Amy's Story

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Amy's Story

Essay

By: Anonymous

Date: 2002

Source: Coalition of Student Advocates. "Amy's Story." 〈http://www.cosaonline.org/stories.html〉 (accessed July 1, 2006).

About the Author: The Coalition of Student Advocates formed in October 2002 to lobby for legislation that would allow illegal immigrants who have graduated from American high schools to attend American universities.

INTRODUCTION

In the 1970s, widespread dissatisfaction with the nation's inability to control its borders prompted the American people to demand a change in immigration policy. Legislation passed over the next decades did not address the problems of naturalized immigrant children. The gap in the law led to calls for legislation that would allow immigrants students to be treated the same as native-born students.

The Refugee Act of 1980 indicated that Congress was ready, willing, and able to examine immigration reform. It was the first of several efforts to control the borders. The legislation set up a commission that issued recommendations that became the foundation for subsequent immigration laws in the 1980s and 1990s. The Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 provided a process by which immigrants who entered the country illegally could legalize their stay and eventually become naturalized U.S. citizens. Most of the immigrants who took advantage of IRCA came from Mexico, but more than 3,000 Taiwanese also became legal immigrants. The Immigration Act of 1990 included an authorization for the attorney general to grant temporary protected status to undocumented aliens subject to armed conflict. It also set a cap of 675,000 immigrants that has been regularly exceeded in subsequent years.

The various pieces of legislation did not resolve the crisis of border control or help all undocumented aliens who were long-term residents of the United States. Advocates for various groups of illegal immigrants proposed legislation that would address the needs of political and economic refugees. The Coalition of Student Advocates, one of the groups proposed immigration reform, focused on the concerns of naturalized students.

PRIMARY SOURCE

Name: Amy

Location: New York

I am an American. I am also an undocumented immigrant.

Before I was born in 1978, my father was involved with the Tangwai. It was a movement in Taiwan whose main objective was to re-establish constitutional rights taken away by the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomingtang) after they had come into power in 1949. The grassroots-level work of the Tangwai eventually led to Taiwan's independence from China.

Involvement with the Tangwai was considered subversive at the time. As a means to silence my father, the Kuomingtang police power destroyed our home with sledgehammers. Our family stayed with one relative after another, running away in terror. We were afraid to be one of the other families involved with the Tangwai—the ones who seemed to disappear into thin air, or the individuals turning up with a bullet in their head. As I write this article, I am reluctant to say the scope of father's activity, as we still live with the fear of what can happen.

My father felt the best way to protect his wife and three daughters was to leave the island as soon as possible. After working with the U.S. Air Force in previous years, he believed America had much to offer. We left Taiwan on tourist visas in early 1982, with no intention to return.

I was three years old.

When we arrived in the United States, my parents did not contact lawyers. They did not know the language, and did not know anyone to turn to for help. Arriving in Los Angeles with only a few thousand U.S. dollars and three children to feed, one thing was clear: they needed money. Immediately, they began working. Despite having studied to become a civil engineer in Taiwan, my father became a cook in a restaurant, and my mother washed dishes.

The restaurant promised to file legalization papers on behalf of my parents, but in exchange my parents were to be paid very little. Everything seemed to cost more than expected in America. After working at three different restaurants simultaneously, my father decided the hours were lousy and the payoff was not enough to support a family. Instead of staying with this plan, my father became a motel manager in a bad neighborhood of San Bernardino. Here, he was to be paid a thousand dollars a month, and our family would receive living facilities—the manager's quarters—for free.

One year to the day we arrived in the United States, an armed gunman came into the manager's office and demanded the money from the cash register. He pointed the revolver just above the collarbone of my father's left shoulder, down into the torso region. My dad was naïve, and said the money was not his to give. So the gunman shot my father. He then took the money in the register, and ran to his motorcycle getaway where another person waited.

My father spent six months in the hospital, having repeated operations with complications resulting from adhesions. When I read the doctor's notes, my father's condition was reported as "stable, but the patient worries about how he will make money for his family."

When he finally recovered a year later, my father moved our family out of San Bernardino to a much safer neighborhood in the Los Angeles suburbs. He decided to leave previous plans behind and to go into business for himself. Utilizing his education in civil engineering, he started his own construction business.

Immigration laws have come and gone. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 gave a blanket amnesty for those who arrived before January 1, 1982. Our family arrived three and a half weeks after this deadline, and therefore did not qualify due to this technicality. We could not do anything about our status.

In second grade, in the multi-purpose room of my elementary school, I chimed along with others in music class,

This land is your land, This land is my land,

My sisters and I liked it here and wanted to belong. We got ourselves American names and worked hard to fit in. As I got older, I enjoyed participating in community service with my classmates. I usually spent afternoons finishing up on homework, nights watching Star Trek: The Next Generation or rehearsing with my high school marching band, playing the clarinet. I also hung out at the mall with my friends on the weekends.

From California, To the New York Islands,

But every year brought with it a sense of being unwelcome in a country we sought to call home. I was oblivious to immigration laws until I became older. When I was fifteen, I learned California Proposition 187 took away access to public services, including driver's licenses, from undocumented immigrants. It didn't matter that my parents paid income taxes every year since they had arrived in the U.S. It also made in-state college tuition for immigrants like me illegal, even though I had lived in California since I was three years old.

To the Redwood Forests, To the Gulf Stream Waters,

Further, lawyers were reluctant to take our case. Declaring amnesty was not going to work because Americans knew very little about the political upheaval in Taiwan. We therefore did not qualify as political asylum candidates, as Taiwan was not considered a "priority" country unlike China or Vietnam. Therefore, our best bet in becoming legal was to marry a U.S. citizen.

This land was made for you and me.

I finished high school with honors, and looked forward to college. "The FAFSA opens the door to the federal student aid process," the application said, "every step you take will get you closer to achieving your educational goals." One exception: I did not qualify because I couldn't check the little box saying I was a legal resident of the United States.

My father thought a college education was vital to success in America, so he and my mother worked like superheroes to put my sisters and myself through college, paying out-of-state tuition for each of us. My California state education cost $17,000 a year, more than three times the $4,500 tuition legal residents enjoyed.

As I entered college, I began to learn the boundaries which exist for an undocumented immigrant in America. One of the first things I did as a new college student was to visit the campus of a well-known academic university in San Diego. I was excited to see where I would be spending the next four years of my life. Our family rode southbound on the 5 freeway and watched as the landscape changed from evergreen trees to deep blue shores.

While driving through the San Onofre Mountains, a yellow highway sign caught my attention. It was posted in the middle of a highway, a yellow rectangular type with a silhouette of a three-member family holding hands and running, with the child flying up like a tail of a kite. The unmistakable word, CAUTION, was written across the top. It took only a moment for me to realize the sign was a warning to oncoming traffic about immigrants running across the eight-lane freeway, away from the border patrol.

As we drove further south, I became more mindful of my family's place in America. I looked across the freeway and observed that the northbound traffic had slowed down. Each car was individually stopped by border patrol agents.

"I don't want to come down here again," my mother said while looking out the window. "I don't feel safe."

In the years to follow, I tried not to fixate on my undocumented status. But in time I began hearing tales from my friends who studied abroad in Spain, England, and Australia. They would speak of their adventures backpacking through Europe, showing me pictures of these huge metal sculptures by Jean Tinguely in Paris. A friend said he realized he found the love of his life on one of the islands of Costa Rica.

I wanted more than anything to be a part of these adventures. I would feel this despair even when hearing my friends bragging about their latest exploits from Wednesday and Saturday nights spent down in nearby Tijuana. For example, when they returned home, they'd hold up a large chipped ceramic statue of a frog or an unauthorized replica of Homer Simpson and say, "Five, bucks! Can you believe it?"

Despite the fact that I would probably never have any use for these trinkets, I wanted more than anything to be in Mexico and other countries with my friends, creating new memories in my life. But I never ventured to go past the border. Despite my perfect English, I was afraid there would be something giving me away at the border check. I believed if I traveled down to T.J. with my friends on a harmless night, the stories I would bring back would be much more tragic, assuming I could return at all.

To occupy myself, I thought perhaps I could get a job. I was hoping the advice attorneys had given us for years happened to be wrong—a misunderstanding. When I tried applying for employment at a retail clothing store, I was met with the same little box which stopped me from applying for the FAFSA: I needed some form of documentation to prove my legal status. According to something called the "1-9" form, I needed a U.S. passport or a green card, and a Social Security card to work. I didn't possess either of the first two documents, and the Social Security card I was issued as a child had some additional printing across the top which I never noticed before: "NOT VALID FOR EMPLOYMENT PURPOSES.""

Without proper documentation, no one in my family was allowed to work in any setting requiring tax withholding—to file a 'W-2.' This meant no health insurance, no retirement benefits, or anything else to ensure our health and welfare.

I was afraid to fake documentation because I did not want to risk my own deportation. To do so would, in effect, also place my family in jeopardy. So instead, I worked odd cash-paying jobs. I helped people pack and move to new homes. I tutored high school kids. Neither paid much money. I even considered being an egg donor when I saw ads in the school newspaper.

Thanksgiving 1999. I would be graduating in six months. My father sat across from the black obsidian coffee table, with a large roasted bird placed on the reflective surface before us. It was prepared in my father's "traditional" Chinese style, with garlic, green onions, and soy sauce.

He cleared his throat. "So did you find a nice boy, someone to marry?"

I knew where this question was going. The immigration attorneys repeatedly told us it was the easiest way to become legal in this country. But the better years of college were spent in search of the perfect major, and not the perfect "husband."

My face became hot. I felt it was such an unfair question. I refused to accept marriage as a matter of convenience for my own immigration status. I wanted to tell him, "No, it goes against everything I was taught to believe—by you and everyone else."

But all I could do was to look down at my empty plate and say, "No, dad. I did not." Then my father sighed, and began carving the turkey.

I was at a loss for what I would do after graduation. On one hand, I could finish school and move back home with my parents. I hated the idea of moving back home, and would have done anything to avoid this fate. My other option was to stay in San Diego, learn the skills of a new profession, and, by my dad's words, "buy time" until I found a husband.

So I started law school. It seemed to be the right decision.

Spring 2001. Almost finished with my first year as a law student, I spoke to an attorney about the reinstatement of Section 245(i). It was a law where undocumented immigrants were given the opportunity to apply for permanent residence without having to leave the U.S. The person filing for a green card either had to be related to a family member who was a legal resident, or had to be hired by a U.S. company.

This provided a loophole for the few who obtained employment with fake documentation. While not all immigrants use fake papers, the government in essence, was promising to look the other way for those who did when applying for green cards—just this one time.

I couldn't believe it. I never followed through with applying for a job because I believed it would have jeopardized my chances of gaining legal employment, legal residency, and ultimately U.S. citizenship. I was doing my best to play by the rules, but it wasn't paying off.

Attorneys were still unwilling to take my case: "Right now, you're just a scholar," one said to me, referring to my then-current status as a law student. "You don't have a job. You don't have an offer of employment. I'm sorry, I can't work with you."

Soon after, I learned for the first time that the American Bar Association does a background check on each person before taking the state bar. At this point, I no longer saw any reason to continue. I left law school and moved back home to the suburbs and got by, tutoring high school students in my neighborhood.

I look back at the twenty-two years I've spent in this country. I've been taught to love the United States and its values above all else. What I cherish most is the freedom to speak without concern of being persecuted by the government. My family did not have this freedom in Taiwan. And despite everything my family has experienced in this country, I would not choose to be anywhere else.

I hope the DREAM Act becomes a reality this year, as it will allow myself and others like me to become legal in a country we have come to love. If it is enacted, I have a to-do list. It is short because I am afraid to set my hopes too high. I will go out and find a secure job, finally utilizing my college degree. I will travel to other countries, including Taiwan, to put a physical setting to all the stories I heard as a child. Most importantly, I will stop living in fear.

But for now, it is still a dream.

SIGNIFICANCE

Until 1970, illegal immigrants to the United States were relatively rare. Subsequently, political turmoil and economic worries in their native countries as well as the increasing ease of transportation encouraged immigrants to enter the United States. By 2006, more than 35 million people living in the United States were born in other countries. This equals about 12 percent of the American population, the highest percentage of foreign-born since 1920. Of these people, an estimated 11 to 12 million are illegal immigrants. Approximately 60,000 undocumented immigrant children are estimated to graduate annually from U.S. high schools. These children, who often came to the United States at very young ages with their parents, are American in all but nationality. They speak English and possess American values. The problem of what to do with these Americanized illegal immigrants has entered the debate over illegal immigration.

Federal law does not permit financial aid to go to illegal immigrants and does not permit states to charge the lower in-state tuition to aliens. In 2003, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act). The legislation permits states to determine residency for in-state tuition, protects students from the threat of deportation, and allows them to work legally. As ofmid-2006, the legislation had yet to pass despite bipartisan support.