Go to college.
She can be an interpreter and travel to Germany and Spain and China.
If they turn her down, her parents will hide her in Mexico.
And try again.
Some will be told no
In the back of a dusty green Taurus, her mother cradles the X-rays from her daughter’s medical exam as carefully as a new baby.
Everything is in order.
The car floats past pock-marked buildings and idling buses and, under a pale morning sky, reaches the Avenue Lopez Mateos — a wide street lined with cheap hotels and metal trailers selling burritos and burgers.
Nacho stops.
Guards pace the street, yelling instructions in Spanish and English.
No weapons in the consulate. No cameras. No food. No drinks.
The family hurries to the end of a line stretching a block in both directions.
Entrepreneurs work the crowd. One sells gum, another hawks coffee. A third, dressed in rags, holds out an empty cup, the skin on his forearm peeled back like a gutted fish, revealing gleaming white muscle and bulging veins.
More than 450 people from all over Mexico have appointments this morning. They are here to interview for visas. If they are approved, they can come to America legally and be reunited with spouses and children and parents.
Some have waited five years for this day.
Some will be told no.
Brissa stands next to a woman with gold hoops in her ears. She has waited three years for her appointment. If she is approved, she will live in Houston with her son.
If not, she tells Brissa in Spanish, she will go home crying.
“This is too much work to be told no,” Jessica Placek says.
Jessica knows the fight.
Every day her heart hurts. She drinks hot tea and swallows Tylenol, trying to erase the ache.
She still can’t understand why her government would make her go through this, would make Brissa go through this. Until the very last, she prayed they would find a way to make her adopted daughter legal without leaving Nebraska.
Now she just wants it over.
The sun inches over the horizon and the line inches forward.
Not the easy thing
They see very few cases like Brissa’s here, says Santiago Burciaga, the immigrant visa chief in Juarez.
Most girls like Brissa live their lives in limbo. They find fake identification to live illegally in their new American world. Work jobs without benefits. Never go to college.
Jessica did the right thing, he says.
But not the easy thing.
The average wait for spouses and children of U.S. citizens to get their visa interview here is 18 months to three years. For the spouse of a legal permanent resident, it is eight to 10 years. For a sibling of a U.S. citizen, 10 to 12 years.
This is a busy place. Most years, they grant more visas than any other country, ahead of China, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic.
This year they are on track to hit 100,000 cases.
On the day of their appointments, the lucky ones sit in a big room lined with chairs, crowded like the department of motor vehicles on the last day of the month.
They are called up to a window. Their documents are checked, their fingerprints run through a database.
Then they wait for an interview in another big room. How old are you? Where are you from? Why are you applying?
After the interview, they will have an answer.
Out of the more than 8,000 appointments every month, the consulate sets aside 35 slots for hardship cases. Medical emergencies. Child abuse.
This month, Brissa Coral Rose Placek got one of them.
‘Just let them say yes’
Everybody pray, Jessica says.
The mother closes her eyes. Please, God, forgive my sins. Help me use this as an opportunity to do for others. Grant us your favor.
Brissa bows her head. God, please let it go well. If we are here all day that’s OK, just let them say yes. And, God, please let us get a guy, guys are nicer.
They call her name.
Brissa and her parents walk to Window 8.
A guy in a blue dress shirt smiles back at them.
He looks through their forms.
Try not to look nervous, her mother told her yesterday. Now Brissa hears her heart beating in her ears.
They look good, he tells them.
They have passed the document check. Now they wait in the next room for their interview.
It worked, Jessica tells her daughter. Keep praying, girl.
They see the woman with gold hoop earrings still waiting. All the anxious faces.
Brissa Placek. Window 21.
Another guy.
He flips through a thick file. Jessica sees a blue form. “Expedited,” it says.
She sees copies of e-mails she sent to U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel’s office.
The man at the window looks at Brissa.
So you were 16 when you were adopted?
No, 15.
You’re from Oklahoma, right?
No, Nebraska.
How old are you again?
18.
More questions, trying to trip her up.
Jessica holds her hands at her sides, clenching her fists to keep her arms from shaking.
The man grabs a sheet of paper and slips it under the window.
Don’t smile, her mother says.
They walk past the faces of all the people who have waited so long for this day. Who are still waiting.
They walk outside.
Into the sunshine.
Into the bright shining light of Brissa’s new world.
E P I L O G U E
Three weeks after they return to Wilber Brissa’s permanent immigrant visa -- her green card -- arrives in the mail.
Three days later she takes the last of three ACT tests and meets with an adviser at Nebraska Wesleyan University.
When they discover her social security card won’t arrive for 3 to 6 months, Jessica starts making phone calls.
Jason works 12 hour days, six days a week trying to pay off the plane tickets and immigration fees.
Max Graves continues to help people struggling through the immigration maze.
And he won’t forget the desperate woman who first called his office two years ago. A woman determined to do the best she could for her child.
A mother who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I admire her persistence,” he says. “It paid off.”
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