Why does immigration make everything so hard? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. This is an important video, not a video like my normal videos. And it is brought about by a message I received in our Immigrant Home Facebook group. If you're not in our Immigrant Home Facebook group, we've been really trying to be more active in there, putting more articles and more comments. And I'm trying to spend some more time in the Immigrant Home Facebook group. If you're not a member, please go ahead and join. It's free, and it's just a place where immigrants can talk to each other. And there was a post last night that really struck me to the bone and I want to read it to you, it's from Lillian. And in the group, we have about 4,000 people, so it's pretty vibrant these days.
Lillian writes, "Let me appreciate each and every individual who is going through this stressful process. Some people here are really, really strong. I've waited for only four months, but since the process started I have never had peace of mind. At some point, I requested my husband to come back to our home country. We live here together, but he said he can't because of the work he's doing there in the USA. Thinking of how stressful USCIS is, thinking of the American embassy in my country, all this gives me sleepless nights. It is almost two years since I saw my husband last. My son is going to turn one year without seeing his father. Oh God, grant us strength." Lillian, this video is for you and for everybody else.
And there's a great emotional toll that this whole process takes on people. And immigration is in and of itself stressful, when you're thinking about leaving one country to go to another. I just know how stressed out I get when I go overseas for a week or two. I was thinking yesterday about that feeling that you get when you're in a foreign country, and how it just feels different. That the air seems different, the atmosphere seems different, the people seems different. So then to layer on top of that separation from your spouse, and not having your husband be able to see your son, that just breaks my heart. And I told Lillian, "That's why we do what we do." But I think that we really need to spend some time thinking about the psychological toll that separation from parents, and separations from spouses or fiances takes.
It's not something that's covered in the headlines. It's not something that can be calculated, the mental and emotional stress of immigration, but it really is a real thing. We've been seeing people more and more stressed out. Sometimes clients are losing their minds a little bit more, getting upset with us when it's really not our fault. They know we're on their side, but they still get frustrated just because the system is built to beat you down. And with the current clown we have in the White House, that's just on steroids. No pun intended, because he is on steroids now. But anyway, we are just seeing more and more of this. I think that we really need psychologists, and psychiatrists, and social workers to spend some time doing qualitative analysis of the long-term effects of these kinds of separations.
And we really need to do whatever we can to make the process kinder, more kind, more gentler, and easier on people so that the mental stress that Lillian is talking about, the sleepless nights aren't there. So I bow to all the immigrants who are going through this process. I honor you, I respect you, and obviously for us, this is much more than a job. It's a calling, really, to try to ease suffering by doing our job as well as we can. I'm going to send this video to our team, because I want them all to hear what Lillian said, to know what it feels like to be separated. And luckily we have a lot of immigrants on our team, and so they can relate, and they can certainly relate through the stories of our clients.
If you're struggling, reach out to somebody, let someone know. You can always give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And if you liked this video, we ask that you please subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos like this one. Thanks a lot, have a great day.
