Bloggerlife.blog

06/21/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

The spinning globe

It is early on a sunny Saturday morning and I am at my desk searching for something to write about today. On a corner of my desk is a solar powered world globe that I was gifted when I left Amigos Center, the immigration law office in Florida where I got my “start”. When the sun shines, the little globe goes round and round. I watch it move and remember what a grand experience it was working for Amigos Center.

But in my blog-o-sphere this morning I consider that I may have to take a hiatus from blog-writing if my brain won’t produce topics to explore. I realize that I mostly write about my immigration experiences, my 12 Step life encounters, and the state of current affairs in these United States. Sometimes I just run out of stuff until I start typing, and then my lava lamp brain produces a topic. 

This has been a tough week in my immigration life. I had two citizenship cases that were temporarily denied due to technicalities that the USCIS officers discovered during their questioning of the clients. Both clients were requesting a medical exemption from the civics and English language tests, and both medical exemptions were approved. That is a big first step. But during the interviews, which included interpreters for my clients’ language, the officers both found some things they did not like. Both issues arose from my clients’ poor memory and inability to recall certain facts – the very reasons that we got a medical exemption in the first place. Despite my commentaries to the officers, we now have to wait to find out what the final decision is. With USCIS, this means it will be weeks before I get letters with final decisions.

By the end of the week I felt unusually tired. Part of this is because my son, Ted, is facing a big decision to be made pretty quickly. I can only pray that whatever he decides will be in his best interests. So I have been noodling about him all week. This is a reminder that, no matter how old children become – and both of mine are now in their 40’s – I will not be worry-free as long as I am alive…

Yesterday I got a referral from a domestic violence shelter. The client is a young woman from Morocco who married a US Citizen in good faith. As soon as she got here from her home country the abuse started. It is a typical sad story of a woman forced to be isolated from any community and subject to painful beatings. In this case, the abuser also opened bank accounts and credit cards in her name and has since emptied the accounts and maxed out the cards. He did file the paperwork for her green card. She has what is called a “Conditional Green Card” that will expire in April of next year. In these cases it is necessary to prove to USCIS that the marriage was and is a legitimate one. If approved, then the green card’s conditions are removed and the person becomes a full-fledged green card holder.

In my client’s case there is a major complication. She wants to end the marriage for obvious reasons. Removing conditions on a marriage-based green card becomes a lot more complicated if the client wants to end that marriage. I have had other cases like this one and can report that there is a procedure for proving that the marriage is irretrievably broken because of the abuse that my client has sustained. Her abuser is a very cruel man who beat her, burned her with hot tea, isolated her from any other persons, took all the money she earned, and threatened to murder her. There is no doubt that her life is in danger if she returns to him.

 I listened to her story and tried to find the right words to give her any hope at all. I felt a deep sorrow for her and for the other vulnerable clients that we have in our care. By the time I got home I told Jan that I could not go to movie night at our friend’s house. All I wanted to do was to turn on a Cardinals game and hope that the boys would pull off a win.

They did. It was a good game, a reminder that life as I know and appreciate it is rock steady even if I am a little off kilter for a while.