Posted by Henry Jones.
This week the New York Times wrote about the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement approach of going hard after immigrant criminals while sparing undocumented students from deportation.
By remaining in the country, many of these students could become legal residents should Congress pass the Dream Act, a piece of legislation that would offer a path to citizenship for foreign-born individuals who have grown up in the US and who attend college or enlist in the military.
You can read the full article here.
Such a law would benefit Mexican-born students like Lorena, whose story is recounted in Underground America: Narrative of Undocumented Lives. Lorena came with her mother to the US illegally when she was six years old. She grew up in Lamont, California and eventually attended Fresno State, hoping one day to become a doctor. To pay for school she took a job at a real estate office, using the name and social security number of a cousin who was at the time living in Mexico.
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When I started working there, I was still pretending to be legal by using Sabrina’s identity. At first, if they’d say “Sabrina,” I would just keep working. I wouldn’t pay attention until I realized, “Oh shit, that’s me.” I was working there for about four or five months but then Sabrina decided to come back to the United States. My aunt, who was in the middle person between the real Sabrina and me, called and said, “you need to quit. Sabrina needs her identity back.” I was crushed. I loved my job. Sabrina’s from New York. If she lived in California, we could both use her Social and pretend she was working two jobs or something. But she couldn’t be working in New York and California at the same time.
So finally, one day, I came in with tears in my eyes. I couldn’t even talk. I told [my boss], “I need to talk to you.”… I showed her my Fresno State ID and told her, “This is truly who I am. I’m really sorry that I lied to you. But I just want you to know that I didn’t do it out of malice, or to hurt people. I did it because I had to, because I need to pay for school.”… I was amazed when she said, “Well, we’ll see what we can do, but you’re not going to have to quit.”
