Fifteen years ago, my mother asked me to pack one bag with my most valuable belongings. I was only eleven, so I decided to pack three of my best outfits and dozens of letters that I had collected from my closest friends in the 5th grade. I wanted to take everything from our home in Mexico, where I lived for the first eleven years of my life, but I knew we were going to walk for a couple of days across the Arizona desert. I also knew that between my mom, my seventeen-year-old sister and I, we would have to take turns carrying my chubby two-year-old brother. So, I left all of my memories behind. But it was ok, because I knew that coming to the United States meant that we were no longer going to be afraid of my father's abuse.
Of my first memories living in Arizona, I remember living in a one bedroom apartment with about ten people. I quickly learned to adjust to any situation I had to face. Unable to find work, my mother and I went door-to-door in Mesa selling tamales (Mexican food). After much sacrifice and very hard work to put food on our table, my mom was able to find a job that overlooked her immigration status. We were finally able to buy a small home in Mesa and I was living the American dream.
A year later, Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducted a raid at my mother's workplace. I spent two days inside my house on my 21st birthday with our lights off, waiting for the sheriff's truck to leave our home. My mother was really scared and I thought we were going to be deported.
As a result of the raid, we lost everything. We abandoned our home and sold everything in order to make rent on an apartment. We had to start from scratch once again.
Unfortunately, stories like mine are not uncommon in Arizona. Due to the ideologies of anti-immigrant figures like Kris Kobach, Russell Pearce, Joe Arpaio, and most recently, Mitt Romney, attrition through enforcement or "self-deportation" reinforces the idea that people like me will leave this country if the government makes our lives miserable enough.
In 2010, my community saw an escalation of such scare tactics with the introduction of SB 1070, a law that allows racial profiling by the police to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. My neighbors started leaving to other states because they were scared of losing family members, and many of the local stores I used to frequent are now gone.
In this interview with Diane Sawyer I speak about our experience as the implementation of SB 1070 was approaching in 2010.
Since then, my heart has been filled with anger, frustration and a much greater sense of responsibility towards my family. My mother can no longer work due to the raid, so the responsibility of providing for my family has been left to me. What is even more frustrating is the fact that I worked so hard to receive my bachelor's degree in psychology, but because of tough worker enforcement laws in Arizona, I cannot legally use it. So, I have to find other ways to help sustain my mother and my little brother.
This whole experience has made me strong. I had to be. I became a co-founder and the founding president of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition and the DRM Capitol Group. Together with dozens of other undocumented youth in my state we decided to come out of the shadows and give an example to our community that fear is not the answer. Our fear feeds hateful policy makers.
Recently, I have heard comments and speeches from several presidential candidates and members of congress speaking about how much support they have for people who, like me, were brought to this country as children. Republican Senator Marco Rubio has been talking about creating a different version of the current DREAM Act and Mitt Romney has stated that he would support the military part of the bill only. However, these same individuals have supported SB-1070. Romney has even called it a "model for the Nation."
I don't know about anyone else, but why would I want the rest of the nation to go through what my family has gone through in Arizona? I will keep fighting for the DREAM Act and our immigrant youth, but I cannot ignore attacks and hate for individuals like my mother whose only "crime" was to love us enough to come to the United States in search of freedom from abuse and poverty.
We should no longer tolerate individuals like Mitt Romney, Senator Rubio -- and even President Obama -- who talk about the DREAM Act for political purposes, but support the criminalization and deportations of people who we love and care about.
She is here illegally. She knows that she is here illegally, regardless of her age when she came here. And she not only wants society to ignore the fact that she is here illegally, she wants society to all but encourage these actions by offering amnesty.
First, enforce the laws.
Welcome those who want to come here - and follow our laws in order to do so.
And those who refuse to respect the laws of the nation?
Sorry, but while there is empathy, there is no sympathy.
I have had some of my students parents deported, and my students tell me how unfair it is, I tell them, " They broke the law and their are consequences". We don't march when people get arrested for robbing a store. A LAW IS A LAW.
Those who oppose them rank among our nation's most ignorant. Every semester, I have a large number of legal residents who show up for 1 or 2 classes, and once they get their Pell grants or student loans, are never to be seen or heard from again. One showed up, this semester, to show us his new iPad and accessories before he disappeared.
It has been 20 years since the last immigration reform and in that time a generation of young American DREAMers has grown up and been educated, serving and pledging allegiance to our flag, in the only country they know, and whose language is the only one they can read and write. They are well documented by their educators and our school systems and it is long overdue that we grant them the legitimacy that they have earned though continuous service and academic excellence.
The community college district in Maricopa County is the largest in the nation and its administration and 3 out of 5 board members are complicit in the persecution of a generation of gifted young Americans, such as Erika. As an instructor, I can easily vouch that these students are among our best and brightest. They have to be. Their lives depend on it.
Hatred is extremely costly to our state, in so many ways. It is terrifying that it has gotten this far. In fact fear and bullying are the most commonly used weapons. I feel like an instructor, in World War II Europe, when Jewish children were banned from classrooms. This year is the first in which the district has finally succeeded in eliminating almost all DREAMers. They are a tiny fraction, estimated at about 5,000, of the several hundred thousand served per year, by the college district. The cost of having several hundred thousand students physically deliver proof of residency, to be processed by staff, exponentially outweighed any cost incurred by these gifted students.
The idea that your Governor did not graduate high school was interesting to me so I took 3 minutes and looked it up. On October 15, 2010, the Arizona Daily Star posted a copy of her high school diploma online and the then principal of Verdugo Hills High School, Diane Klewitz pulled her records to confirm she did in fact graduate. After verify this fact I did not continue to read what you wrote. Why waste my time on a person who would lie about something so easy to verify. Are you still looking for that birth certificate too?
Honesty is important. My students and I are evaluating their final portfolios this week. One week of the body of work they are completing is about ethics.
While researching your comment, I did learn that our governor is 1 of 2 governors in our nation who does not have a college degree. Her post secondary education was that of a certified radiologist. The other non-degree governor is Scott Walker.
Calling her "GED Jan" is level with "beheadings in the desert" and honesty on all sides of an issue is crucial.
I apologize.
You know you are not immigrants, you are foreign invaders, and we will finally treat you as such.
We should neither tolerate people breaking our laws!
Also, if you want to LEGALLY move to Mexico, you have to show that you can support yourself, as you are not eligible for any assistance from the government.
1) does she acknowledge the fact that the U.S. taxpayers have spent hundred of thousand of dollars for her and her siblings to educated here?
2) Where is her gratitude to us for that?
3) Does she realize that her mother could have gone elsewhere in Mexico to escape abuse? They did not need to come here...
4) Why does she feel that she and her family are so special? That because they evaded the law for so long, that she should be allowed to stay?
I'd love her answer to those questions!
She is free to voluntarily "Self-Deport"
Or ~
Chance that Obama's ICE agents detect, detain & deport her as one of the record-breaking forceable deportations = 1 each & every 79 seconds
Soon ~ all illegals will be, , , , , , gone.
This country is going to need get over it's racism and cooperate with Mexico and Canada in order to create a cohesive North American continent in order to compete with Europe and Asia . . . else the racism of these domestic haters, those hiding behind "Wut Part of Illegal Don't You unerstand?" will sure be the death of America.
The acceptance of this type of behavior and the Governments "turn the other cheek" mentallity towards this issue is more likely to be the death of America rather than its' citizenry standing up for the laws and principles...the mortality's that guided those whom established this great country in the first place!
The richest person in the world is from Mexico: Carlos Slim. Born and raised in Mexico, he lived the "Mexican Dream", showing that if you work hard you can accomplish anything anywhere, and that Mexico is a country of opportunities as any other.
Erika, you have received higher education in USA, and therefore you should be able to live a "Dream" in a country that you're a citizen of, and which shows again and again that it is a land of opportunities if you're willing to work hard. Buy a book about Carlos Slim, study it, be inspired, try to follow his path to create your own "Mexican Dream" that you can live.
Use your American experience and your education as an asset - you speak fluently English, which gives you already a competitive advantage over so many people in Mexico. Once you move back to Mexico, use your English, work hard, create your own Dream, and you don't have to ever worry about being deported. You can live a life without fear, stress, insecurity, and be just happy.
I am sympathetic to her, that's why I am trying to show her a way where she can be successful and have a life without fear of deportation and without breaking any laws. That's in her native country, which happens to be Mexico. It is not a foreign country to her, if she left it when she was 11, and has lived here for only 15 years. You cannot tell me that you have no memories from the time when you were 11, can you?
Let's be very rational about it. If we want this country to be a country of law, we need to follow it or change it, but we cannot pick and choose which we like and which we don't like. We have immigration law and we need to enforce it. Based on the SCOTUS questions last Wednesday, it seems that SCOTUS will support the enforcement by the states, showing that even federal government cannot pick and choose which laws they want to enforce.
And why would you then discriminate against illegal immigrants who don't have higher education and who would not contribute to the tax base at higher rate than most people? Are you suggesting that people with lower IQ than Erika should be deported because they wouldn't contribute sufficiently to the tax base? Is this how you see equality and justice?
Besides, again strictly from a rational perspective and leaving any emotion aside, I could have tomorrow 5 PhDs from Mexico or China who would love to move here LEGALLY and who would contribute at a much higher tax rate that Erika ever will.
I’d like to see more people thinking critically about the fairness of our system. For example, is it right that U.S. Immigration prefers wealthy investors applying for citizenship (no backlog) over law-abiding applicants with citizen siblings (10-24 year backlog)? For me, waiting a quarter-century just for a reply effectively denies entry for most people; it creates a huge incentive for basically good, but perilously situated, people to break the law. Thus, it becomes more reasonable, just, or even necessary that a person should disobey these policies rather than follow them.
Also, although I disapprove, I can understand why some people consider U.S. Immigration “racist.” It’s not explicitly racist (de jure racism), but it blatantly favors people with access to money and education; since these qualities appear in some groups more than others, the result simulates racism (de facto racism).
So, here’s my challenge to anyone who would disagree with me with statements like “what don’t you understand about ‘illegal’?”: Can you explain why the current immigration system should be considered reasonable, just and worthy of our support?
Thanks everyone for reading and, if you accept my challenge: thanks for your courtesy and insights!
NOTE: my “wealthy foreign investors” info comes from the U.S. Department of State (see “Employment Fifth Preference (E5): Immigrant Investors”)
That's 10 million legal immigrants in just 10 years, on their "pathway" to the rights & benefits of Naturalized U.S. Citizenship.
"Vetted" on the following criteria ~
CRIMINAL Background Check
MEDICAL Background Check
EDUCATION Level Beneficial to the USA
SKILL Set Beneficial to the USA
1 legal immigrant granted entry every 38 seconds for over 10 consecutive years
What's the need for 11.2 million illegals, unauthorized to work in the USA?
Especially ~ since the U.S. Economy can not sustain the existing U.S. Workforce = 13 million U.S. Citizens are out of work for the past consecutive 40 months & out of hope for the American Dream
NOTE: my information comes from the DHS Annual Flow Report.
You’re right – in raw numbers, more authorized immigration comes to the US from non-European countries than from Europe.
We should think about this fact critically, however:
1) Is the demand for US citizenship proportionally met when we compare European and non-European countries?
E.g. if 4 people from Country A are accepted, and 4 people from Country B are accepted, we might assume the situation is fair until we consider that Country only has 4 applicants and, meanwhile, Country B has 9587349587394, you know?
The truth is that I don’t know how to find this kind of information. Please write back if you (or anyone, really) find anything!
2) Is it safe to assume that a person’s race is likely to correspond with their country-of-origin?
Normally, I would assume this is an ok assumption. But, since we know a disproportionate number of wealthy/educated people are likely to be accepted by our immigration system, and given the colonial history of several countries across the globe, it could be that the upper-strata of these countries (i.e. wealthy/educated) is disproportionately made up of whites.
This is an even more complicated question to research, however, and, once again, I don’t know the answers. Needless to say, I’d appreciate any help others can offer.
Thanks!
(and please cite sources if you can)
Why do you assume that if we consider Erika a criminal, our earnings potential is lower than hers? Where do you have the data to back it up?
Why do you think that we're Republicans? There are enough of Democrats and independent voters who are against illegal immigration.
And why do you think that Mexico doesn't offer any chances for kids?
Mexico is a land of opportunity as much as any other with tons of immigrants succeeding there:
- the richest person in the world is from Mexico, his parents immigrated from Lebanon
- the former President of Mexico is Vicente Fox, his grandparents immigrated from USA
And please stop bringing race into this. There enough of Hispanics who are against illegal immigration and who support enforcement of immigration laws in our country.
Let's drop name calling and accusations, and let's talk facts!