A question was posed to me last night about why don't we travel with Kai's Chinese passport, Landed Immigrant card and a visa to the USA.
So, many issues all at once.
- it's complicated
- Citizenship asks for the permanent resident card back
- too hard to know which route we would need at the end so difficult to plan the future
- it wouldn't work for getting into Mexico - I can NOT find out how to get him into Mexico
- China wants their kids to have their Citizenship as soon as possible and it's a part of the post placement requirement
- we've had horrible, horrible experiences at the border
- we're heard awful stories from friends
- we've read and heard about awful stories from our groups
- moving around as a trans racial family for the most part is easy and we forget but borders bring all of the issues front and center in a really big way
Way back a million years ago, OK, 24 years ago, we were coming back to Canada after our honeymoon and Eric kept his sunglasses on at the border crossing. He was asked to remove them and then we were slow to answer a question (we were super tired from driving all night) and then we were told to pull over in one of the bays. Next, to our shock and utter dismay they put us in a room with a window where we could see our car and they went through every inch of our car. They emptied our dirty laundry and went through each item. They ripped up all of the carpet in the car!! They riffled through every single item in the car. They of course found nothing and there were no apologies.
Fast forward to traveling with little Chinese girls. Are these your children? Can you prove it? How does anyone prove that any child is theirs?! Lili and Fei had Canadian passports and their names matched ours and they were calling us Mama and Daddy. I now travel with copies of their adoption orders. I have had to show them twice now.
Once crossing the border into the USA at night the girls were very young, 3 and 4, they were asleep. We thought that would be better. NOPE. WRONG. The border folks want to see that the children aren't drugged and being kidnapped. Again, even though we have Canadian passports with matching names. The fellow opened the back door, put lights on the girls and demanded we wake them up. Lili woke easily and answered the questions. Are these your parents? Do you know where you're going? Is this your sister? Fei however doesn't wake up well, she cried and then cried harder with the strange man barking questions at her. With me trying to use my very calm mommy voice to reassure her while trying to tell the 'nice' man that she's non verbal, you're scaring her, he's telling me to be quiet, stop talking. Ug. The torture ended and we were on our way but it wasn't pretty and these are the things that help cause even more trauma in small children and parents.
Friend Catherine tells me that on a flight home her oldest daughter was taken from them to a private room and interrogated. So, now I'm acutely alert that this can happen. The girls were around 5 & 6 and we're on our way home from Las Vegas (Grand Canyon trip) and we're in a line up waiting for security and an officer bee lines for our family and flags us out of line. Panic sets in. I'm in front of the kids prepared to fight so they won't be taken away from us and then the man tells me, come to this line over here, there's no wait, it will be better for the kids. We went through the wheelchair line, they were fabulous and there was no problem at all.
Lili is 7, we're on our way to Disneyland, her ticket goes through and she is flagged as a random security check. They want to take her to separate room for a search. They're asking which bag is hers. I'm all over it, she's a child, you can't take her away from me, she doesn't have her own bag - she's a child. They're insisting on taking her, another two officers come over. I'm getting louder. Eric has his manly puffed up stance telling them in a calm John Wayne voice that this isn't going to happen. I demand to stay with her. I'm being loud and letting everyone around us know what is happening. They finally agree I can stay with her, they will just pat her down. Then I demanded a female officer thinking that would be less scary. I'm asking her if she is ok with them putting their hands on her. She agrees. The poor woman doing the pat down has so many people watching at this point that she gingerly touched her legs and her waist and said clear.
Again with Lili, she is 10, I'm taking her to China just the two of us. I have my letter from Eric and I wasn't expecting to need the letter. I had been told that they are rarely checked. Not this time. He questioned her at length. Called Eric's cell. Read the whole letter. Asked me questions about the letter. About the trip. What day would we be home? Did Eric know what day we'd be home? Name of the hotel we were staying at. Who were we seeing. It was extensive and scary. We both had a sit down to calm down before carrying on to security.
A friend has her little kid at our Macdonalds, she's young and her daughter is freaking out. Not uncommon, and really not uncommon in the playground area. Another woman/stranger decides the kid doesn't match so she must be kidnapping her. Police are called. She is asked to prove parentage. Again, how does one prove parentage?
Again, driving out of Canada, kids are all awake. Officer asks if they are our children. I say yes, I have their adoption orders here. He asks to see them. Wild. Will be awful with Kai, because his order is from BC, doesn't match the other four and has no happy family photo on it.
Leaving Beijing on Luk's adoption trip. They are upset about my baggies of formula. They finally let me keep the baggies after I make a bottle up in front of them. Then they won't let him through the metal detector with him on my chest in the carrier so I try to hand him to Eric but they won't let me do that, they take him from me with me protesting loudly and then to our horror they took him to a chair and sat him on it. But he wasn't able to sit, so I yelling to them in English and they have no clue and I'm trying to mime for them to put him on the floor and then I'm yelling to Jia who was just shy of 3 to run over and make sure he doesn't fall. I finally was aloud to go get him and and he didn't fall but it was scary.
So, basically when we hit borders the kids are warned to be quiet, answer the questions, never lie, be respectful. We have to explain to them that the nice people working to keep us safe don't understand adoption or how Chinese children have ended up with us. It's not the best part of traveling for us for sure. Sometimes, there are no issues. Sometimes they simply ask us where we are going and how long we'll be gone. Once the fellow even said to the kids 'have a great time'.
Kai is for all purposes non verbal. We are the only ones that understand him and it's hard for us. There is no chance he could make it through an interview/interrogation.
I'm still feeling pouty about not being able to plan a trip for October. Especially because the Disney tickets are on sale 25% off for Canadians right now. I'm happy to have the Citizenship application and name issues solved.
