20 years in the USA and still a wetback

Yeah, I'm here since I was 18 years old, and I'm about to be 38...married 12 years to an american, and still a wet back. What did I do wrong? answer: everything.

You know that joke that in the best planned effort whatever that can go wrong, will?...well, that's me.

I guess I should start from the beggining, and that would be when I was born. I was an accident, which was the basis for a marriage between my father and mother. It wasn't a solid foundation because it wasn't long after I was born that he left me and my mom. I grew up without a father for most of my childhood.

My uncle Johnny (yes that's his name, yes he is from Peru, and no I never asked my grandmother why he gave her son an american name) was my only father figure that I respected.

I was not poor (even though during most of my relationships with americans they assumed I was and I rarely corrected them) neither was I hungry. The best possible description of my social status in Peru would be lower-middle class.

In my early years I sorta got lucky, my mother married a German and we ended up moving to Germany. It was pretty cool, until she left him one night and we moved away elsewhere. They didn't get along and I think now it was for the best...even tho sometime I wonder what other choices I may've had if we had remained in the society.

Well we didn't leave the country right away, my mother had a job at a hospital and when we moved to an apartment building I made a new friend, Mike Lippa (not sure on the pronunciation of his last name, I was about 8-10yrs old then I think).

I had a happy life, school was good, I played with Mike every afternoon and the only bad memory there is when I accidentally ran into the door of a washing machine and I had surgery near my eye. I don't remember much, except my mother's expression of fear. It may have been serious, I dunno, never asked once I recovered from it.

She told me one day we were going back to Peru, and it made me very upset. Nothing I said convinced her of changing her mind, so I left my happy german life behind.

I was very fluent in german, and that may have been something to praise perhaps in the states or elsewhere in europe...but in Peru...I got called Nazi and every bad name you can come up with...because I had returned without speaking much spanish. I must have unlearned german in record time, because a few months after I was enrolled in a catholic school and I was speaking perfect spanish by then.

We lived with my grandma, who was in charge of a building which rented rooms.

If I remember correctly, grandma had an old lease.  
Because of law the owner could not raise the rent over a certain amount. 

Of course over time the owner ended up getting a rent which did not represent the actual market value of the property. It was in a commercial area. My grandma made a good living renting the rooms.

But I guess even she knew that sooner or later the owner may sell the building and we would be out. 

She took a chance, and in her 50's she got herself smuggled into the USA through Mexico.

She had a sister and family in Brooklyn, NY which helped her get situated. She married a guy she did not really liked to become legal. Grandma would send us money and clothes, I was always looking forward to the imported american clothes, heh.

I never thought I would end up here too.  Well this is all I can write for today.