Painful Memories of Escaping Communism Legally

To escape communism, its dire poverty, and the total lack of opportunity for a good life for my present and future family, I left behind everything I have ever known and all the people I loved who loved me back. I embarked on a journey to freedom that has given me, my mom, and my children a life that I had never dreamed of having.

For four long years, before I was given permission to emigrate, to depart the lovely communist country I was born and raised in, I was interviewed and interrogated at the most inconvenient times, sometimes in the middle of the night, had to file hundreds of sheets of various forms, affidavits, all notarized, translated, and quite expensive to obtain; I had to pay for my “free” government education I received as part of being a Romanian citizen, schooling which suddenly became valuable because I was going to live with the capitalist enemies and my education was too important to the communist police state and it cost an x number of dollars which I had to pay in cash. Not having such cash at all, I had to rely on my American husband.

At that time, I did not know that I would spend four more years in America being interrogated by the INS and filling out paperwork, notarizing them, paying expensive fees with money I did not have, before I could become a naturalized American citizen. Today all that process has become an expensive joke as illegals waltz across the border greeted by a welcoming committee of NGOs who give them money, clothes, phones, apartments, plane tickets, bus tickets, voter registration cards, and free reign of America, no questions asked.

Knowing what I know now, would I do it again? I am not sure since communism has followed me to America in my golden years. I had thirty years of what made America great, and it was wonderful. But it is waning fast and becoming communist.

Communism did not really die, as the west proclaimed assuredly in 1989, it went underground, it regrouped, and re-emerged stronger and more insidious than ever on the shores of the most powerful nation on earth that had fought communism. McCarthy was right. Not only do we have communism now, but it has also spread globally.

One of the many reason for my journey was that I was born to impoverished parents who were not Communist Party members, were part of the proletariat, did not have college degrees, were ordinary people who worked hard in the communist factories for a paltry salary and a rental apartment in a small, grey, reinforced concrete high rise complex which the communists built in a hurry to house urbanites and villagers alike whom communists dispossessed of their land, homes, and family valuables. We had no hope of building a more prosperous life and nothing to look forward to in such an oppressive regime. I had to escape and, even though I was an only child, my parents agreed that it was the only way.

Did I want to leave behind my parents, my friends, my relatives, my books, my grandparents, and all memorable places attached to my growing up? Most certainly not, but I had no choice. The communists made it difficult for people like us to succeed, all venues were closed to us and were reserved for communist party members, their children, and even their extended families. The dear leader’s armies also had special privileges not reserved for the likes of us, simple people spied upon by an army of informants to make sure that we took our place in the daily drudgery, cogs in the communist well-armed machine.

When I moved to America legally, the locals called people like me derisively Eurotrash. To my face, they were welcoming, unsure where exactly my country was on the map as geography was not their strong suit or any suit for that matter. I was the stranger who left her family to come here – who does that, they said, and they were right unless they knew where I came from. Nobody in her/his right mind would move halfway around the globe for a better life, with no family at all, no friends, and fighting new prejudices and rejections from the locals. The rejection was so obvious, you could have cut it with a knife.

If I had money for an air fare back then, and they were quite expensive, I would have returned to my birth home, but I was too stubborn to admit that I was wrong, and that America and my new family did not exactly welcome me with open arms.

I endured the pain and eventually became comfortable with my new life and family, becoming a naturalized American. My roots still live inside me but I am an American citizen. The apartment that I grew up in, our “home,” is still standing today, but I found it more foreign with each visit to my homeland. The expression, you can’t go home again, rings true because you can never find again what you are looking for.

Is there any place left in the world to escape to from the global communism that is infecting the planet and our country?