The Mexican Passport Test #1

Yesterday I went to the Mexican Consulate here in San Diego and applied to get my Mexican passport.

It’s always embarrassing to go to the Mexican Consulate because everyone speaks Spanish perfect and I fear that I’ll stutter in Spanish, say something wrong or with an accent.

I’m pretty much fluent in Spanish, however when it comes time to converse with a Spanish speaking native, I lack the native method of manipulating the language fluently and I’m sure it's noticeable.

Three hours and $85 later, I received my Mexican passport with delight.

The Turkish guy who I mentioned was a U.S. citizen in my last post is leaving to go visit his family in Turkey for two months. He’s holding a going away get-together at a local bar and I’ve been invited.

I’m sitting here two hours away from using my passport for the first time and I fear that someone is going to see me use it. What will they say? What if they see the Mexican Seal instead of the American eagle embedded on the front cover? How can I explain my lack of an ID? I can only imagine the worst scenario:

“Hey Ben … you don’t have an ID?”

“Yeah I do … but … well … I lost it, and I can only use my passport.”

“Oh that sucks, let me see it”

“No dude, I don’t like the picture in it.”

“Common, let me see it … why is it a Mexican passport … are you a legal resident?”

“Of course man, I just haven’t gotten my American passport and I brought my Mexican one I got about three years ago, I have duel citizenship you know.”
Then I would briskly shove it in my back pocket and swiftly try and change the topic.

Although I try and remain optimistic, I’m really nervous. We’ll see what happens …

Uncle Sam, am I in?

The other day, two coworkers and I were discussing some meaningless topic when unexpectedly our conversation evolved to talk about immigration. One of the guys is from Yugoslavia and the other from Turkey.

“I can’t believe this guy, he was born in the U.S. … he could be President if he wanted to,” said the Yugoslavian to me about the Turkish guy.

“Where were you born?,” I asked in amazement.

“Ohio.”

“Ahh.”

It struck me with surprise to hear that he was born in the United States because he holds a thick accent in English.

I didn’t ask details but I suppose that his parents came to the U.S. to deliver him and then took him back to Turkey to raise him there.

Everyone at work thinks I’m a U.S. citizen and as I sat down on my break that same day, I thought about how unfair it was for him to have all the privilege America has to offer meantime I’m stuck in a situation where my life cannot advance. I speak better English, I know more American History, I’m in school, I’m a good person, why me, I asked?

I felt envy … I accepted that I just wasn’t lucky enough to be born here.

I don’t want to sound like the U.S. is the only place anyone can survive in but my problem comes from the fact that I was inadvertently raised in the American culture and still I am not fully accepted.

My two coworkers and I work at the mall in a small retail shop selling sports merchandise. Malls are usually places where foreigners on temporary visas come to look for work, and so I have many friends that are from diverse regions of the world.

I remember a Brazilian friend, whom I worked with, that always asked me why I had such a worthless job. He always explained how he didn’t understand why I hadn’t found another job that paid better and gave me more opportunities and experience. Although I get paid semi-decent for the work I do, I still could never answer him with sincerity.

“You have a Social, you can do anything,” he repeated with disparity.

“I’m going to school right now, and, this job is flexible with my schedule … I don’t know, I guess I have to look for a better job.”

I play it dumb, as though I’m too lazy to find another job, the typical American conformist. And that’s all I can ever say.

I’ve been an employee of this company for two years now and I have met many foreigners that have overstayed their visas. Paradoxically, I’ve even been offered money to stage a marriage between me and a Brazilian coworker who had an expired passport so she could become legal.

I turned 21 last month and yet another burden of shame is placed on my shoulders.

I’ve turned down countless offers to enjoy the downtown nightlife because I don’t posses an identification to prove my age. I would have to get my Mexican passport to have an acceptable form of ID but this brings the fear of having a friend see me handing a passport to a bouncer instead of a California ID, exposing myself to questioning.

I try to look at the bright side of things but it just becomes so difficult to remain optimistic when so many situations around me force an effort to hide my true identity.

My sanity continues ticking with an attempt to contemplate my reality. I try placing my situation into perspectives. I live in a place where I don’t worry about my basic survival necessities, like so many people in the world do; I’m in good health, with extra money in my pocket and family that keep me motivated.

I dream of the day when I can present an identification bearing my name.

The very word ‘identification’ propels my mind to speculate. No longer is being ‘you,’ a human being, enough to be an entity, rather, a non living physical plastic card becomes the one who identifies you. With it you’re something, without it, you’re nothing.

Is it just me, or is this not right?

Getting a degree becomes much harder when your undocumented

Summer school starts tomorrow.

In the United States it is illegal for universities to allow undocumented students to pay instate tuition. Students without legal proof are forced to pay international fees that are 10 to 15 times the amount a regular resident would pay, making it impossible to afford an American education.

However, more than 6 states have passed laws that have overturned this rule giving anyone who wishes to study in a University the right to do so paying a fair price.

California has luckily been one of these states that have opened the doors to my educational development. I am currently at a junior college paying instate tuition but without the ability to receive financial aid.

Financial aid is critical when transferring to a University because the differences in tuition rates are immense.

I am currently paying about $1,600 per year at my junior college where as when I transfer to San Diego State University, I will be paying almost three to four times as much. Without financial aid, it will be virtually impossible for me to afford my University considering I pay rent and all the utilities associated with living independently. So in the end, it seems as though I’ll only be able to take 1 class per quarter or semester at the University level and graduate in 10 years!

It disturbs me to think of the discrimination that is going on towards undocumented children in the K-12 education system. A child is not required to be legal when attending K-12, rather it is said that if any child resides in the U.S. regardless of legal status, he/she must attend school.

Once an individual seeks to attain further education, they are denied entrance unless there is proof of legal presence.

The U.S. creates a society of students which are encouraged to achieve academic excellence in high school but are then denied to study further at a University.

Statistics say that about 65,000 students graduate each year from U.S. high schools but are denied entrance to a University because they are living illegally.

What option do these kids have?

Drop out of school and get a meaningless job that overlooks a SSN?

The United States creates a population of children with dreams to become someone in this society only to have them shattered upon graduation.

I’ve read so many articles and stories of students who have excelled in their high school studies. Class valedictorians that have lived without documents, graduate, and are denied scholarships and offers to Ivey-league schools solely because they are undocumented.

And so my journey continues tomorrow at 7:55 a.m. where I will be studying Political Science; the American political system; ironically the same system that has delayed my future.

I can only try and remain optimistic.

-Ben

Introduction

This Blog has created a window between me and the world. It’s become a veil of anonymity that has impelled me to express my sentiments towards my experiences as an undocumented student without fear of reprisal.

It’s an unimaginable grief to the mind and to the heart to want to belong and at the same time be rejected by this same affection. The United States, the land of opportunities, denies my plea to stay.

Without a social security, without identification, it is virtually impossible to enjoy the freedoms this country is said to offer.

I was crossed illegally over the mountains that divide Mexico and San Diego when I was six years of age. I can still remember how it all happened vividly till this day…

There was a divorce between my parents, my two brothers stayed with my father in Tijuana, Mexico and my mother and I fled to the United States.

My mother possessed a passport but I, unlike her, did not. She paid a person $500 to cross me over illegally because that was the only way possible.

I could feel the dark cool early morning wind briskly fanning my face as we treaded across somewhere in the border region. I was accompanied by a young gentleman, about 30 years old, curly hair with a shaven stencil of a mustache. He instructed me on what to do if we got caught:

“You tell them you are my brother, if not they’re gonna send you back by yourself.”

“Will we go to jail if we get caught,” I dreaded to ask.

“No man, don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine, just follow me and don’t make any noise.”

After walking what seemed to me about an hour, we reached a location where we could see a road on top of a small rising, a long elevated track of road designed to spot people crossing by passing border patrol vehicles.

As we crossed the road, I felt my adrenaline pump as we saw in the distance a patrol car steadily approaching in our direction. Instantly we ran across and hid in some nearby bushes.

“Stay down and don’t say anything!” said my guide.

I could see the sun rising as the patrol car shined its search lights our way.

“Don’t move, this is the border patrol, put your hands in the air!”

We were detained and sent to some facilities where they transported us back to Mexico on a bus.

We attempted once more at the break of dawn the following day. I now had the help of two other men. After about three hours walking through hills, farms, and tall brush, we arrived.

One of the first things I notice was the incredible cleanness of the newly paved roads. A McDonalds stood in glow on the corner with a Lincoln Town car approaching its drive threw.

I thought to myself what an amazing new place this was, the city seemed much cleaner then in Tijuana, people where different, the air smelled cleaner, my eyes gleamed with curiosity.

My mother and I traveled to Chicago, where we met her family. It was here, Elgin, a suburb of Chicago, with my aunt, uncle and cousins where I would live my first years as an undocumented child.

It really never occurred to me what consequences my mother’s actions would present in my future. Her dreams were to place me in an environment were more opportunities were available to prosper. Although she had the greatest intentions, the dreams she had for me have been interrupted because my status was never adjusted.

There is not a single day that I don’t think about my situation … on the bus, at work, in bed. I can be apprehended at any moment and sent back to a place which I have no social and emotional connection to. Essentially, I will be deported to a foreign country.

Though I do not deny my roots and where I come from, I can only say that Mexico is not my home country. I have been a victim of identity theft because my boundaries have been determined by a sheet of paper and not by the customs, tradition and language that I mirror.

My undocumented status impedes me from entering a university, driving, boarding an airplane, crossing the boarder to visit my father, and even simple things as to open a bank account, rent movies, and enter night clubs because these actions require a federal ID or a social security number.

My future is evaluated not on my academic or personal performance, rather I am judged by the absence of a birth certificate testifying that my first gasps of air as a toddler were inhaled 15 miles south of the Mexican/US border.

My luck ran 15 miles short, and although I have resided in the United State for over 13 years, I’ve yet to receive any mercy from the government I have lived under since a child.

My only hope is to wait for congress to pass the DREAM act.

The DREAM act is a legislation waiting to be introduced in congress this year. If enacted to become a law, students that have remained in the U.S. for five years or more, have graduated from a U.S. high school, and have good moral character will be eligible for legal residency. A six year conditional resident status would be granted and within this time frame, the applicant must have completed a minimum of two years in the military, or have at least received an associates degree in a higher educational institute to gain full residency.

I sit here on my computer writing this text with my future in the hands of politicians. Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican Senator from Utah has ironically spearheaded this legislation since its initial introduction in 2002.

This blog will serve as a testament to my life’s struggles and I welcome all to read and contribute so more light can be shed on this injustice.

Thank you.

-Ben