Reunite Carlos with Dad
UPDATE: 12/27/18
re: recent NPR Story:
Since the story aired on NPR, I have gotten a wonderful flood of new interest in the shirt. Please bear with me as I am not a professional shirt seller, so please forgive me as I navigate the best way to do this.
> If you donate via this site: $25 shirt + $5 shipping I will send you an email asking for your address and shirt size, or you can just send it to me to [email redacted]
> You can avoid this step by going to the website www.bienvenidoastl.com and placing your order there.
Thank you all for the overwhelming amount of love and support and again, I am sorry if I made this too confusing.
- Carlos
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THIS IS NOT A FUNDRAISER
I would never ask you for money or charity. Rather, this is the most effective tool I found to sell you a shirt, and hopefully a story, and hopefully a dream.
I feel a great deal of gratitude toward everything I've been able to build in the United States. I have great friends, who have become family, mentors, and a community of caring individuals, who always step up to help one another.
As a naturalized U.S. citizen, my dream is to continue to build a life that my community and I will be proud of. In every step of the way, I feel closer and closer to attaining that dream.
Yet in everything I do and accomplish, there is always a missing piece: my father: Luis Carlos Restrepo
You see, my father, Luis Carlos Restrepo, gave up everything to help me come to the United States. He never held me back from my future and went above and beyond to ensure I would have the life he knew he couldn't give me back home.
My father, Luis Carlos Restrepo, gave up more than 15 years of life that he did not get to spend with his son. He gave up my graduation, my first job, my first heartbreak, my first wrestling match. He gave up many nights of lost sleep as he wondered if he made the right choice in letting his son go in search of a better life.
But he never complained. My father, Luis Carlos Restrepo. He never let me or others understand just in how much pain he has been all these years that we have been apart, and I can only put together the pieces of his feelings from stories from his friends and relatives back home.
A couple of years ago I became a U.S. citizen with a promise to my father that I would begin the lengthy and costly process of bringing him with me to his new home: St. Louis.
And friends, I am stuck. The anticipated legal fees, attorney costs, tickets to and from embassies, and other documents are keeping me from reaching my most precious dream of having my dad living here with me in the United States.
I am now more anxious than ever as the future of family-based migration has been questioned by our politicians so many times. An end to this would effectively mean an end to my dream of having a whole family again.
So I am racing against the clock and need your help:
For a donation of only $30, you can purchase a t-shirt designed by yours truly, and printed in the USA, with the words I hope to tell my father one day, with your help, in the not-so-distant future:
Bienvenido a St. Louis (Welcome to St. Louis).
May this also be a message you wear proudly for every immigrant and newcomer who may see it. You are welcomed here.
