Nov 13 – This Black Friday marks 10 years in the United States for me. It’s got to be a sign.

Exactly 10 years ago, my entire world collapsed as we boarded the flight to the United States, leaving behind everything I knew and loved.

That’s my city, Suva, where I grew up.

5 months later, the looting, raping and burning down of Suva City began during the third coup in the Fiji Islands.

That’s when we knew that we couldn’t go back anytime in the near future. What we didn’t know is that somehow, due to our nonsensical immigration system, my family would achieve legalization while I would ‘age-out.’

Unlike most DREAM Act students who (maybe thankfully) cannot remember their original countries, I have constantly pined to go back and contribute to a state that is slowly turning into a pariah island-country.

Those hopes were slowly burned to ashes over years of turmoil in Fiji, while building relationships in the United States. My family settled in the United States. I soon found myself calling the San Francisco Bay Area home and appreciating the higher education opportunities that I would not have gotten back in Fiji.

Last week, when I did an interview on Radio Australia, the announcer noted that I had lost my Fijian accent–the ‘eh’–and replaced it with a laid-back Californian slang. I couldn’t deny it.  But the United States keeps denying our existence.

I live here for my family. If there was no 10 year ban from seeing them, I would have said ‘Hasta La Vista’ a long ways ago, and gone back to Fiji for a while before settling in Australia or Canada.

But there is one thing that makes me forever indebted to this region–I had the chance to come out of the closet without fear of repercussions, something that was not possible in Fiji 10 years ago. Due to exposure to ‘alternative lifestyles,’ my parents were friendlier and a little bit more understanding.

I have many other regrets about staying here. However, one thing that I cannot regret is being a part of creation and foundation of this great new media organization. DreamActivist celebrates two years on November 30. It is quite possibly my proudest accomplishment thus far. And even if (touchwood), we somehow fail to pass immigration reform in 2010, it still makes up for living without warm sandy golden beaches, luminous blue-green seas and well, utter bliss.

Okay, maybe it doesn’t. But you can’t blame me for trying to stay positive about this lost decade. My biggest weakness is that I look back a lot. I am trying to look forward nowadays and see the next 10 years. So I came up with some questions:

Where do I want to be? Certainly not here.

What do we need to do for that to happen? Pass immigration reform.

It gets me back to square one so I continue to do the same thing I did yesterday: work to legalize all of us so we can all move on with our lives.

Yes, I am really saying that my biggest motivation for doing all this work is so that I can finally leave with the right to visit my family.

P.S. Stop drinking FIJI water.