This one hit very close to home. I too was born in Iran. My family too emigrated to the United States with my father staying behind. Our family too grew up poor in the United States and managed to work very, very hard collectively and individually to realize common measures of success in this country.
I want to address an aspect of this piece that seems to be a bit controversial in these comments. Many seem to be sympathetic to the father and feel that the daughter is unappreciative and uptight. I completely understand where she's coming from here from my own experience.
One very vivid memory I have as a child was my brother, a teenager at the time, yelling at someone on the phone like I had never seen someone yell before in my short life. He then slammed the phone down and ran into the bathroom crying – one of two times I've ever seen him cry to this day.
Only a couple years ago I shared this memory with him, asking him who the hell was on the other side of that phone call to generate that sort of reaction from him.
It was our father. He called to see how everything was going. He was being cheery and asking how everything was going. Things weren't going well, and he had thrust a teenager who lived a very comfortable life back in Iran a couple years earlier straight into the role of "man of the house." We were poor, my brother was bullied endlessly, and my mom had become depressed.
When you've been abandoned by a father, you don't have the patience for the "fun uncle." The abandoner wasn't there for the hard times – the bankruptcy, the eviction, the teasing, the depression, the canned food your classmates would donate that ended up on your table, the toys they would donate that would end up under your Christmas tree. The abandonment is a burden that follows you throughout life. It manifests itself in the form of insecurity, anxiety, and/or a shitty attitude.
Sorry if that's too deep for HN, but this struck a chord with me. Dug up a part of me that I bury way deep down.
This sort of situation can have tragic consequences too. In high school, a friend of mine was in the same situation: Mother and kids in the US while the father is stuck in Iran. They were wealthy so they didn't go through the added stresses of poverty in the US and my friend seemed to everyone to be a happy go lucky guy. He was popular, involved in the community, and did very well at academics but we found out too late that the stresses in the family over the separation had developed into a drinking problem. A few days before his father finally managed to get a Visa and arrive in the US, he got too drunk at a party and stopped breathing. The psychological toll on the entire family is hard to understate, even when life is otherwise good.
This kind of separation happens quite a bit within immigrant communities, especially nationalities that have long waiting lists for green cards, let alone undocumented immigrants. Due to some quirks in the Visa system, you have to leave the country in order to change your status which runs the risk of delays or outright rejection. When the parents are on separate visas, one can get let through with the kids while the other is stuck indefinitely. Often times that means that the parent not granted a visa becomes an undocumented immigrant in the host nation and the other is forced to return home because all of their stuff and financial obligation/jobs are in the US. If they can't find a job in the host nation, the stuck parent often moves back to their support network in their birth country, further complicating things.
I'm an Australian, originally here on E3, then H1-B, now green card. I got stuck on just such a trip, to Barcelona. The local US embassy called the wrong number to notify me of my updated passport (which was delivered to a post office only a couple of blocks away, which I wouldn't find out for weeks), and never tried again.
I was stuck for a month, with no possible way of getting back to the US. It's a truly sickening, horrifying feeling, that the only solution is to blow up your life and go back where you came from.
I was extremely lucky that my employers lawyers cajoled them into communication before my money completely ran out.
The requirement to go to a third country to update status seems pretty routine. When I was on a foreign visa in east Asia, I knew of many Canadians who flew to Hong Kong for a week in order to get a new visa.
Thank you for your personal story. It is interesting the angle of the father being the one who abandons the family. Did your father have the option of coming with you at the same time and he chose not to?
The father in the New Yorker article seems to have stayed behind in order to allow for the other to get the visa, the implication being that otherwise they wouldn't have crossed over.
Was the situation the same in your case? Or did your father simply chose to stay behind out of his personal comfort?
According to the US State Department, anyone who visits Iran and stays for longer than a year requires an exit permit to leave the country. I don't know much about the politics of Iran but I'd imagine that applies to everyone born there. Due to that exit permit requirement it's probably much easier for women and children to leave than for the father.
I don't think he needs to be put on trial. He probably based his generalisation on a certain view of Northern Europe. It's a common mistake to make - a bit like seeing all Americans like white Texans.
I want to address an aspect of this piece that seems to be a bit controversial in these comments. Many seem to be sympathetic to the father and feel that the daughter is unappreciative and uptight. I completely understand where she's coming from here from my own experience.
One very vivid memory I have as a child was my brother, a teenager at the time, yelling at someone on the phone like I had never seen someone yell before in my short life. He then slammed the phone down and ran into the bathroom crying – one of two times I've ever seen him cry to this day.
Only a couple years ago I shared this memory with him, asking him who the hell was on the other side of that phone call to generate that sort of reaction from him.
It was our father. He called to see how everything was going. He was being cheery and asking how everything was going. Things weren't going well, and he had thrust a teenager who lived a very comfortable life back in Iran a couple years earlier straight into the role of "man of the house." We were poor, my brother was bullied endlessly, and my mom had become depressed.
When you've been abandoned by a father, you don't have the patience for the "fun uncle." The abandoner wasn't there for the hard times – the bankruptcy, the eviction, the teasing, the depression, the canned food your classmates would donate that ended up on your table, the toys they would donate that would end up under your Christmas tree. The abandonment is a burden that follows you throughout life. It manifests itself in the form of insecurity, anxiety, and/or a shitty attitude.
Sorry if that's too deep for HN, but this struck a chord with me. Dug up a part of me that I bury way deep down.