2001 Twenty-one years ago today, I got off a plane at Sea-Tac International Airport as a fresh immigrant to the Unites States. I was exhausted after an almost 24-hour trip with a layover. It was only my second airplane trip ever, and I’d prepared poorly for it. Back in Bucharest, Romania, because I knew I…
Tag: US immigration
Extreme Vetting and Dreams Deferred—A Chapter from My Thriller
Before the times of COVID-19, all the way back to the beginning of January 2020, I finished my new novel, an immigration thriller called Extreme Vetting. The title comes from a catchword coined by our own salesman president, and it refers to the treatment of immigrants in the United States—undocumented and documented—under the current administration….
The Vale of Tears
I moved to the United States from Romania in 2001, and it took a family tragedy for me to understand that I cannot straddle the world and have two homes half a planet apart. Now that I’ve learned the limitations of living in the real world, where the laws of physics apply no matter what…
A Little Bit of Wisdom
I was born with ten fingers and ten toes. My mother was so relieved when she counted them, that she failed to notice that I was born without a national identity.