Many Americans are protesting what they see as dictatorial tendencies in President Donald Trump, which is something Cuban native Maite Mesa can relate to (Photo Credit: Beth Fitzpatrick).
Maite Mesa’s journey to become a United States citizen does not fit the stereotype one might hear while listening to political figures debate the issue.
Mesa did not cross the Mexican/American border illegally.
She did not come to the “land of the free” to take “Black jobs.”
The nurse came to America because she wanted to escape a Communist and dictatorial regime in her home country, Cuba.
Houston area nurse Maite Mesa (left) casts her vote in the 2024 United States presidential election (Photo courtesy of Maite Mesa).
Mesa told RegalMag.com, “I decided to become an American citizen because who doesn’t want to have that advantage? Also, because I never planned to go back to my country. America became, and is still, my country. I have lived longer here than in my own country, and I have no desire to go back to the place I was born at any point.”
She added, “I came from Cuba in a raft with my 6-month-old daughter in June 1992. I got my social security (card), and I-95, I believe, within three days after I got to this country. Then a year later, I applied to get my residency thanks to The Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), enacted in 1966.”
The CAA is a U.S. law that allows Cuban nationals who have been living in the United States for at least one year and one day to apply for lawful permanent residency (a green card).
This special pathway to residency was created in response to the large number of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s regime after the Cuban Revolution.
Mesa added, “Four years later, I applied to get my citizenship, went to the interview, passed it, and got it. It was very easy
for Cubans like me to go through the process.”
This was before the Balsero crisis, also known as the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis, which was a mass exodus of Cubans to the United States via makeshift rafts and boats.
This occurred after Castro announced that those wishing to leave Cuba could do so without hindrance, following riots and protests in Havana. Over 35,000 Cubans attempted the perilous journey to Florida in five weeks.”
While Mesa’s parents and grandparents did not realize how dangerous life was under Castro, Mesa knew that a better life existed outside of her home island.
Mesa said, “I was born in a small town. In Cuba, I went to the University and that opened my mind to realize that the Cuban leader Fidel was a dictator, a liar, and that my parents didn’t realize that we lived in a dictatorship. They were only 12 years old when the Cuban Revolution took place, so they had no idea. They could not see the difference between before and after the revolution. Besides, they were very poor, so to my grandfathers, the revolution was something great and that’s what my parents believed.
“When I finished University in 1991, I had no place to live, no future, no job. I had lived in a boarding school since I was 11 years old and worked daily for the revolution. There is child slavery in Cuba. (It) is not officially recognized. But there is no one (who) ever mentions this.
“So, from that point on I had to go out and find a place to live on my own. There are no places to live, nothing to rent or buy, even if you have the money. The laws are completely crazy in Cuba, no food, and many women get (hit) up daily by their husbands in Cuba. No one talks about that. There (are no) rights, no solution to any problems. No one can help. It is real hell. Only if you ever go through the process (or) situation can you really understand it.
“One day, I thought that if nothing could be changed, and I had no way out of this situation, what was the point of continuing to live like that?
“I wanted to kill myself and my daughter. At that point, I was really desperate. I was living in total poverty in a bus terminal with my daughter in my arms. I didn’t see any point any longer.
“(The) next morning, I decided to leave the country, same day, at night, I left in a raft. Six days later, we got picked up by the Miami Beach Coast Guard.
“I couldn’t believe how life was so much different here. Still today, I remember the first time I was in the U.S.”
Mesa added, “Only if you walk in hell can you appreciate heaven. People who have always had it all take everything for granted. People born in the U.S. can’t understand what it is to be poor because even the poorest person in the U.S. is rich compared to people in other countries. And sometimes, some people like me who have been through hell, come to this country as immigrants and are so ungrateful, so egotistical that they forget or pretend to forget how terrible life can be out there, and don’t want anyone else to get a second chance in life.
“I really can’t understand how they can’t have any compassion, no compassion for who they might have been once.
“Like any immigrant, I have done all kinds of jobs, the ones that get little pay and no one appreciates it.
“The ones that people take advantage of you, since supposedly anyone can do it.
“But the truth is, no one wants to do it because it is hard and painful and no pay.
“I had to sometimes work three different jobs at the same time to survive. I was a single mom with a baby, no family or husband. I had to do whatever I had to do to survive.
“(The) U.S. isn’t easy either. But you can make it here. Little by little, everything starts working out for everyone who comes here if they want to.
“I learned English. I went back to school. I became an RN. A lot of sacrifice and many nights without sleep, but at least you feel you have control over your own life, not like Cuba.”
For more information about becoming an American citizen, visit the links below.
becomeacitizentoday.com
https://houston.naturalizenow.org/resources/
https://usahello.org/citizenship/prepare/
