09/05/2017
Thank you Julieta for sharing your story with us! DACA is very important to us here at AfroTurtle. Please continue to share your stories.
"I was 6 years old when my parents decided we would leave our hometown in Argentina to seek out the American Dream. At the time, I knew we were leaving our country, our home, our friends and most of our family behind. Mami and Papi explained that they wanted a chance at a better life. I didn’t really know what was wrong with the one we had! Anyway, I trusted they knew what was best. Distance and borders were a foreign concept to me. Politics and laws were not words in my vocabulary. My young mind only pictured adventure. As I sat in that big metal bird on our way to our destination, I dreamt about what we would encounter once we landed. The explorer in me was not afraid but instead thrilled.
From the moment we arrived on the the other side, my life changed forever. Our first couple of years in Milwaukee were difficult to say the least. I have vivid memories of my first years of school. I remember being bullied for not speaking or understanding English. I remember being made fun of for the clothes and shoes I wore. It was difficult to fit in. Many days my sister and I would go home and cry in our parents’ arms and they would cry in ours. Mami and Papi were facing their own set of struggles as well. They were struggling to learn English and they were settling for jobs that paid minimum wage which meant they were working long hours to be able to support us. Sometimes it felt like we barely ever saw each other. I remember nights where I would try to stay awake long enough until my father got home, just so I could say good night, but my eyes became heavy before he arrived. When we were all together, it was bliss. My parents did their best to make us happy even though I could see that they often felt defeated. For all of us, many days were battles.
Like all immigrant families I have ever known, we were fighters. Life was tough but we were tougher. Everyday I went to school, I felt more determined. I became fluent in English and soon enough I was translating for my parents anytime they needed me to. I did my homework, I participated and I excelled in every class. My parents used to tell me, “your education is one of the only things that can never be taken away from you. Don’t worry about your material possessions, focus on what you can learn.” From then on, my education became the most important thing to me. My teachers often told me they knew I would have a bright future and insisted that if I kept working hard I would be able to achieve anything I dreamed. Unfortunately, as I got older, I realized it wasn’t that easy. I realized I was at a disadvantage.
My junior year in highschool, I was one of the few students working to help my family while maintaining excellent grades. I was third in my class and confident that I would go to a great university and go on to have a career I loved. Why wouldn’t I be able to? I put a lof of effort into my education, I completed countless hours of community service and I never strayed from the right path. I was accepted to every university I applied to but when it came to being able to afford tuition, I was at a loss. Federal financial aid was not an option since I was undocumented. Few scholarships did not require a Social Security Number to apply. Regardless of the limited opportunities, I searched and applied for private scholarships until I had enough to cover my first year of college and a little more. A part of me, though, still felt uncertain about my future. I realized that even if I graduated with a degree I would still be undocumented, meaning I would not be able to get a job with my degree. I realized that at any moment, if it was decided that I should be deported, I would be. These realities brought doubt. Why did everyone assure me if I worked hard I could do anything I wanted? It didn’t feel that way. “Undocumented” seemed to be my identifier. My humanity, my ambition and my efforts seemed overlooked. I felt like the country I grew up in and gave my all to was betraying me. I felt like the American dream was a lie.
I grew up hearing hateful rhetoric about people like me. According to those who hate me, I am a criminal. I am thief. I am a freeloader. In fact, I’m not even human, I am an alien. I’m something you fear, something that doesn’t belong. I grew up seeing families torn apart on the news due to deportations. I grew up believing that I had to prove myself to some higher being who was constantly judging me. This higher being wasn’t God, it was the American government and it seemed to me that no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough. During my senior year, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals became a reality. I remember the tears of joy that ran down my cheeks when I found out that things were finally going to improve for people in my situation. I learned that with DACA I would receive a Social Security Number and a work permit. This would mean I could work legally and get a license. More importantly, it meant that I would no longer have to live in fear deportation. Yet, DACA meant much more to me than the benefits it promised. DACA meant that, for once, I was being welcomed in a country that had been rejecting people like me for many years. DACA made me believe that maybe people didn’t hate us so much anymore. Maybe, they were ready to give us a chance. To be truthful, DACA did not appear to me as an ideal program. It did not give me the same rights as those who are legal citizens such as the right to vote, travel or apply for federal financial aid. It did not promise a pathway to citizenship, either. It was simply a temporary fix. Nonetheless, I was extremely grateful and finally able to find hope again.
The American Dream can be defined as the ideal that, in America, we are all given the equal opportunity to be successful so long as we are determined and put forward our best efforts. If this is true, I cannot think of a reason why Dreamers like me should not be able to thrive from the fruits of our labor. We have been in this country most of our lives. We constantly work hard, educate ourselves and give back to our community and our country. We pay our taxes, we live by the laws set in this country and we continue to contribute through our talents and hard work. DACA has given us new opportunities to develop and to achieve success. There is no doubt that Dreamers deserve DACA. In fact, we deserve much more. I hope one day this country will recognize our worth not because we are a strong labor force but because we are human. All we want is a better quality of life. To those who want to see the end of DACA, you can rest assured that we are not quitters. With or without DACA, we will continue fighting for what we deserve. We will continue bettering ourselves anyway we can. We will continue demanding equal rights. We will continue dreaming and waking up to achieve the unimaginable." - Julieta Alonso
