A Face of Asylum

Gina Cala sits in front of Pilar Lizarazo. She leans forward to focus on getting the red nail polish to spread evenly across Pilar's toes. When Gina does house calls as a cosmetologist, her chats with her clients are reduced to work and family, dotting on her 4-year-old son, Juan Pablo. But with Pilar, they bond over their lost lives in Colombia. 

They lament the city they used to love, it never feeling safe enough to raise a family. How Bogota always changed and grew, but in the last decades, the city started feeling like it had grown past its capacity. 50-year-old  Pilar tells her that at 34, Gina will readjust to almost everything. Almost everything. 

Gina prides herself on being adaptable during her entire immigration process. Always keeping a cool head and a serene look on her face when she admits to having been undocumented in the United States for a period of time. Her sister, Carolina Cala, boasts about how collected Gina has been, even during the tumultuous process of seeking asylum. 

Gina's chirpy voice stops calling her client's doll when she talks about two occasions. When she talks about the career she lost and when she shares the fears that made her want to leave Colombia. 

Gina studied at University La Gran Colombia, dedicating her life to get her degrees in two fields she was passionate about, social work and law. 

Gina said that for her, careers don't just feel like jobs. Having had to move on from her career felt like moving on from a part of herself.

"The career you studied so hard for becomes a part of how you identify. Losing that feels like losing a part of your identity," Gina said. 

Gina had to trade her briefcase for a caboodle full of nail polishes when she arrived in North Carolina in 2018.

 Now that she is in the middle of her asylum hearings, she is hopeful that if her case passes, she will be able to find a job as a social worker. 

Gina says it will never get easier knowing she left part of her identity in Colombia, but she would do it again to protect her most important identity, the one as a mother. Gina had many reasons to flee from her native country, but the ultimate factor was her son. 

 Juan Mora, Gina's husband, also worked as a political lawyer defending Colombian soldiers who were injured in the line of duty. Most of the soldiers were injured by the  Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or more commonly known as FARC, a guerilla group with Marxist-Leninist believes enforced by violence.

 In June of 2016, peace treaty negotiations between the Colombian government and FARC began. The peace treaty gave FARC members immunity from their previous crimes and transitioned them into a legitimate political party. 

Juan's life had been threatened every step of his prosecution. However, if FARC became a government-sanctioned political party, the Colombian government could no longer protect him or his case. 

Restless nights and nervous breakdowns over their situation started to tear away at their family. Finally, in November 2016, the treaty was approved by the Colombian congress, making all their late-night what-if conversations real. 

A month later, in December 2016, Gina began to worry about the safety of a new family member. She was pregnant with Juan Pablo. Gina decided to spend her pregnancy close to her sister Carolina and her mom, who had immigrated to Charlotte in 2006. 

Gina already had an approved tourist visa for visiting her family in North Carolina and was planning to return to Colombia for Juan Pablo's birth. However, Juan Pablo had other plans to speed up his own immigration process and was born in Charlotte.

When Gina returned to Bogota with her newborn baby, she saw her city with completely different eyes. 

"It's one thing to talk about how packed it was, and it's another to live it. I felt suffocated," Gina said.

Gina felt that Bogota was changing for the worse, making it impossible for her to envision a safe future for her son. 

That was when their plan changed, and they began to think about a permanent move to the United States. The Cala family took some time to build their savings, arrange the details and spend the allotted time between their last visit.

In October 2018, the entire Cala family returned to Charlotte under tourist visas, but with the intention of overstaying. They lived with Carolina, used part of their savings to immediately buy a car and started hunting work to grow their savings for building an asylum case.

Rick Su, Professor of Immigration Law at UNC-Chapel Hill, said that to claim asylum in the United States, you have to make your claim inside the border within a year of your stay. Su said that most cases take between 2-4 years, but cases like Gina's can be processed much faster compared to people who claim asylum at the border.

In November of 2020, the Cala family was scheduled for their interview with a United States and Immigration Services official (UCIS). 

At the time of their interview, their temporary tourist driver's license had expired, so Gina had to turn to one of her clients to drive them 6 hours to the UCIS office in Arlington, Virginia. 

In January of 2021, Gina and Juan were allowed a temporary work permit, Social Security and drivers license. Gina is waiting anxiously for the response from UCIS if these privileges will be extended permanently.

Gina used to joke with her clients that she would pay them to get married to speed up her legalization process. But now, even with the temporary reassurance, some of the weight has been lifted off her shoulders.

She feels much safer raising Juan Pablo in Charlotte than she ever did in Bogota, but that doesn't mean she doesn't still worry constantly about him. She worries about all the small things she can't give her son because their entire income is going to this process.

But mostly, Gina worries about the cultural disconnect she and her son will have. They'll speak different languages, understand different customs and Juan Pablo may never see his parents the way they saw themselves in Colombia. 

Gina said the first time she realized this was last week when Juan Pablo was working on an art project for school, coloring paper ties for all the dads who have to wear them to work.

While Juan Pablo concentrated on staying between the lines, he asked his dad, "Why don't you wear ties to work?"

"That was the moment that truly made me sit down and have a cry," Gina said. "My son will never see his father the same way his dad sees himself. His dad used to live in a suit with a collection of ties of every color and every pattern, one for every occasion while he was practicing law. And Juan Pablo will never see his dad looking like that on a daily like I did." 

Gina lets out a heavy sigh while she starts topping Pilar's red varnish with a topcoat. 

"At the end of the day, we're all citizens of the world. Borders were created for politics, and politics were made by some of the worst people in the world," Gina said.

Gina starts removing the toe separators and looks up at Pilar with a smile.

"You're all done, doll!"

Politics tore her away from her career and her native country. Gina will not allow politics to tell her she is not allowed to seek a safer future for her son.

Sources:

Gina Cala:980-339-9475

Carolina Cala: 704-774-9218

Pilar Lizarazo: 980-315-3396

Rick Su: [rick.su@unc.edu]