Felipe Torres Medina is a writer for the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert." But not so long ago, the prestige and excitement of life as a TV writer felt like a distant reality to him.
Medina came to the U.S. as an immigrant. Like many immigrants, he had to navigate a byzantine bureaucratic structure that seemed, at various points in the process, designed to keep him out of the country.
In his new book, “America: Let Me In,” Medina lampoons the absurdities of the immigration system by presenting it as a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style game.
Medina joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
FELIPE TORRES MEDINA: I am an immigrant from Colombia originally, and so my experience is one of the many paths that you can take in the book. I came here to study in the US. I got my masters in screenwriting, and then I got what they call an alien of extraordinary ability, Visa, which is a kind of kooky term for the government.
SAM DINGMAN: I can’t believe it was actually called that.
MEDINA: Oh, it is actually called that.
DINGMAN: It’s still called that? Oh, wow.
MEDINA: Yeah, it's still called that. I have actually now given up on my extraordinary alien status by getting married, and I have a green card.
DINGMAN: Your goal in this book is to add a little bit of comedy to your own experience. That would suggest, I suppose, that there were some things about your experience that were distinctly un comedic?
MEDINA: Yeah. I mean, the whole process is Kafka-esque at its best. So at least for me as a, you know, a person who is a comedian, it's unavoidable to find comedy in the contradictions within the system. Every person who's getting any kind of visa, be it a tourist visa, or, you know, this alien of extraordinary ability visa, once you go get your visa stamped by a person in the embassy. You have to fill out this form online, and it's called the DS 160 form.
And this form is very long, and it asks some very silly questions that sound silly, but they have to ask them, you know. So they ask you, like, you know, what's your parents name and how many times have you been to the US? Give us, like, the exact dates of when you were here, blah, blah, blah. Oh, also, have you ever been part of a terrorist organization, or have you ever been part of human trafficking? And there's an element of comedy there for me, of like, obviously you can't lie in these, but right, who's clicking yes?
DINGMAN: I didn't think they were gonna ask.
MEDINA: Got so close. Yeah, so close. And then the other funny thing is that the website crashes about every, like, 27 minutes.
DINGMAN: Oh boy.
MEDINA: And so you have to save your progress. And if you don't, you have to start again. It takes you, like, a whole afternoon to fill out this form, and then when you're done, you have to print it out.
DINGMAN: What?
MEDINA: Then why did you make me fill it out online?
DINGMAN: Why do you have to print it out?
MEDINA: Because you have to take it to the embassy to show it to the embassy officer.
DINGMAN: Oh my god.
MEDINA: But there's no way to just upload it and they can pull it up on their computer. You just have to do this thing for four hours on your computer, and then print it out and bring it to the person.
DINGMAN: Wow. You came to the U.S., as you mentioned, to study screenwriting, but as I understand it, you have always been comedically inclined. When did you first notice that you had that voice available to you as a way of communicating?
MEDINA: I was always the kid who, like, gathers your family and puts the chairs around and it's like, you know, it's Christmas, but I'm doing a bit, you know, and I'm doing, like, a performance. So I was always like, doing impressions for my family. And you really like impressions of Colombian presidents that have been presidents before I was born.
DINGMAN: I know that Colombia has a fraught political history when it comes to authoritarianism and terror and people being disappeared and things like that. Was that somewhere in the DNA of your thought process about trying to bring some amount of levity to a situation that you know, viewed through a less comedic lens, could be sort of bleak?
MEDINA: I think Latin American people are generally very funny, and I think it might be because of what you're mentioning. I think we have to deal with the realities of authoritarianism or terror or crime, honestly, like in many times sponsored by the United States, you know, especially in the case of authoritarianism and dictatorships in Latin America.
DINGMAN: Yeah.
MEDINA: So there is an element of life that goes on, and you must live life where joy is an act of resistance. Not to sound very trite, but it's true. You know, joy is being alive is the one thing that authoritarians wish you weren't.
DINGMAN: Right, yeah. Well, OK, so that is an excellent segue to the format of the book, which you alluded to a moment ago, which is this, almost choose your own adventure, sort of structure. How did you get the idea for that, that format, and why did it feel right to you for this?
MEDINA: I wanted to write a lot of immigrant stories like I didn't feel like my story was going to be enough to communicate what I wanted to communicate. I was kind of frustrated. I lived in New York, and I was kind of frustrated having to explain to all my, like, very progressive, like, liberal friends, like, all the processes that I was going through with my immigration process, I was like, these people, everyone has an opinion about immigration, and no one knows how it works. Whatever side you're on, progressive, liberal, conservative MAGA, whatever it is, everyone has an opinion, but no one has any idea how the system works.
I was like, I want to talk about all the ways that I've thought of or experienced or know of friends who have gone through the process that people can come here. And I knew I wanted to be funny, and so I ended up landing on this kind of interactive method where you're like, you're the character, and you're experiencing the different paths.
DINGMAN: It almost feels like you're poking fun at the fact that a lot of anti immigration folks, that's language that they use that immigrants are trying to game the system.
MEDINA: Yeah, I call it Schrodinger as an immigrant. I did not come up with the term, but it's this idea of like immigrants are coming here to take all our jobs, but at the same time, immigrants are coming here because they're lazy and don't want to work and want to take all the government benefits. So it's this vision of this, this joint vision of what immigrants are and can be and so by adding this playfulness, I wanted to just like, demystify all that stuff.
DINGMAN: Right.
MEDINA: And be like it cannot be both. So how about you experience it and let me know what you think after experiencing it.
DINGMAN: I know that one of the other things that is important to you about this project, and that is encoded into the existence of the project in the first place, is the idea that people are coming to this country as a choice. Why is that important to you?
MEDINA: I think choosing where to live is a huge act of love. I sometimes describe your home country, like your family, it's got its problems, but you love it, your choice country. If you choose to move to another country or even to another city, that's a decision you made. So it's a little bit more similar to romantic love or to friendship, and so understanding that the people who come here made a choice, an act of love, actually makes us want to reframe all of immigration.
