Scott Swanson
Nelia Taraski is now able to vote. And run for local office. And visit her parents without fear of big hassles at the border.
Taraski, 51, who has been director at Little Promises Preschool since 2013, became a U.S. citizen in a small ceremony in February, nearly 30 years after she moved to the United States following her marriage to her husband, Pete Taraski.
“Now I’m going to run for governor,” she joked – a frequent occurrence. ” If Arnold Schwarzenegger can do it, I can.”
Born and raised in Monterey, Mexico, across the border from Laredo, Texas, Taraski had her first encounter with English when she was “10 or 12 years old” and met a missionary woman who came to her neighborhood, she said.
“She tried to teach me one English word a day.”
That got her interested in learning other languages, she said, and when a technical institute opened in town, offering a career major in tourism, she signed up.
“In order for me to graduate, I had to learn two different languages,” Taraski recalled, adding that she took her English “very seriously.”
A nearby academy was offering a unique class teaching French and Italian at the same time.
“They have the same Latin roots, along with Spanish,” Taraski noted. She signed up.
“By the time I graduated, I had the language requirement.”
She started working in five-star hotels, which is where she met Pete Taraski.
He was an architectural carpenter from Houston, Texas, who had been brought to Monterey in 1994 by the head of the Carta Blanca brewing firm, who wanted to build a shopping strip mall for his daughter, for a graduation present.
The daughter, Nelia Taraski said, envisioned a store with couches and reading nooks, “like in the ‘Ellen Degeneres show.’ That was pretty much the concept she wanted to mimic in Mexico.
“Peter did a beautiful floating staircase, bookshelves, everything.”
Nelia was head housekeeper for the hotel where Pete’s crew was staying, a couple of miles from the construction site, and that’s where they became acquainted.
“We met at the end of November of 1994 and we were married Dec. 11. We were ‘Married at First Sight’ and ’90-Day Fiancé’ together,” she joked, referencing the current TV shows.
Within days of their wedding they were in the United States, where Pete’s employer had another big job for him at a bank construction site in Harlingen, Texas.
“The owner of the construction company he was working with told him he needed to immediately go back to work,” Taraski recalled. “He felt bad because we had just gotten married and hadn’t been able to have a honeymoon, so he put us in a beachfront condo in South Padre Island for six months.”
Those days brought a steep learning curve, she said, in English and other areas.
“The first year, in 1995, when it was time to file taxes, Peter gave me a pile of all his receipts and asked me to find somebody to file taxes for us. I was so proud. I was driving through the neighborhood and I saw a sign for ‘Taxidermy’ and I thought, ‘That’s it! This guy can do our taxes for us.'”
Inside, though, she said she was wondering about the “odd” office décor.
“Why are people bringing dead animals in here?”
When she figured it all out, she went back to the office where she worked.
“I told the gal I was working with and she laughed so hard. There are a lot of words that are confusing.”
And then there’s the “Nelia” pronunciation, cadence and rhythm that are common to Spanish speakers, whose language isn’t full of crazy and unpredictable sounds like English is.
“My Pre-K class (at Little Promises) keeps telling me I speak funny,” she said. “You have to speak “Nelia’ to understand what I’m saying.”
That bit her too, in the early years.
“Peter had a beagle when we first got married and he was being sent all over Texas to work. He told me the beagle had some ticks and he wanted that fixed.
“I went to the vet. When Peter came back, the dog was fixed.”
Another challenge was crossing the border, particularly in the first months.
The couple had been married by a municipal judge in Monterey, who was a friend of Nelia’s sister. Problem was, the judge left the country the next day and they hadn’t gotten the paperwork from her.
“This is how crazy Mexicans are,” Taraski said: “(The judge’s) family gave her a trip to Rome for the Birthday of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She was taking a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe with her and she going to spend a month in Rome.
“Every time Immigration stopped me, I didn’t have wedding papers because she didn’t give them to me. Officials didn’t believe my story. One of the officers took pity on me and explained that even if my story wasn’t fabricated, a ton of other people were fabricating stories. He said he’d give me a 90-day fiancé’ visa so we could make it legal.”
They got married again, this time before a U.S. judge in a courthouse around the corner from where Pete was working on a construction project.
Eventually, the Taraskis settled in Cut And Shoot, a town near Conroe, about 40 miles north of Houston, and had three children, Mark, Noah and Genesis.
Pete became a pastor and a fire department chaplain and, in the early 2000s, they founded Yahweh Street Ministries, named after the most reverent Hebrew word for God, to serve the homeless in Montgomery County, Texas.
In June of 2012, the Taraskis moved to Sweet Home, where Pete became pastor of Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church. A year later, Nelia took over as director of Little Promises.
Along the way they’ve become very active in local pro-life causes and in chaplaincy work with the Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District.
Taraski said she got interested in becoming a citizen because she realized that she couldn’t hold office if she were not. Then, when immigration issues became a hot topic during the Trump Administration, “I was afraid to travel. I haven’t seen my parents in seven years.”
She decided to go for it, to take the test that quizzes potential citizens on U.S. History, geography and writing and reading English.
The latter wasn’t a big challenge: I try to learn one new English word every day,” Taraski said. “Every time I have a conversation with somebody, I try to pick up a word. When I stumble on a word, I look it up, research it, Google it. Sound it out. I don’t know English 100 percent.”
She learned the history too.
“We play ‘Jeopardy!’ games in my house and my kids were amazed at the stuff I had to learn to take my test,” she said.
She passed, on Feb. 16, and took the oath in a “small ceremony” as a new U.S. citizen at the federal courthouse in Portland, which was “all boarded up” due to the riots, she said.
“They did not allow my family to be with me. This was only 10 to 15 people at a time, properly spaced out.”
Being a citizen gives her more peace, Taraski said.
“Now I see immigration reforms under a different scope because I know they will not affect me, impact my life in any way,” she said, noting that she is soon to leave for Mexico to see her parents.
“It gives you that peace, a sense of belonging.”