Bulgarian Immigrant fleed tightening communist grasp

As a little girl, I always wondered where the strangely handsome, six-foot something young man with beautiful hair, deep blue eyes, and a deep voice accentuated with a peculiar accent, that my father called Chav, had come from. He would often come over for long dinners and was present at several of the birthday parties of my sister and I. This much about him seemed normal to me as a nine-year-old. Telling from how often Chav would call to speak with my father, often late at night or early in the morning, I knew he was no ordinary friend of my father’s. The only thing I knew about Chav was that he had come from Bulgaria, but I was never told any details.   

It was not until last year that my father told me Chav’s full story. As a young man living in communist-occupied Bulgaria, Chav earned a degree in microwave and electrical technology and engineering from one of Bulgaria’s most prestigious universities. He also spoke fluent English, not with a Slavic, eastern European accent, but with an 1850s English Victorian accent and vocabulary. Eager to do something, Chav became one of the student leaders in the Bulgarian revolt against communism.

Sometime during the late 1980s, the authorities murdered Chav’s best friend, also a student leader of the revolt against the communists. According to him, the authorities claimed it was a suicide, but everyone, Chav said, knew this was a lie. During the limited “free” elections that began to take place just prior to the collapse of the Soviet regime, Chav was made a poll judge at a military base. When he called irregularities to the attention of the commanding officer, he was kicked out of the election process and began receiving death threats.

The United States was somehow aware of Chav’s situation, and when he appeared at the U.S. Consulate sometime in 1991, they gave him a 120-day visa to travel on a United States Information Agency tour. He asked the consulate what would happen after the 120 days, to which they responded, “you’ll think of something.”

After completing the 120-day tour, while sitting in the airport in Washington D.C. on his way back to Bulgaria, Chav called his Geneseo, Ill. host family and told them that he was afraid to return to Bulgaria. They told him to return to the Quad Cities and that they would help him. They brought him to an immigration lawyer, my father, who prepared Chav’s political asylum case. While the case was pending, Chav worked three different custodial jobs. Fortunately for him, at the time he submitted his case, anyone who filed for political asylum was granted automatic employment status. The laws have since been changed, according to my father. Eventually Chav was granted political asylum, a process that took two years.

On the same day that my father filed Chav’s case in Chicago, there were approximately 90 other Bulgarian political applications filed in Chicago alone. These other applicants had arrived at O’Hare Airport earlier that morning and went directly to Chicago’s immigration offices. Only two applications were granted that day, one to Chav, and one to a woman who had been sleeping in her apartment when communist authorities burst into her apartment and murdered her husband in front of her and their children. The approximate 89 other Bulgarians were promptly returned to Bulgaria.

Chav was finally able to return to Bulgaria for the first time to visit his parents, ten years after he had left. Today he is married to another Bulgarian immigrant and has two children. He works as a senior researcher for Motorola in Chicago.  His parents eventually made their way to Chicago. The family is now in the process of trying to regain land and property in Bulgaria, which was taken from them when the Soviets occupied the country.


* Chav’s last name has been changed to protect his identity