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Today’s immigrant had an interesting journey that I would like to split into two; the first you will read today and the second first Saturday in October.

In today’s piece, my key takeaway is “even in the midst of things where things are not going according to plan there are opportunities”.

Profile​​
​Gender: Female
​Country of Residence: United States
​Profession: Medical Software Analyst

The first question I always like to ask is, why did you decide to leave your home country?

It wasn’t a specific decision for me. I was already out of school, and I wanted to further my education. I had been working for a while, and so I traveled to the US to get an admission and continue with my further education plan. But the plans were taking longer than expected, and at some point, I couldn’t go back to work at home.

So I decided to have a plan B by just staying back. It was never an initial plan to immigrate to the US at that time.

I see. Okay, so let me take it back one step. The plan was to come to the US, have your master’s degree, then go back home?

That is correct.

Okay, so how did you plan to fund the MBA, sorry, the master’s degree?

Family. My family was responsible for funding the entire thing; tution, accomodation, upkeep etc

Okay.

So the actual reason that I didn’t bother to go back was I had lost my job back home, and I also was struggling to get my official transcript for my school.

And at the time, the national university body was on strike, so it was taking longer than expected, and my school kept trying to tell me; “Hey, you have to send your transcript in by so, so, so” the deadline passed. I couldn’t get the transcript sorted.

I then lost my job back home.

At this point, I had to make another decision. In fact family and friends out here were like, “why do you want to go back now? You don’t have a job to go back to. School is already out of the question. Why don’t you have a plan B of staying behind?”

So I had to drop out of school and pause the idea of furthering my education at that time.

Wow. Before I ask the next question, why did you lose the job? I am assuming that the agreement was you are going to be on study leave and then come back. Why did they renege on that agreement?

My path was kind of different. So I did not get a student visa from Nigeria. I came to the US on a visiting visa and I had taken a month off of work. The plan was to come here and process my student visa from here, by which time I will have to stay in the country within 30 days, and also speak to an academic advisor for whatever school that I am trying to work with. Get the necessary papers and then go back home to get the actual visa.

That was my plan.

Unfortunately, when I got out here, I realized that it wasn’t going to be that quick, so I kept extending and asking for more time from work; one month became two months and then three months. At some point they just let me go.

To be fair, 3 months was a bit of a stretch. Okay, cool. So what then happened? So I’m assuming that by this time, you had had your student visa.

The school had issued my I-20 which I needed to apply for the student visa. All I needed to do next was to go out of the country and get that visa stamped on my passport, but technically on file, I was already a national student.

However I had to drop out because I could not produce the transcript.

Around this time, a family member out here had started talking about starting a business (a medical-focused one), and needed someone to help with running the business. I was like, oh, “you know what I can do that”. I mean, I have some work experience. At the time, I was about 25.

They were paying me very little money. To be fair It was supposed to be for the short term and pay under the table because I wasn’t qualified to be working visa. For me I wanted to use that time to restrategize with some income to cushion costs for any daily needs.

How long did you do this for?

I did that for three years.

Oh!!

In the early weeks, I started talking to people about the options available to me and everybody just kept pointing me in the route of, “You need to get married to an American”. I was actively meeting people, and the putting myself out there.

In fact I had met someone I was introduced to and started dating. But after a short while I thought, no, this would not work. So I stepped back.

By this time, I had become an overstayer. I could only stay in the US for up to a maximum of 6 months on a visitor visa, which had lapsed. I was not able to get my transcript sent over so school was out of questions.

Two and a half years into the US, I didn’t have legal documentation, no social security, and my driver’s license had expired. I was getting frustrated. A lot of things happened in between; trying to date somebody else, talking to other people. It was just a mess.

Because this is a newsletter more focused on the finance side of things; In that period when you were undocumented, how did you cope financially with the little pay you were earning?

Because I had been working back in Nigeria, for a few years before I came out here; I had some savings. I was working for a multinational organization that was paying quite well so was able to save about $20,000.

I also had stipends from family coming into my account every month. At that time the exchange rates were not so bad. It was about N150 to a dollar.

Then the little income I was earning here.

However, after about a year of living in my studio apartment, the first place I lived in, I got the idea to rent a two-bedroom apartment; a luxury one.

The goal was to rent out the second bedroom to people who were coming in from wherever to have their babies in the US. Around this time it became a thing

Because of my exposure to the medical field, healthcare in general, I could help them with finding the hospital out here, the doctor, pointing them in the right direction, etc so that as soon as they landed from whatever country, they had everything sorted. Including accommodation and transportation.

So it was a concierge service?

Yes, a concierge service with a contractual agreement.

That’s really interesting. And what were the numbers like? You don’t have to give me specifics, a bracket is fine.

It depends. If they had all the hospital side of things sorted and needed just accommodation, I charged $1,500 per month. At this time my rent was exactly $1,500 but I needed to bill this person that high to cover utilities, damages etc. Feeding was not included.

But if they needed the full concierge service, meaning finding the hospital, getting hospital appointments etc then the fee was much higher.

I was able to subsidize my rent, and also with the little income that I was earning I could live comfortably.

I did that for a while, actually did that well into when I had my documentation sorted, and up until the time I actually relocated from I used to live in Texas to California.

What was that transition like? I mean, this is you who used to work in a multinational in Nigeria. Clearly, they were paying really well. You were quite comfortable. To become somebody who was undocumented, now working for a startup healthcare company. What was that like for you?

Oh, it was tough. It was very tough. I came here at a very young age and it wasn’t the initial plan to end up an undocumented immigrant. I didn’t have a roadmap for this. This was something that just happened and had to pick myself up.

I remember that initially, I didn’t get the support of my family for staying back and going through all of that. Emotionally, I was constantly unhappy. I was depressed. I didn’t know who to trust, I didn’t have friends. I felt like people had too many bits of advice.

I also dealt with a lot of, when people don’t know where you’re coming from, they don’t know your story, and people tend to talk to you or advise you based on where you are in that phase.

It was a lot of struggle for me, because I was comfortable while I was back home, visited a lot of countries for work. And at that age, too, I was pretty young, so I got pretty exposed to things early on in my life.

To then deal with someone who’s a truck driver; who had never had a corporate experience, happens to find themselves out here because of visa lottery, have American citizenship, and because of that, think they are better than you.

I had to snap out of it. I asked myself “Am I going to settle in this space forever, or am I going to make something out of it”?

Yeah, so it was tough. I’ll tell you that much.

But one thing I’d say, though, on the flip side, is getting introduced to medical healthcare system logistics was one of the best things that happened to me. I didn’t know the importance of what I was learning,

Even though it was not a major corporate America but a very small office, it helped me to understand the importance of documentation, accountability, being a leader, and being a manager, in a very different world that I was not used to. I was able to gather those experiences when I had my documentation sorted and I was ready to plunge into real corporate America.

Let’s now talk about the journey back to corporate life; even while you were undocumented, you still had that entrepreneurial mindset, and you were able to carry on. What was the journey to getting the papers sorted, and then how did you move on from there?

At some point, I was dating someone who was from Nigeria, and the talk of marriage was actively on the table.

One thing about me is, I never lost sight of my faith. I’m a Christian, so I would always pray before I took any steps. With this particular person, something was just off but I couldn’t place it for a long time.

A couple of days, or, I think, a couple weeks before our planned wedding date in the US, I found out that this person wasn’t even an American citizen. He had outrightly lied to me that he was.

What was he trying to achieve by doing that?

I think he wanted to marry me and just put me there

That’s another thing I would say for anyone coming to this country; if they’re not good with research or like reading, they need to get themselves well-informed by developing a habit of reading or asking questions that would take them further.

This person had goofed by asking me to print out their social security number card for something we were trying to put together, and as I printed it out I noticed the date the social security card was issued.

And I was like, wait a minute, this person came in a year before me. I began a mental calculation from the many research I had done; I knew that if you got your green card through your parents, you would need to have stayed five of residency before you become a citizen. I had that information from my own research, so when I saw the date on that person’s social security number, I realized that they were just three years in the country.

What does that mean for you?

That means if I had gone ahead to marry that person I would have just been in limbo for another 2 years just waiting for him to get his citizenship before we began the journey of sorting mine. We had been together maybe a little over a year but I didn’t like the deceit, and I felt if you can deceive me on something like this, I wonder how many of the things you’ve deceived me on. So I ended the relationship.

Remember that person I dated when I initially stayed back? We got back in touch. I remember the first thing he said to me was, “are you ready to be my wife now?”

One second, this is a personal question; What was your concern in those early days that you broke things off?

For context, remember I was just fresh from Nigeria and was a bit of a church girl.

The guy was covered in tattoos and wasn’t working in corporate America. He was working at some manufacturing company or something as a floor worker. For me, it didn’t match what I had in mind for myself as a spouse

We met up and started dating again. Going out this time around I got to know that, oh, this person is actually really cool. He treated me so well, significantly better than the men from my own country.

Before long I got married. And he was the kindest human ever (I say was because we divorced after about 7 years together). But this man was just a nice human being, and I am thankful to God that I did not judge a book by its cover, by its appearance. Oh, my goodness, the love, the care……it was such a breadth of fresh air being treated so well.

I am assuming, of course, that meant you could then have your paper sorted?

Correct.

What did that do for you from a financial point of view, as in, how did that then propel you to move forward?

Oh, it did a lot eventually. But I had to cross another hurdle.

By this time I had about $10,000 saved, and never touched the money because it was supposed to be for rainy days only. In my head, I thought if I ever had to sort out my resident documentation, I wanted to be ready for all the associated costs. So the minute we got married, I waited about a few more months, I filed my application, and …

…..to be cont’d.

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