Hi, I’m Illegal: Part II

Remember when I told you about how as of November 24th I was illegally living in the country, but not to worry because it would all be fine? That was a simpler time, when we played kick the can in the street, walked 5 miles to school in the snow, and the milkman and paperboy (even TV!) were just around the corner. Wait, what? Just go with it.


Here’s a little lesson for you, helping you understand this story a little better. In Central America there is something called the CA-4 and it is made up of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. What being in the CA-4 means is that basically if you have a visa for one country, you have a visa for all four countries. So, when I came to Honduras on August 24th I received a 90 day visa, but it was not just a visa for Honduras, those 90 days counted for all of the CA-4. Long story short: I needed to be out of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in 90 days. This did not happen, thus the reason we needed to renew our passports.

So here’s what happened. Triny says she is going to renew/extend/fix/do something with our passports so we can pass the borders with no trouble. We had already planned out our trip, with Brett and Abby’s sisters having plans to fly out of Guatemala and Nicaragua. We didn’t have a ton of wiggle room, especially because we figured, as it stated in our teacher’s contract, that this would all be taken care of ahead of time. So, Triny makes a few calls to her immigration contacts in San Pedro Sula and finds that the best way to deal with the situation is to just pay a simple fine at the border when you get there. Then, at some point we’d have to pass into Costa Rica (not part of the CA-4) in order to get 90 more days in the country of Honduras. After talking to her contacts, Triny discussed our trip with us and said that the school would pay for us to go to Costa Rica for three days at the end of our trip. Not a bad deal, right? Twist our arm a little harder, then maybe we’ll go. It all sounded great- we just pay fines at the borders and go to Costa Rica for a few days and then we are good as new. Right? HA. I wish.

When we told this plan to Mr. Bob, he had his doubts. He said that we better make absolutely sure that we could pay this fine at the border. We obviously agreed, because with our guests leaving from Guate and Nicaragua, we couldn’t afford to be sent back to where we came from, not to mention, that would completely ruin our whole trip. Mr. Bob made a couple of calls to the immigration office for us and they told him something completely different than what Triny had said. They stated that we needed to go to San Pedro Sula (2.5 hours away) and get all of this taken care of ahead of time. After hearing this, we investigated a little bit more, and despite Triny’s insistence that we could pay at the border, we convinced her to go to San Pedro and extend our passports. Of course this is being left to the last minute and we’re quite annoyed at this point that all of this wasn’t taken care of a month ago, before our passports were even expired. Never-the-less we were grateful that she was taking the time to bring our passports to San Pedro. She asks us the date we are leaving Honduras, we say “Dec. 23rd.” With the incompetence of the immigration office personnel at work, we get an extension until “Dec. 22nd” and for some reason…completely unknown, and I am sure completely stupid, Triny is not able to convince them to make it Dec. 23rd. Blah blah blah some more drama happens. But in the end we get it changed to Dec. 23rd.

Important Note: This extension or whatever it is, is a stamp in our passports with Dec. 23, 2008 written in plain ol pen.

Come December 23rd we leave Honduras, traveling from Copan Ruinas to Ranchero, Guatemala. It doesn’t take long for things to go awry. We get to the Guatemalan, Honduran border, go up to the booth with everyone else from our shuttle and instead of getting the quick stamp, a pat on the back, and a “welcome to Guatemala,” we get lectured and threatened by the border officers. They asked us when we were planning to be out of the CA-4 and we said, Jan. 3rd. Well apparently, we didn’t have to be out of Honduras by December 23rd, we had to be out of the CA-4 by December 23rd. Technically, in the fine print, we have five extra days to leave. But that still only gave us until December 28th to get our butts outta there. I’m sorry Miss Border officer but there is no way this was going to happen. We wouldn’t even be leaving Guatemala by then, let alone Nicaragua where Abby’s sisters were flying out on Jan. 2nd. Pretty much we created a bit of a scene with the border guards and finally just said, “okay we’ll be out by then,” apologized for holding up our shuttle, and then left the border annoyed and pissed off…more at Triny than anyone. She has been doing this for 15 years. Come on lady. When we are back in the car, Abby is talking to Triny on the phone who is basically giving us no help at all. When Abby asked the plain question, “so what should we do?” Miss Triny just said “I don’t know, all of the borders are different.” Hm. Okay, well first of all, maybe you should recognize the fact that this is your job and this is not freaking forgetting to copy one of my tests! This is our passports, traveling, and our legality in the country we are talking about. Second of all, and not Triny’s fault, but why the HELL are the borders all different. They create the CA-4 and then nothing is consistent. Consistency- it’s a beautiful thing. You go to a McDonalds in Napa, CA it’s the same as in Ann Arbor, MI. You order a Big Mac, you know what you’re getting, you step up to the cashier and they ask you the same prescribed lines. Consistency. And this is just burgers! YOU WOULD THINK people might try and be consistent when it comes to the lives of actual people. You would think this, but you would be wrong.

She hangs up with Triny and we’re in the shuttle about 20 minutes when Abby, sitting in the front seat, turns around to me and says,

“I just changed the 23 to a 28. So you should probably do the same.”

I think most of you know me as some one who tends to play by the rules. But you know what? Sometimes you just do what you gotta do. No one was making this easy for us and it was time to take things into our own hands. Not to mention, a 3 to an 8? It’s like the easiest possible number change! That 23 was just asking for it. So, black pen in hand, my December 23rd because a December 28th. Five days past that is January 2nd, the day we need to leave and we are golden. Or so we thought.