Starting in high school my family situation finally more or less settled down. My family moved to a very white and rural area, a place that would make you think why the f*ck are there Mexicans here and why would they move here. I finally made long term friends, white americans, who I didn't have to abandon after a couple of months. My high school had very few Latinos, so I was friends with rednecks and edgy white kids. This is the time I was very functionally and socially an American doing American teenager things, but of course I had the burden of illegalness and crushing extreme poverty.
Being poor and not having a social security number really limits what one can do for fun (no money, no driver's license, no car.) So I read, nonfiction books and articles online and at the library.
It was that habit that led me to question whether I could be and should be an American. And it was also what kept me busy during high school. Teenage delinquency wasn't for me because I had been taught that as soon as a police officer shows up me and my mom were to be deported (the worst of all fates). Crushing poverty and lack of driver's license also made buying teenage me a car a non-starter. So I was considerably less mobile and much more cautious than regular teenagers. That doesn't mean I didn't drink, smoke pot, or any other teenage stuff, it just meant I was completely reliant on friends with cars. Avoiding legal troubles wasn't difficult for me, for one I dislike weed and I was simply on the road less often than most. Most of my U.S born cousins have been caught with weed in their cars.
Either way, I spent much time contemplating why everything is so fucked up, why did the U.S invade Iraq? Me and my mother knew it was a bad idea, why didn't Bush? Like many teenagers who liked to read I became a stereotypical anti-American teenager. Before I continue I do have to say that after graduating high school and getting a work permit I have had older white co-workers in low paid jobs who were incredibly welcoming and humane, who saw me as a fellow American and took an interest in seeing me succeed. These people represent the best of America and they do exists, but they exist in shockingly low numbers and the larger institutions of this country are built to end such personalities from public life.
Entering the workforce at the bottom of American society doesn't give one much hope or optimism for this country or for one's future, having been sold on the idea of getting a university education and having applied and been accepted into universities, but not being able to go because the schools were public and thus no aid is available to illegals even though thanks to daca I do have a social security card, before daca I couldn't even apply to colleges, what does one put down when applying to college from a U.S address and the form requires a social? I finally learned about some private universities that were need blind even for international students and I applied and got accepted into one.
If one is expecting this part of the story to be one where I go out and have the American college life and fully integrate. Something kind of like that has happened. In my experience young Americans have college years they can't call golden and quite a few feel alienated from this society. I am the same, I feel alienated. During college I took advantage of library resources and my free time to read more, and I became even more pessimistic about the future, I also had more brush-ups with the bureaucracy of the university and saw the pessimistic ideas I read about are pessimistic realities.
You talk about having kind white coworkers, but what about love interests? Your mother loved a man who was here legally, and he used her illegal status against her. What about you? Has your illegal status gotten in the way of having a relationship with anyone?
I have only had one love interest and legal status had nothing to do with it or it ending, maybe it has a little to do with it because I have never felt like I could provide the life I would want for a family. I couldn't provide the life I wanted for myself, how would I be able to provide it to myself and a girlfriend?
Being an illegal has taught me to not talk about myself and given such an unstable childhood I don't have a hometown or really any place I can say I am from. Therefore friends and girlfriends don't know I am illegal. But during college and after daca I did open up about it, but not to everyone. And in general people don't know where I am from, not that I could answer that question with a short reply or pick a point on a map that I can call my hometown.
Your life as an illegal, then, has been highly unstable, stress-filled and uncertain, and the DREAM Act gives you little hope, not that you would necessarily embrace it, for you have decided to go home.
This leads to why on Earth would I go back to Mexico. For one and maybe to present a ray of light in this interview is that my father's side of the family contacted me during my college years and want me to go. Honestly without a middle-class Mexican family welcoming me back with open arms, I would probably remain here trying to survive in a culture that rubs me wrong in so many ways(this is worthy of a whole other article).
My mother's side of the family is poor and has basically left Mexico en masse, I have an aunt and a cousin and my maternal grandparents living in a rural community where the average age is 60+ and the young people have all moved to the U.S. Returning to them with no capital would be useless. If I had not been contacted by my father's family I would work until the permit expires then go back with some savings in hand and try to make the best of it.
What draws me to Mexico is my father's family and some personal experiences that contradict the narrative about Mexico from Mexican immigrant. If one is to believe the immigrants from Mexico, one would never leave the U.S. The U.S is a great noble country with no corruption, rule of law etc. And Mexico is the opposite it is basically unliveable. However I will share something I rarely share. I have been to Mexico. After graduating high school and before DACA was announced. I went to Mexico, I worked in a border factory for a couple months then went to Nayarit. And it was amazing. I felt like an actual human being, the first ever official government ID I ever had was credencial de elector I received at the age of 18. I also felt middle-class I didn't feel like I was at the bottom of society, but that I was right at the center. All feelings of being a marginal individual vanished. I was as free and equal as anyone else.
Someone once described poverty as one continuing crisis, and when I went to Mexico the crisis ended. I also saw that I could achieve more as a legal Mexican citizen in Mexico than an illegal Mexican in the U.S. The poverty I live through here in the U.S is ridiculous. My maternal grandparents have a nicer home in Mexico than my mom has in the U.S. But after six months in Mexico I returned to the U.S, because I was still a wandering 18 year old and all my closest family members are in the U.S and once I was in Nayarit it seemed like the thing to do. But the emigre myth of horrible unliveable Mexico was shattered by my experience there.
One reason I was so happy to be back in Mexico was that I was 18, living on my own and 3/4 of my income was disposable. Sure it wasn't a lot of disposable income but it felt like a lot. Having all that gave me a nice taste of adulthood. Here in the U.S expenses are high, and everything is so damn competitive, there is so much pressure to be better in all aspects, to achieve ever more and if that fails one must consume ever more. Mexico felt like a place where I could just be. The jobs I worked here in the U.S were so damn demanding eating into my weekends, requiring half-hour or longer commutes and paperwork. In America low-wage manual temp workers are required to do paperwork, apparently managers are too stupid or too lazy to manage parts, production and what not. Being managed by dumbasses is one thing, it is a near universal experience nowadays, but being limited by law to remaining in such a position is f*cking bullshit. But now I recognize even with legal status social mobility is shot, your birth determines your status in life. It is the American inability to face this fact, to deny reality and dismiss it, that is turning it into a decaying empire.
In Mexico I met people whom I could not have met in the U.S, Mexicans who had zero interest in going to the U.S and some who had gone to the U.S and disliked it and never wanted to go again. Growing up in an immigrant household that dealt with such heavy burdens and problems, I thought that if we are dealing with this awful situation (domestic violence, grinding poverty, constant fear of deportation, constant moving) instead of being in Mexico, Mexico HAD to be worse, why else would anyone choose my life in the U.S.
Being poor and not having a social security number really limits what one can do for fun (no money, no driver's license, no car.) So I read, nonfiction books and articles online and at the library.
It was that habit that led me to question whether I could be and should be an American. And it was also what kept me busy during high school. Teenage delinquency wasn't for me because I had been taught that as soon as a police officer shows up me and my mom were to be deported (the worst of all fates). Crushing poverty and lack of driver's license also made buying teenage me a car a non-starter. So I was considerably less mobile and much more cautious than regular teenagers. That doesn't mean I didn't drink, smoke pot, or any other teenage stuff, it just meant I was completely reliant on friends with cars. Avoiding legal troubles wasn't difficult for me, for one I dislike weed and I was simply on the road less often than most. Most of my U.S born cousins have been caught with weed in their cars.
Either way, I spent much time contemplating why everything is so fucked up, why did the U.S invade Iraq? Me and my mother knew it was a bad idea, why didn't Bush? Like many teenagers who liked to read I became a stereotypical anti-American teenager. Before I continue I do have to say that after graduating high school and getting a work permit I have had older white co-workers in low paid jobs who were incredibly welcoming and humane, who saw me as a fellow American and took an interest in seeing me succeed. These people represent the best of America and they do exists, but they exist in shockingly low numbers and the larger institutions of this country are built to end such personalities from public life.
If one is expecting this part of the story to be one where I go out and have the American college life and fully integrate. Something kind of like that has happened. In my experience young Americans have college years they can't call golden and quite a few feel alienated from this society. I am the same, I feel alienated. During college I took advantage of library resources and my free time to read more, and I became even more pessimistic about the future, I also had more brush-ups with the bureaucracy of the university and saw the pessimistic ideas I read about are pessimistic realities.
You talk about having kind white coworkers, but what about love interests? Your mother loved a man who was here legally, and he used her illegal status against her. What about you? Has your illegal status gotten in the way of having a relationship with anyone?
I have only had one love interest and legal status had nothing to do with it or it ending, maybe it has a little to do with it because I have never felt like I could provide the life I would want for a family. I couldn't provide the life I wanted for myself, how would I be able to provide it to myself and a girlfriend?
Being an illegal has taught me to not talk about myself and given such an unstable childhood I don't have a hometown or really any place I can say I am from. Therefore friends and girlfriends don't know I am illegal. But during college and after daca I did open up about it, but not to everyone. And in general people don't know where I am from, not that I could answer that question with a short reply or pick a point on a map that I can call my hometown.
Your life as an illegal, then, has been highly unstable, stress-filled and uncertain, and the DREAM Act gives you little hope, not that you would necessarily embrace it, for you have decided to go home.
This leads to why on Earth would I go back to Mexico. For one and maybe to present a ray of light in this interview is that my father's side of the family contacted me during my college years and want me to go. Honestly without a middle-class Mexican family welcoming me back with open arms, I would probably remain here trying to survive in a culture that rubs me wrong in so many ways(this is worthy of a whole other article).
My mother's side of the family is poor and has basically left Mexico en masse, I have an aunt and a cousin and my maternal grandparents living in a rural community where the average age is 60+ and the young people have all moved to the U.S. Returning to them with no capital would be useless. If I had not been contacted by my father's family I would work until the permit expires then go back with some savings in hand and try to make the best of it.
What draws me to Mexico is my father's family and some personal experiences that contradict the narrative about Mexico from Mexican immigrant. If one is to believe the immigrants from Mexico, one would never leave the U.S. The U.S is a great noble country with no corruption, rule of law etc. And Mexico is the opposite it is basically unliveable. However I will share something I rarely share. I have been to Mexico. After graduating high school and before DACA was announced. I went to Mexico, I worked in a border factory for a couple months then went to Nayarit. And it was amazing. I felt like an actual human being, the first ever official government ID I ever had was credencial de elector I received at the age of 18. I also felt middle-class I didn't feel like I was at the bottom of society, but that I was right at the center. All feelings of being a marginal individual vanished. I was as free and equal as anyone else.
Someone once described poverty as one continuing crisis, and when I went to Mexico the crisis ended. I also saw that I could achieve more as a legal Mexican citizen in Mexico than an illegal Mexican in the U.S. The poverty I live through here in the U.S is ridiculous. My maternal grandparents have a nicer home in Mexico than my mom has in the U.S. But after six months in Mexico I returned to the U.S, because I was still a wandering 18 year old and all my closest family members are in the U.S and once I was in Nayarit it seemed like the thing to do. But the emigre myth of horrible unliveable Mexico was shattered by my experience there.
One reason I was so happy to be back in Mexico was that I was 18, living on my own and 3/4 of my income was disposable. Sure it wasn't a lot of disposable income but it felt like a lot. Having all that gave me a nice taste of adulthood. Here in the U.S expenses are high, and everything is so damn competitive, there is so much pressure to be better in all aspects, to achieve ever more and if that fails one must consume ever more. Mexico felt like a place where I could just be. The jobs I worked here in the U.S were so damn demanding eating into my weekends, requiring half-hour or longer commutes and paperwork. In America low-wage manual temp workers are required to do paperwork, apparently managers are too stupid or too lazy to manage parts, production and what not. Being managed by dumbasses is one thing, it is a near universal experience nowadays, but being limited by law to remaining in such a position is f*cking bullshit. But now I recognize even with legal status social mobility is shot, your birth determines your status in life. It is the American inability to face this fact, to deny reality and dismiss it, that is turning it into a decaying empire.
In Mexico I met people whom I could not have met in the U.S, Mexicans who had zero interest in going to the U.S and some who had gone to the U.S and disliked it and never wanted to go again. Growing up in an immigrant household that dealt with such heavy burdens and problems, I thought that if we are dealing with this awful situation (domestic violence, grinding poverty, constant fear of deportation, constant moving) instead of being in Mexico, Mexico HAD to be worse, why else would anyone choose my life in the U.S.
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