A little over 5 years ago, my wife lived in Cuba, and I was trying to work my way up from analyst to developer in the IT of a failing department store.

She abandoned her degree after finding out that graduates go on a no-fly list for 3 years after getting their diplomas. Can't have the students you just trained leave the country before they've paid off their "free" education. Instead she took the time to study as much English as she could, while her uncles over here worked out a plan to get her off the island and onto US soil.

She flew to Mexico City, and took public buses up to the Laredo border crossing, where our awesome CBP granted her parole to come over and prove her worth. A cousin in Tampa let her crash at her place in exchange for working as the cousin's deaf kid's nanny.

Her first task was repaying the $12,000 her uncles spent setting everything up between the Cuban and Mexican immigration departments. She did this by waiting tables while taking more ESL classes at night.

After paying back her uncles, working for room and board got really old, so she saved up enough to make the trip to New Jersey since the rest of her family was up here. That's how we met. While we were dating, my mom saw fit to offer her a spare bedroom at our house, but this wasn't a sustainable living arrangement. Before long we had to get our own place, but could only afford a moldy illegally-converted basement apartment.

In 2018, I got a new job with a massive pay bump. This let us move into a proper apartment. In late 2019, my wife completed her bachelor's degree in engineering (the Cuban university curriculum had a lot of gaps). She had already secured a full-time job at an international healthcare group before even graduating, thanks to the booming economy.

When the COVID lockdowns came, we both made off like thieves. My company sells supplements, and Vitamin C and Zinc quickly became the hottest things ever. Turned out that my wife's company makes ventilators, so they were stable as well.

With the market crash came the incredibly low interest rates, which we took advantage of to buy our first house - a multi-family built sometime around 1900. While I was being crushed by the maintenance backlog of a 120-year-old house, she was the one who took a hammer to the walls upstairs and started demolishing what couldn't be saved. She worked right alongside me to tear down the plaster and lath, haul bag after bag of debris, rip out the rotted cabinetry, rebuild the balcony railing, lay down new flooring, paint everywhere, and rewire the whole apartment.

We spent 3 months in renovations, and our tenant moved in on October 1st.

Today she took her oath of allegiance. The immigration officers were telling everyone the system was down, that oaths were cancelled for the day. She told her officer that it was the last day to register to vote in NJ, and that she was hoping her vote would actually count. That officer called us back in 20 minutes, saying that they fixed the system and to get back to the office because her name was in the pile for the first oath ceremony of the day.

In 5 years, my wife went from staring down a future in a communist country, making $30-40 a month with no way out...to being a landlord in the greatest country on Earth.

She's my inspiration, and maybe a few of you will catch a muse, too...because this is exactly what the fucking American dream looks like.