I think it’s fair to say that Felipe Torres Medina has accomplished the impossible. He has written a book that is undoubtedly the funniest book you will ever read about immigration in America.
Trust me, if you don’t read it, you will succumb to FOMO — the fear of missing out.
Torres Medina, an immigrant himself, says on the back cover of “America, Let Me In: A Choose Your Immigration Story,” that the book “is filled with laughter, tears, peril, adventure, and paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.”
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Originally from Bogotá, Columbia, Torres Medina’s dream was to write comedy in the United States. And he has made that dream come true. He’s one of the writers for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.
Torres Medina spoke with WPR’s “BETA” about writing with humor, navigating immigrant spaces and America as an experiment.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Doug Gordon: What is the origin story behind creating “America, Let Me In?”
Felipe Torres Medina: I was kind of tired of explaining all of this to my American friends. I love them deeply, but Americans have a very, very small understanding of their own immigration system, even though they have a lot of opinions about their own immigration system on both sides of the aisle.
And so I was dealing with that frustration and was looking to do this in a creative way that also wasn’t preachy. I feel like immigration is this big, scary word. It sucks the air out of the room. And it was important to me to be able to talk about those things, to address those narratives, but to do through humor. That was always my main goal because I’m a comedian.
DG: And that’s what’s so fascinating about your book, is that, as far as I can tell, you have accomplished something that nobody else has ever done. You’ve written this how-to guide about immigration that is very funny. So I’m curious, did you know that you were going to use your comedy chops when you started writing your book, or even before you started writing it?
FTM: Yeah, I think so. I never wanted to write a straightforward book about immigration. I say this a lot, but I’m not an immigration lawyer. I love immigration lawyers. I owe so much to immigration lawyers.
What I can tell you is how these stories of immigrants work, but the goal is to make you laugh. And if you learn something along the way, that’s awesome.
DG: Mission accomplished. It’s very funny and very informative. You’re originally from Bogotá, Colombia, whereas I’m originally from Vancouver, British Columbia. Different places entirely, but we both have George Foster Peabody awards. What did you imagine moving to the U.S. would be like?
FTM: I think it depends on which time in my life you asked that question. I think as a kid, I was like, I’m definitely gonna have all the cereal that they have in the cereal aisle over there that we don’t have in Colombia.
But I think the dream was to come to the States to write comedy. When I was in college, I realized that all these shows that I liked and that I was obsessed with, people wrote them. And I was like, well, what if I try to do that? Because I’m kind of funny and I like writing.
So I finished college, and was like, well, I’m gonna go straight to the U.S. to pursue my master’s in film and screenwriting, which is what I eventually got. And that was it. That’s how I came here originally, on a student visa.
DG: Yes, and you got the same visa I have — an Alien of Extraordinary Ability, right?
FTM: Yes, after my my student visa, I applied and successfully got an Alien of Extraordinary Ability visa, which is a ridiculous name for anything.
DG: Yeah, but it’s not so ridiculous for me because I kind of always feel like an alien. So it kind of suits me.
When I was returning to the U.S., one of the Customs and Border Protection officers looked at my visa and said, “So you’re as good as the Rolling Stones?” And I replied, “I’m even better if you’re including ‘Steel Wheels.’“ (Full disclosure, though, I wasn’t fast enough to come up with that. I didn’t say it at the time. It was one of my many George Costanza moments.)
But I’m curious, have you experienced those same kind of comments from border officers?
FTM: Yeah, I think the fact that I’m Latino makes them a bit more targeted sometimes and less fun. I had one border officer ask me, when I was still on a student visa, if I was coming here to steal jobs, which was not nice.
But, you know, I had a really funny experience, because I have a homonym. You know, I’m Latin. I have four names. Felipe Torres Medina is the professional name I go by, but my full name is Carlos Felipe Torres Medina. Four names. And there’s a person who has committed a crime here in the U.S. who has a combination of those names. We don’t know who they are, but that meant that when I was coming in on visas, they would take me to the back room to check that I was not that person. And so one time, I was in the little back room and I was like, I’ve got it. I’ve got a plan. I’m gonna ask him, “Is there anything I can do to make your life easier?”
And this guy was lovely. He was very nice. And in a very thick Brooklyn accent, he was like, “Change your name, get married! This wouldn’t happen to you if your name was Felipe Schwartz!” And that was very funny. He got me there. I did get married to an American, but I did not change my name.
DG: How has writing this book changed the way you think about living in the United States?
FTM: I kept coming back to this idea of the experiment, of something that is constantly improving. An experiment, you’re tweaking it all the time to be more efficient, to be better. And so to me, that was something that I realized about America.
What America is to me is this experiment, and we always want to make it better. And sometimes, unfortunately, it’s a group experiment. You know? It’s a group project. So we’re in chemistry class, and sometimes we don’t get to touch the experiment because other people are touching it.
And regardless of what political side you’re on, that’s going to happen. And later, when you get to touch the experiment again, you’re going to have to deal with that and improve the experiment.
