Immigration Reform and the American Dream: A Personal Perspective

April 12, 2013

Guest blogger: Jacqueline Duran, third-year law student, University of San Francisco

From Washington D.C. to California, rallies were held across the country on Wednesday by advocates for immigration reform. Young people, mothers and daughters, father and sons, entire families and co-workers, set out determined to be a part of the protests.

While I prepared myself for another day of law school classes, I checked my newsfeed on Facebook and began to see pictures of my friends preparing for their participation in the rallies. Some were Dreamers, graduate students and undergraduates students, others were civil rights advocates from various nonprofit organizations, still others just wanted to be there and show their support.

The New York Times reported this week that Congress was getting closer to a bipartisan deal on immigration reform. However, part of the deal requires tougher border patrol, with what is being called “continuous surveillance of 100 percent of the United States border and 90 percent effectiveness of enforcement in several high-risk sectors and for other workplace and visa enforcement measures.” The deal that is currently being negotiated in Congress includes $3.5 billion dollars to the Department of Homeland Security and a 5-year border enforcement plan.

I say: enough is enough. It’s time for the United States government to do something, and quickly for the 11 million immigrants in this country, living in the fringes of our society, attempting with their blood, sweat, and tears to eke out a living.

I write this because I have direct experience with this issue. I know what is like to be on the other side.

From the age of three until the age of fifteen, I lived in this country as an undocumented person. When my mother opens photo albums of my childhood, I am always reminded of my experience of living in “the shadows” of our free American democracy.

Flipping past the initial pages of baby pictures taken of me in Panama, and past the first few years of living in the U.S., close to when I was six years old and starting the first grade, are articles from the local paper on Proposition 187, also called the Save Our State initiative. Proposition 187’s objective was to initiate a state run citizenship screening, and prohibit undocumented immigrants from health care, public education, and other types of social services.

My mother collected the articles because it was the only issue that she was truly worried about at the time. She was terrified that her children would grow up in a country that would not provide them access to an education. She collected the articles and worried, torn by what she and my father would have to do with the family if the proposition was upheld, and celebrated when it was eventually found to be unconstitutional. I know how relieved she was. I feel even more relief now as an adult by the way it all worked out.

I have been one of the fortunate ones. I am in law school now. My brother is a biotechnology engineer in Silicon Valley. My parents toiled day by day multiple jobs to keep the family afloat. They paid their taxes every year. They are upstanding citizens. My mother in all of her twenty-four years of living in U.S. has never even gotten a speeding ticket.

I read Plyler v. Doe in law school last year as part of my Constitutional Law class, and it was amazing how close it hit home. I thought about what would have happened to me if Proposition 187 had been upheld. I think now about what is happening in places like Arizona, and Alabama, and other states across the country, and I worry.

I think about the bi-partisan deal that Congress is expected to make soon, and I know that it is still not enough. More needs to be done to protect a person’s basic rights. More needs to be done to protect children, to protect workers’ rights. More needs to be done than to simply increase the amount of enforcement at the border. More needs to be done than simply aim for “100% continuous surveillance.”

It horrifies me that the American Dream might only be something that exists for the privileged few. Even as I went to school every day as a child, reciting the pledge of allegiance, I felt that it was a dream that was accessible to me. I did not realize until I learned of things such as Proposition 187 that it might not be true. The American people, my colleagues, my friends, need to demand more from ourselves and our government to ensure we meet the promise of a dream that is ingrained in the very fabric of our society, and in the hearts of children from all walks of life.