“As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram.
Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn’t allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I’d have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to be ready to go at any moment, ready to go with nothing but the clothes on your body. I’ve learned to develop no relationship to anything …"
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (PC: Talya Zemach-Bersin)
These are not the words America expects from its immigrants. America expects them to be humble, heads down, hardworking overachievers who get into college and spend a lifetime gratefully repaying their debt to society without complaint.
America expects every child to be a poster child for immigrant success like Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, which she is, except she doesn’t want to be.
Because she knows her story is exceptionalism, i.e. extraordinary, unrealistic, uncommon. So this DACA-recipient Harvard-grad author writes The Undocumented Americans to tell us about the others, the ordinary, the realistic, the common, like:
- Julián, Mexican, Staten Island: day laborer, crossed the desert 4 times to see his children in Mexico.
- Milton, Colombian, New York City: cheated out of wages after cleaning 9/11 basements flooded with hazardous chemicals that made him sick.
- Julieta, Nicaraguan, Miami: uses local pharmacy for medications under the table if they know you, because that’s the only choice uninsured immigrants have.
- Lilliana, Mexican, Flint: wondering if years of drinking toxic leaden water caused her breast cancer.
- Patricia, Mexican, Willard Ohio: raising 4 kids alone after her husband Javier was deported.
- Leonel, Ecuadorian, New Haven: spent months living in a church to claim sanctuary from ICE.
- Octavio, Guatemalan, Brooklyn: worked hard jobs his entire life alone in America for money for his kids back home.
Aren’t these also humble, heads down, hardworking overachievers just trying to get by?
“Have you heard?” is our way of sharing another point of view on commonly held beliefs. Through this we hope to encourage curiosity, dialogue, and tolerance of diverse ideas.