In the shadows of the growing hate and immigrant bashing that is engulfing the United States, I quietly celebrated my 40th birthday in August. I, like so many of my immigrant brothers and sisters, live in constant dread and panic, fearing that today, in this current black-hearted hole that we call America, our day will come and we will be caught, arrested, jailed, and eventually deported to some God-forsaken part of Mexico or Central America that we fear will lead to a death. So in this month of my 40th birthday, I thank La Virgen de Guadalupe for watching over me, guiding, and protecting me.
I am still free and alive.
I am a ghost without a home. I am an undocumented immigrant.
In today’s Trump America, make no mistake, I am a criminal, an illegal alien who must be hunted down and caged. I have lived in the cold and heartless shadows of this country for more than 33 years, where Father Gregory Boyle reminds us that “on the periphery of humanity, where the pain, suffering, and need is the greatest.” The United States, then, has been my purgatory, a place that I desperately want to call home, but I am denied at every turn.
I was smuggled into this country when I was about 7 years old, a child, guilty only of being born to a single mother in desperate need to find a way of keeping her family from starving and the daily violence in her native Mexico. Like so many of the children who were/are smuggled into this country, as we grow into adulthood, we lose most of our connection to Mexico.
This country then pulverizes and mongrelizes us into sub-human status. We all become rapists, terrorists, whores, gang-bangers, leeches. All the while, this nation reminds us every second of our miserable existence that we are not American and never will be.
We can never go “home” because Mexico was never our home. We were just unfortunate to be born in a geographical/political war zone, at the mercy of everyone. We have no real home, and the semi-invisible ghostlike life that we lead in this country is criminalized at every turn.
I have survived 33 years in a country that has denied me the human right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. I can’t get a job legally. I can’t get into college legally. I can’t vote. I can’t call the cops. I am easily reduced by politicians and fearmongers to a statistical anomaly, a political talking point, a savage criminal, a pathetic scapegoat. Periodically, I am hunted, rounded up, arrested, and thrown into cages, made a prisoner of a society that I have served faithfully in my adulthood.
In this schizophrenic and hypocritical land of laws (for some), I must have legal “papers” to breathe freedom openly. Perversely, in order to have legal “papers,” I must somehow wipe away all of my 33 years of illegal existence in this country and return to a foreign and foreboding Mexico and pray for celestial intervention that I live long enough to complete the impossibly arduous process of legal immigration and re-entry into the United States, my estranged home of 33 years.
How surreal is that?
Today, worldwide, there are millions of migrants (I am one of them) traversing the globe, seeking a country that will provide the peace, compassion, love, and refuge from the violence, starvation, war, hatred, and persecution that we are all desperately trying to escape. The journey that each and every one of us migrants takes happens when all of the other options have been exhausted, and there is no other choice.
“¡Al camino o muerte!” The road or death.
That is what my mother did; that is why she smuggled me into this country 33 years ago; and that is why I am alive today to celebrate my 40th birthday. One day before I die I hope that this country, my home, my country will see the tragic error of its current inhumane immigration policies and transform itself back into the world’s beacon and a refuge for those persecuted and huddled migrant masses that yearn to be free. Δ
Adelita de los Milagros wrote to New Times under a pseudonym for obvious reasons. Send your response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 8, 2019.
YOU are an admitted ILLEGAL INVADER and you will be deported or disposed of one way or another, again if you try to re-enter. America is built on the “rule of law,” not feelings.
This American of hispanic descent, surname and dark skin to match has zero sympathy for ILLEGAL INVADERS. I am not a bleeding heart liberal, I am a law abiding American that puts AMERICANS AND THOSE THAT LEGALLY EMIGRATE FIRST.
ICE has been notified.
Signed,
#Hispanics4Trump
#Trump2020
What is it with these people entering our country illegally and claiming they are exempt from the laws we have in place. Enough with the whining and blaming Trump for doing what he was voted to do. You had 40 years to get your paper work in order and now you blame the law for your status while others applied and waited to get their citizenship as it was intended.
Dear Ms. de Los Milagros:
I would like to respond to your commentary.
America is a nation of free people, self-governing and prosperous. Thats an ideal, but it has been achievable for scores of millions of people. America is not necessarily a nation of immigrants, but it is definitely a nation of citizens.
As an American resident you are protected by the Rule of Law, but you are also subject to the Rule of Law; just as I am. When I get caught breaking the law, I must face the consequences, just as you must.
If a President fails to abide by or enforce the law, then the rights and liberties of every citizen and every resident, legal or otherwise, are threatened.
Presidents in the past have neglected, intentionally or unintentionally, to enforce Americas immigration laws.
This is a mistake.
This does not make you a criminal, but you are breaking the law, just as I would should I drive intoxicated or shoplift (both of which I did in my youth!).
America is not a hateful or hurtful country. America welcomes all people from all backgrounds, as it should.
I would suggest that you subject yourself to the law. I think you will find that in America the law is applied FAIRLY and MERCIFULLY.
Welcome to America.
Norman Jonah
She broke no laws. Her mother did.
There is currently NO PATHWAY to citizenship for people like her without doing what she describes…going back to a country she barely remembers, filling out the paperwork there, and waiting to enter along with many others who have applied. Years of waiting. YEARS away from her family here, and living in what to her is a foreign country, where she also has limited rights to work, own property, etc.
The others who would wait with her to enter the U.S. have not spent years in the U.S. already, contributing to the economy by buying things and paying taxes (sales and gasoline taxes for example) even though she cannot claim most of the services these taxes provide to citizens. She would not go to the front of the line.
This is not fair. She is being punished for something she had no control over.
I’m playing the worlds smallest violin. Hear it? It’s small but the loudest violin ever.
Emigrate legally or DO NOT come to America at all. We don’t want or need you or your spawn using up our finite infrastructure and resources.
#Hispanics4Trump
#AmericaFirst
You ARE illegal. You ARE here illegally. You have had 33 years to rectify the situation. THIRTY-THREE years! What is your excuse for not changing your resident status?
Do I have sympathy for you? Yes. Do I feel you should be exempt from the laws of the United States? No.
To say you have been denied the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness is erroneous. By what means have you been denied? You live in the US. Youve had a free education. Youve had medical attention. You have a roof over your head. You have a job. You have a family. By what right do you think you are entitled to more than citizens of this great country? And, if this was not a great Country, you would not still be here; your mother would not have come here to give you a better life 33 years ago. If you feel you have been denied rights it is because you have failed to rectify your status. You cannot blame everyone else.
Your mother had the right to apply for amnesty when The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was signed into law by President Reagan. This Act granted amnesty to over 3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
You have bought into the brainwashing of the left believing you are owed the right to be here. What you are owed is designation of illegal immigrant because that is what you are. Have the courage to start the process towards citizenship, which is YOUR path to freedom.
I am very familiar with Father Gregory Boyle and his wonderful works in Los Angeles and Homeboy Industries. Sadly, you have taken his words out of context.
I was naturalized in 1982, enlisted in the military in 1987, veteran of Desert Storm and OEF/OIF.
cost applying and waiting 6 years for citizenship- $$$
cost to enlist and serve- $0 (just Honor, Courage, Commitment)
Not having to defend or justify my reason for being- Priceless.
And how free are you, really? Can you go to Europe or Asia for vacation? You can’t legally leave the country, since you’re not legally here.
Being in constant fear of deportation, always looking over my shoulder- that ain’t no freedom i would ever want…
Call me bleeding heart, socialist, whatever, but I will never ever condemn a seven year old for whatever mistake her parents made. Once you learn to live in hiding and fear, it is very difficult to come out of it. I don’t expect those who so harshly condemn Adelita to understand this, but I want her to know that some of us do, and that compassion can be found in this unforgiving country. I know of a young man who was brought here from Mexico at age 14. He later married an American woman and had two children, so he decided to try to regularize his situation and did everything right, paid taxes, hired a lawyer, filled all the papers, etc. He was arrested and sent back to Mexico, and stayed there almost starving for 17 months. He got out of it only because of the huge support he received from important residents, including local politicians, and he finally became a citizen. I doubt that those of you who condemn Adelita would be willing to go through 17 months of hell, away from your family, and without even knowing if you will get out of it.