Visiting Morelos
I decided to make the trip back home to Mexico after viewing social media posts of other DACA recipients visiting their families. They shared videos and photos of themselves in front of their family’s yards, at bustling markets full of Spanish speakers, and at national landmarks. They walked in sunny urban spaces and slurped colorful raspados from plastic cups. I was filled with a pang of nostalgia that permeated the depths of my consciousness. I too wanted to visit the places where I was raised.
One video struck me most-- it was of a DACA recipient arriving in Mexico and embracing her grandfather after 24 years. I imagined myself doing the same. It had been 26 years since I had seen my grandfather, Poli in person. I was raised in two towns, the small indigenous pueblo named Santa Catarina, and the now trendy town Tepoztlán in Morelos, a small state located south of Mexico City. I came to the U.S. when I was five years old and have lived in NYC ever since.
Over two years ago, my mother called me on a Sunday morning to tell me my grandmother Rica had died from a heart attack. It was unusual for my mother to be awake so early on a weekend. I had postponed visiting Morelos for years, assuming someday I would travel when it was convenient for me, and that my grandmother would still be waiting for me there. Once she passed away, I realized I should not have waited. She was the last emotional connection I had left in Santa Catarina.
I have been a DACA recipient since the program started in 2012. I was accepted when I was 22 years old. I’m now 32 years old. I had to apply for an advance parole travel permit from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, to be able travel internationally, and reenter the country legally. As an undocumented immigrant, I cannot reenter the country legally without permission from USCIS. Flying or leaving thew country without advance parole meant surrendering my DACA work permit.
My maternal grandparents, Rica and Poli, and my paternal grandparents, Paula and Tiburcio, raised me for the first few years of my childhood in Mexico while my parents worked in the states to save money. I considered them to be my parents, especially Rica. I spent days with her in the sunny courtyard of her home feeding birds, helping hang clothes to dry, or playing with her dogs.
The last time I had seen Rica and Poli was before I climbed on an airplane at Mexico City headed for the border between Mexico and America. I always thought I would see Rica in person again. I never imagined I would watch her funeral on Zoom.
My other grandmother, Paula, died in her home at Tepoztlán just a month before Rica. I was the last person to speak with her on the phone that night. I heard her take her last breaths while the ventilator machine beeped in the background.
Rica and Paula, 70 years old and 76 years old, died from natural causes two years ago. The stress of the Covid-19 pandemic played a role in their deteriorating health. I made ofrendas for them the last two years in a row.
Last year, the ofrenda was three layers high and fifteen inches tall. I bought three bouquets of cempasuchil and a large potted plant, and I taught myself how to make sugar skulls at home. I used little catrina dolls with pale lace trimmed dresses, a vase painted with neon colored plants, plum-sized ceramic calaveritas, and new embroidered camisas, all handmade and imported from Mexico for decorations.
I placed framed photographs of my grandmothers and their parents at the top of the ofrenda. I worked next to their portraits for five months. Every morning, I clipped the rotten leaves off the plants, and changed the water in the vases. I still keep photographs of them near my workspace at all times.
I realized that my grandfathers, both 76 years old and 79 years old, could also die at any moment. I worried I would not see them again. That’s when I set my mind on traveling to visit them in person. I was determined to speak and hear them face-to-face at least one last time. I also wanted to visit the graves of my grandmothers.
The TikTok creator, Spanglish Girl, shared her advance parole application process online. There were templates on her page for the best way to gather the required documents, which included a statement of intention, birth certificates, a doctor’s diagnosis letter, and translations. Most importantly, she recorded a video of herself reentering the country safely at an airport, using her DACA work permit and a letter of approval from USCIS.
The DACA advance parole application requires recipients to have a valid reason for traveling internationally. The three reasons include: educational or professional advancement purposes, or to visit a gravely ill relative. While casual international trips are not out of the question, the paperwork can take longer to process by USCIS.
I had to contact doctors in Morelos to find one who would write a medical evaluation letter for Poli. I paid a doctor 1,000 pesos or $50, to write a letter presenting a sound case for visiting my grandfather. I stressed the trip was urgent. He and his wife kindly and patiently learned how to use Gmail and document scanning to send me the documents.
The USCIS advance parole application for DACA recipients costs $495. All the other expenses including a renewed Mexican passport, birth certificates, translations, and plane tickets for my sister Alex and I, amounted to several times the cost of submitting the paperwork.
The lawyer who helped me fill out my paperwork told me to wait for a reply letter in the mail—I would not be notified ahead of time about whether my application was approved or not. USCIS could send a reply a month, six weeks, or even six months after the submission date. I had to be prepared to fly out of the country at any moment.
I talked with DACA recipients who lived in the U.S. and had returned home to Mexico. Most of us were in our mid to late twenties or early thirties with careers and homes. They posted videos of themselves traveling from suburban neighborhoods and large metropolitan cities to small rural and urban towns. I was told the hardest part would be a 10-15 interview with border patrol at airport security. Going back and not being able to reenter the country was my greatest fear.
Relatives in Morelos sent my mother, uncle, siblings and I, photos of Rica inside her casket the next day after she died. She had asked to be buried with shoes and clothing my mother sent from America. There were videos of my uncles carrying Rica’s casket to the local cemetery on their shoulders. A small band that played traditional banda folk music followed walked behind her casket that played Durcal’s “Amor Eterno” on repeat, a popular song played at funerals.
My family and I watched the burial ceremonies for Rica and Paula from our small living room in Queens, New York. In Mexican tradition, a wake is held for one to three days, there are daily prayers for eight days, the casket is taken to a local church for funeral services, and then finally, the casket is carried through the streets to the local cemetery on the eighth day with live music. The family of the deceased hosts mourners, friends, and visitors who attend the prayers and funeral proceedings with food and drinks each day.
My relatives in Mexico streamed the daily prayers from our family home in Santa Catarina after she was buried. When we wanted to help prepare food for the daily evening prayers, look at my grandmothers’ faces in person one last time, or help clean their belongings, we could only sit in our living room and talk to our relatives on Zoom.
I received a letter of approval six weeks after I mailed my application for advance parole. I had made calls to speed up the review of my case. I meticulously prepared my paperwork to have it approved in time for the Christmas holidays in Mexico. I was given five weeks to travel, from the end of November to the beginning of January. I had to return to America by the exact date provided by immigration services, or my reentry could be denied, and I could be deported.
My ticket back into the country was an inkjet sheet of paper from USCIS, stating I was permitted reentry until the first week of January. Several things could have happened to this sheet of paper: it could have been lost inside other papers, forgotten inside a book, been ruined by spilled liquid, or dropped on the way to the airport. For the amount of labor and expenses that DACA recipients spend in getting advance parole for international travel, the American government could issue a durable reentry pass that is waterproof, or perhaps thicker than a sheet of regular computer paper.
I was too worried to travel on my own. My sister Alex accompanied me, she was already familiar with Santa Catarina and our relatives. We scrambled to get plane tickets for the end of December as soon as I got my letter of approved. I called my relatives to let them know I would be arriving at the Benito Juarez airport in Mexico City during the posadas festivities.
Las Posadas are an eight-day Christmas celebration when families take turns hosting holiday parties. Each day is celebrated with a home cooked meal such as tamales and posole, live music, singing, and fireworks. It was an excellent opportunity to spend time with family, their friends, and get reacquainted with local traditions.
As an undocumented immigrant, any event that may involve an arrest is a risk to be considered seriously. Even attending protests is not safe. In America citizens can protest for their rights. In other countries, protestors can face persecution or physical harm from police enforcement. Yet for the rest of us who must be careful with the law, it is safer to be an observer than a participant.
On the day of travel, I couldn’t sleep. I walked into the airport sleep deprived and nervous. I had to force myself to face the discomfort of flying. I spoke with a DACA recipient who changed their mind before boarding the plane, left the airport, and went home. I too had thought about cancelling my flight or leaving the airport.
Some relatives criticized my decision to travel back home to Mexico as stupid and risky. I temporarily placed work, home, and relationships on hold. The urgency to reconnect with my relatives and visit home was greater than the comfort and safety of the present.
When the airplane left the airport, I could not turn around to go back home in NYC. This caused a great deal of distress during the flight, scenarios of getting stuck in Mexico and not being able to return home ran through my mind. I kept repeating to myself I would reenter the country safely and return to my regular routine. I learned from previous flights that to cope with motion sickness and travel anxiety I had to take deep breaths and keep my eyes open. I looked out the airplane window during lift off.
I wanted to be mentally and spiritually present for when our plane crossed the border into Mexico. I was returning to the home I had tried so hard to forget. The Mexican American border had dominated the entirety of my early 20s—the dilemma of wanting to leave NYC, wanting to stay, and not wanting to do anything at all. Then there were the issues that came with being undocumented, such as not knowing whether there will ever be citizenship reform, whether to be publicly open or not about my immigration status and face the judgment that came with it, or not knowing what will become to my parents as they get older, without any retirement savings or the documentation to visit home.
My sole goals for the trip were to reconnect with my family and indigenous Mexican cultural heritage. During the decades of assimilation in America I had denied my own background, to be able to move on and adjust to my new settings. Since I had left Mexico, I realized I knew little about my grandparents and their family histories. I wondered who my ancestors were and what they did. I felt a sudden need to meet my extended family and ask them questions about themselves. I wanted to know about where our families came from and who they were. This missing piece of the puzzle was essential in learning and accepting who I was.
Most of my classmates during childhood were also immigrants who faced similar struggles— preserving their cultural heritage while adjusting to a new home. I felt pressured to speak English and to learn about American culture. I blended in so well by my early twenties no one knew where I was from unless I told them. I rarely spoke about being undocumented or my family’s history, I didn’t want to be perceived differently by my immigration status or cultural background.
Many undocumented elders, such as parents and grandparents, without any form of American legal paperwork to re-enter the country, never return
home to Mexico. If they leave, they can’t come back, or they have to cross the border illegally to reenter the country. It is a difficult sacrifice many choose. I also have relatives and family friends who came to the states, worked, and then returned home. These were not stories of failure-- they were immigrants who had temporarily lived and worked in the U.S. only to find out they did not belong here.
When I arrived to NYC, I was reluctant to fit in. My parents bought me Timberland boots, a Miami Dolphins jacket, a beanie, and they cut my hair short to blend in with the other kids, gone were the frilly dresses and light summer clothes I wore year-round in warm sunny Morelos. I was pressured by my family to adjust as quickly as possible to living in America. They placed me in an English-speaking class less than three months of being in the country against the school’s recommendations. It was the equivalent of being pushed into a pool without knowing how to swim.
No one was more stubborn in assimilating than my mother. She constantly complained the lack of nature, the noisiness, the high rent costs, and American fast food in NYC. My siblings and I all had to learn how to speak fluent Spanish, with the correct Mexican accent, at home to communicate with her. At times she taught us words in Nahuatl. Her reluctance had its perks-- she cooked meals for us she learned to make in Santa Catarina. The first time I tried a hamburger from Burger King I couldn’t finish it. The processed ingredients and odd mix of flavors were unpleasant. I picked the pickles out of sandwiches for years.
Rica went through the painstaking effort every few months to send my mother pounds of queso anejo, or as my siblings and I called it queso de patitas, or “stinky feet cheese” because it smelled like dirty socks. For cheese that filled the entire apartment with the scent of unwashed clothes, it was sharp and had just the right crumbly texture. She also sent ground mole verde and mole poblano she prepared herself. Other goods included roasted peanuts, pumpkin seeds, tamale leaves, and toasted coconut patties. The flavors of home were always with us.
For years I subconsciously looked for Rica and Poli in the crowds of NYC. Queens just wasn’t home. I slowly willed myself to forget about my family in Morelos. Eventually I stopped calling and asking about my grandparents. It was too painful to remember what I left behind and couldn’t go back to.
Alex and I did not only travel for ourselves. We traveled for my mother and uncle, who never returned to visit their parents. They left in their twenties and they are now their fifties. My mother and uncle talked on the phone every year with my grandparents saying one day they would be reunited.
Rica had stored all of mother’s belongings the way she had left them in a separate room. She didn’t throw anything out, so my mother could easily slip back into her old life when she returned to Mexico. There were blankets, kitchenware, all my childhood toys, and outdated clothes from the 90s. There was a drawer with lipstick, colorful ribbons, a cracked cassette of Los Tigres Del Norte, and a hairbrush with dark hair still tangled in between the bristles. Every few weeks, she dusted and cleaned the room, a place for my mother to stay when she returned.
When Mexico City was announced over the airplane speaker, I looked out window and examined the mountainous topography peaking in between the clouds below us. When the glimmering city lights came into view, I finally relaxed. I had waited for this moment for 26 years. The airport staff members were short and tan like me. Listening to Spanish being spoken was like being back at Rica’s and Poli’s home.
My cousins and grandfather picked us up at the airport. I did not receive the warm welcome I had expected. My grandfather did not get out of the car to greet me or show the enthusiasm I had expected—he stayed in the driver’s seat as Alex and I climbed silently into the backseats of the car.
The two-hour ride to Morelos was quiet and long, my family seemed apprehensive and so was I. I found it difficult to speak only Spanish. The words stumbled out of my mouth reluctantly and slowly. My cousins teased my slight accent and asked why I spoke awkwardly. My relatives were strangers even if I knew we were biologically related. I was no better than an acquaintance-- connections formed solely over the phone or social media are weak.
When I arrived at my hometown, I felt like I was looking at a series of photographs. The scenes were like slips of paper, the more I tried to grasp them and hold onto them, the more they slipped from my fingers.
Poli’s and Rica’s pueblo of Santa Catarina is located in between the major city of Cuernavaca, and the town of Tepoztlán, my other home. The scenery on the drive home from the airport to the pueblo slowly changed from blankets of tiny yellow flickering lights and paved highways, to mountains and dusty concrete roads.
The Palace of Cortés is in Cuernavaca. It was built during the 16th century by one of the first Spanish conquistadors, Hernán Cortés. Both Tepoztlán and Cuernavaca were major sites of battle during the Mexican revolution. At the entrance of Tepoztlán is the statue of an indigenous warrior to commemorate the people who fought in the revolutionary war.
I later learnt my paternal great grandfather was supporter of the Zapatista movement, who fought for agricultural workers rights and for their land not to be seized by the Mexican government. There is a sepia photograph of my great grandfather with a bullet belt slung over his right shoulder in the early 1920s. I’m not sure whether he fought in the war or what role he played, but I was surprised to learn a relative from long ago was part of a major event in Mexican history.
We stayed at my uncle’s Arni’s home, a three-bedroom house in Santa Catarina. The walls are painted a bright mustard yellow and the tilling on the floor is a deep maroon. During the day when sunlight filtered into the room from the square barred windows, the space glowed golden. Alex and I, who have contrasting personalities and interests, shared a bedroom during our stay. There was a donkey next to our window which I named Guillerma. We heard fireworks from morning until night every day during las posadas. The neighborhood dogs gathered in packs and howled every night. On New Years, gun shots were fired into the air at midnight.
The family properties in Santa Catarina have been passed down for four generations of family. When I walked down the main street, I passed my mother’s cousin’s shop, my grandfather’s niece’s food stand, my grandfather’s sister’s house, and the homes of some other distant relatives.
The Tiktok videos of DACA recipients returning back to their hometowns did not prepare me for the culture shock of returning home. There is no plumbing in Santa Catarina, people store water in large containers for laundry, washing dishes, or cooking. In the houses that did not have indoor plumbing, people bathed outdoors. Clothes are washed by hand and hung to dry on a clothesline in the front yard. It is not uncommon for people to still cook over a wood stove fire.
My upbringing in a small modest apartment in Queens, NYC was by no means luxurious, but it was difficult to adjust to the pueblo’s infrastructure, even if only for a short period of time. I dreaded having to wash clothing by hand or having to carry buckets of water for warm showers in the morning. I packed enough clothing for the eleven days to not have to do laundry.
I’m embarrassed to admit that one of my first questions was, “Where can I get iced coffee? Where are the coffee shops? I want an iced latte.” not knowing that ice cubes were not sold in stores. One had to travel an hour to purchase ice from a local vendor. There was only one instant coffee brand sold in all the local bodegas. What an absurd request, to ask where I could purchase iced coffee. There were bigger problems in the pueblo than not having iced coffee.
The small locally owned bodega-like-shops are stocked with the same fruits and vegetables, and drinks and snacks high in sugars and preservatives. The Mexican government put health warnings on the labels, but people seem to ignore the text and still purchased the products. Those are the only foods sold in stores. I didn’t see any organic drinks or foods, or products low in sugar. Milk is sold in powered form.
Healthcare is difficult to access, especially reproductive care for women with lesser means. People have to commute to larger cities and towns for doctor’s visits. For safety, women ride in the front of the bus at night and in separate train cars. An average of ten women are murdered per day in Mexico. I was accompanied by Alex and my cousins wherever I went. I was repeatedly told it was not safe for me to go out alone.
Santa Catarina has areas that are more developed than others. I asked my grandfather as many questions as I could about the pueblo, it was so new in comparison to NYC. The town is still relatively new—it is about one hundred years old. The land was used for farming before families settled there to build homes and businesses after the Mexican revolution. The plot of land where my mother’s and uncle’s homes are located today was owned by my great grandmother, Julia, in the 1920s.
The local language of the pueblo was Nahuatl until the 1960s when it changed to Spanish. I asked my grandfather how to say, “good morning,” “tomato,” and “how are you?”. He spoke the words in a low confident tone. I didn’t understand anything, but he seemed happy to share what he knew. Hearing him speak was a privilege—I had listened to a dying a language from a native speaker.
My grandfather had learned Nahuatl from his parents, who learned it from their parents. It was common during his youth, the 1950s and 1960s, for local townspeople to speak it. For him, speaking an indigenous language was not a source of pride, it meant being stereotyped as poor or uneducated in urban cities. He was amused at my interest in listening to him speak. The language has no value in the pueblo, the prized language in Mexico is English. We exchanged words with admiration in our primary languages, Nahuatl and English, the way children share new discoveries and what they have learned.
In Mexico today less than 2% of the national population speaks Nahuatl. Morelos is one of the states with a significant number of speakers. It is still taught in Santa Catarina’s schools as an elective class. My mother participated in competitions during her childhood, when students had to memorize and recite numbers 1-500 in Nahuatl. She still speaks a few words, but not enough to be fluent.
The town’s infrastructure began to develop to what it is now during the early 1960s. That’s when the pueblo finally got electricity and a source of water. Before then, townspeople used candlelight and had to travel on their own to get water. There were dirt roads and smaller homes. According to my grandfather, the main source of income was agriculture until the 1990s when the town began to modernize.
I sat quietly and did my best to listen to my grandfather without judgement or interruptions, knowing I have experienced a different upbringing and life in NYC. I shared very little details about my own life, at the risk of sounding superior or snobbish. I was humbled to learn about the hardships my relatives had experienced.
We didn’t visit Rica’s home until the third day of our stay, and we planned to visit to visit Paula’s home at the end of our trip. The streets in Santa Catarina are paved with large smooth cobblestones. Alex and I walked down a hill until we reached a bright pink house. The sunlight illuminated the entrance of the home, two large metal charcoal black doors, a light grey.
I stepped in front of the gated entrance and fumbled the keys nervously; the door wouldn’t open. I had to ask my grandfather for help who complained about my ineptitude. A thin dark-haired boy greeted me at the door—he introduced himself as my cousin. Next, I met my aunt, a petite dark haired tan woman. These were the voices of people I had heard over the phone for years. I was finally able to connect their voices to faces.
I recognized the concrete steps in the courtyard that led into the kitchen immediately. The kitchen was a dimly lit room with yellow walls and a white tiled countertop. I looked at the corner of the room where I took naps on a homemade toddler sized bed while my grandmother cooked daily meals. The dining table was still the same-- it was a chipped turquoise table. I gently pulled a chair out and sat down with my elbows on the cold smooth surface. I wanted to remember what it was like to eat meals at this table, yet no memories came to mind.
Alex took a photo of me sitting at the kitchen table. I was not the same five-year-old that had sat on that seat. I didn’t want to accept this— it meant accepting decades of missed birthdays, weddings, and funerals. I stood in the room with the reluctant acknowledgement that 26 years had passed. I learned that for a place to continue to have value in our current lives, new memories must be made. A place without new memories is a forgotten one.
My interactions with old friends and acquaintances did not hold the same warmth and familiarity as I remembered from childhood. I was a passing visitor. I greeted neighbors who remembered me and asked about my parents. Other townspeople could tell I was not from there. I visited my best friend’s home, Lucero across the street, where I hugged and petted a chihuahua that I did not know had fleas. Lucero’s mother Maria, offered to give us a stack of homemade tortillas to bring back home for our mother. We explained we could not go through airport security with a stack of pan-sized tortillas.
Seeing home again and how much it had changed gave me a sense of needed closure. The strangeness of the settings made me realize that the memories and people I had held onto so tightly emotionally were not there.
After visiting my childhood home, we walked less than ten minutes downhill to Santa Catarina’s cemetery. I remembered running and skipping over the graves as a toddler and frightening myself by thinking corpses would reach out to grab my legs. I would shriek and call Poli for help.
Poli purchased large bouquets of pink and red roses, lilies, and carnations for my grandmother’s marble grave, where I apologized for not visiting while she was still alive. We walked past a tall water reservoir, and large piles of discarded dry flowers from other grave sites near the entrance of the cemetery. I had to walk back and forth to the reservoir to get buckets of fresh water for the flowers. We placed the large bouquets inside buckets on the ground near her grave.
My grandfather brought roses for my great grandparents’ graves as well. The gravestones of my relatives in the cemetery traced back to the early 1900s, and the oldest tombstone in the cemetery dates to the late 1800s. Being at the cemetery and seeing the names of my great grandparents carved into tombstones, gave me a deep sense of belonging and comfort, one I had not felt in America. Queens had rarely felt like a permanent home, it felt like a pit stop in a series of other pit stops. Over the years, I had made the conscious decision to purchase as little items of clothing and belongings as possible, just in case my family decided to return to Mexico, or we had to move. In Santa Catarina I found a place that felt permanent and stable.
When we stood in front of my great grandmother’s grave Poli turned around and said, “Aqui hay dos gringas.” I was not Mexican in the sense I imagined myself to be, I was at best first generation Mexican American. I had refused to identify as American based on pride—it would have felt like a betrayal.
“Never forget where you are from,” my grandfather always said over the phone for over two decades.
I did not want to identify with the Eurocentric culture that had wiped out my ancestors, especially after witnessing the ongoing impacts of colonialism, on friends and family in Mexico and America. My family had survived decades of colonization and discrimination in Mexico, where colorism and anti-indigenous sentiment is still strong today. If it weren’t for the Mexican revolutionary war, they would not own the property they have now in Santa Catarina and Tepoztlán. Their land might have been seized by the government or they might have been displaced from their homes. Other indigenous peoples in history have not been as fortunate.
Santa Catarina’s social values came into focus after a few days of being in Morelos. I had forgotten about the sexism, machismo, traditional gender roles, and the influence of Catholicism on social life.
Townspeople are expected to marry in their late teens or early twenties. My young cousins already had children and families. I too might have been married with children in my early twenties had I stayed in Morelos.
I was forced to bridge both identities-- accepted that I am a product of my upbringing in America. I’ve had opportunities and rights my relatives did not have. In America, I did not start dating until I was 24 years old. I have not to worry about not having access to an abortion or basic contraceptives in NYC. Over the years while I longed to return to Mexico, America had become my home. I could see myself returning to Morelos to live there permanently.
While the local infrastructure had been a shock, what I had missed most about Mexico was the sense of community from family and friends of family. I still don’t know who my neighbors are at the end of the block in Queens where I lived with my family for twelve years, and I probably ever won’t. I got on the plane back to America reluctantly—I did not want to leave the warm tropical climate or the language.
Alex and I stuffed our suitcases the night before our flights back to NYC with mini pinatas, clothing, guaraches, and clay figurines. We also packed pounds of aged cheese, mole, dried chili peppers, and spicy candy. I could barely haul the luggage onto the conveyor belt at airport security. Surprisingly, we did not get stopped by airport security. The salted beef Alex had wrapped inside a button-down shirt passed inspection. My mother and uncle gleefully chewed and savored pieces of bread and roasted seeds made in Morelos later that day in Queens.
At Texas’ airport security, I was called into the immigration services office, where border patrol looked at my DACA work permit for a few minutes. I was not questioned for fifteen minutes as I had expected. The entire process had taken less than ten minutes, and my entire family was relieved.
I hope that in the future, USCIS changes their fees and rules for advance parole permits. DACA recipients shouldn’t have to pay such high application fees or be required to submit so much documentation, whether it’s to visit Mexico or other countries, especially if they have been recipients for over six years, and have filed their work permit paperwork and paid their application fees on time.
The high advance parole application fee limits who can and cannot afford to apply. Not everyone has access to the resources required to file an application. There may be DACA recipients in rural American towns without local organizations that offer aid, recipients without access to the internet, a computer or a lawyer, or who for whatever reason, just cannot afford the fees. Flying out of the country to visit home should be a lawful right, not a financial privilege.
Most importantly, our relatives shouldn’t have to be in grave health or on their deathbed for advance parole requests to be taken seriously, or to receive prompt replies by USCIS. We shouldn’t have to justify the humanity of our relatives with written medical evaluations and advocacy letters, as evidence for visiting them, and as a reason for us recipients, to be allowed to reenter the country legally and safely.