@BarackObama, I'm not cheering yet

This column appears in Spanish in Al Día News, June 22 edition.

If you pay attention to immigration matters, it was hard to ignore the jubilation June 15 as President Obama announced that, via a prosecutorial memo, his administration would change its exercise in priority of deportations for young people who were brought to the nation as children. The young people, between the ages of 15 and 30 and fitting specific criteria, will become eligible for deferred action and a two-year work authorization.

So a lot of my twitter friends — which include a number of DREAM-Act eligible young people and many immigration reform advocates — started celebrating Friday afternoon. “This is HUGE HUGE HUGE,” tweeted Jose Antonio Vargas, whose cover story about undocumented young people had appeared in Time Magazine the day before. A friend who’s been active in many aspects of advocacy for Latinos sent me a message that read, “what incredible news.”

Yeah, okay. Except I wasn’t one of the ones throwing confetti around or sending “thank you” tweets to the president. Call me cynical or cautious, but I’m withholding my celebration until this proves more than just lip-service or — to use Washington Post columnist Ruben Navarrette’s word — hispandering.

The president’s announcement, made as his reelection campaign gears up for November, reeks of desire to sew-up the Latino vote. And plenty on the internet commented on the convenient timing:

- “You waited for four years and you remembered four months before the elections?” tweeted journalist Diego Graglia in Spanish.

- “If this turns out to be another ... PR stunt from @barackobama rather than policy change some peeps better buy teflon shirts,” tweeted DREAM Act activist Anja Asenjo.

The thing is, many of us have made note of the president’s propensity to sell the Latino community a bill of goods that is never delivered:

- “The last time Obama promised a case by case review for prosecutorial discretion less than 2% of cases were completed,” tweeted Alfredo Gutierrez from La Frontera Times.

- “Today’s memo clarified the 2011 Morton Memo which clarified the 2010 Morton Memo. All Memo No Action.” echoed Rigo in his tweet of June 15. (Rigo is part of the IYJL and NIYA, both groups that had urged the president to issue an executive order to grant Dream-Act eligible students lawful residence and a path to citizenship.)

“I think it’s brave of the president,” said one of the reporters in the Al Día newsroom, after we had watched Obama deal with a heckler at his Rose Garden announcement of the memo, but before national anti-immigrant groups had disseminated their statements of outrage.

“What’s brave about it?” I scoffed. “It’s not an executive order. It’s not the Dream Act, not even close. It’s a two-year reprieve. If they’re lucky. That’s it.”

“Two years can mean a lot,” he said.

And it’s the way he said it that made me stop my rant.
I was suddenly very aware that this reporter jumps through hoops every year to get his work authorization renewed so he can stay in this country legally and do a job he has a gift for. There is, I suppose, no way to go through the process without concern that someday something could go very wrong and he might not make it back to the life he’s made for himself in Philadelphia.

Someday, he’s told me, he’d like to have a green card. But only a small number of employment-based green cards are issued for professionals and skilled workers coming from Mexico (just under 6,000 were issued in 2010, for example) and since Mexico is his country of origin, he is also excluded from entering the diversity visa lottery that randomly selects 100,000 winners from a pool of millions of green card seekers.

There is such desire to stay here from so many who recognize this as the country of their hearts, it almost hurts to hear it. “This is real,” tweeted Bessuvia, a DREAM activist, who followed her tweet with the hashmark “#Tears.”

“First thing I am doing is getting a drivers license,” tweeted Gaby Pacheco — another DREAM activist — clearly excited at the prospect of something those of us with documents, or citizens, don’t think too much about.

And there it is: People are celebrating such a little step by the Obama administration as if it were huge because even the little steps have been so few and so hard won.

And so precious.

That’s the part I don’t want to forget. And I don’t want the president to forget it either.

Brave dreams: An interview with María Marroquín

Update: According to the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, María and the six other undocumented students arrested in Georgia on April 5 have been released. "ICE agents interviewed the students, but ultimately declined to get involved," said the e-mail release PICC sent out April 8.

When María Marroquín first came to the United States at the age of 13, she thought she’d be seeing Mickey Mouse. She was excited and anticipating her first visit to Disneyworld.

That’s what she told the Transportation Security Officer at Miami International Airport who asked which tourist sites she and her family planned to visit during their visit from Lima, Peru. And, in fact, she stayed long enough in Miami to see palm trees for the first time, to swelter in the near tropical heat she had never experienced before and to notice “how clean and beautiful” the streets of this American city were.

Her family did eventually board a bus but it didn’t take them anywhere near the Orlando resort. Instead, it deposited them in New Jersey and into a life María didn’t expect.

That is — the life a regular American teenager. Except for one thing. They were undocumented.

María’s father had a job lined up already — doing laundry and cleaning at a hotel. It was very different than the work he had done in Lima. The family owned a restaurant there — a going venture for 10 years — and María’s father drove a taxicab at night to make ends meet. But he came to realize that without radically changing the family’s economic circumstances María and her two siblings wouldn’t graduate from high school.

The fact that work as a cabbie during the night shift was becoming increasingly dangerous helped to finalize the decision to come to the United States on visas — which the family overstayed. They moved to Pennsylvania not long after their initial foray north. María was enrolled in a high school in Cheltenham.

“I didn’t realize what being undocumented would mean,” María said. “None of my friends knew. I felt really isolated (and) like I couldn’t trust anyone. I thought they wouldn’t understand if I told them about my status. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.”

María’s parents took English as a Second Language classes, they paid taxes, they enrolled their three children in school, and took them with them to Spanish-language Masses — especially the ones at St. William Parish in Philadelphia, at which the community of Philadelphia-area Peruvian immigrants celebrate feast days together. María’s mother started working as a nanny, and the family settled into building their lives.

They consulted with lawyers early on to see if there was a way to legalize their status, but it proved a fruitless pursuit. After that, María and her siblings stopped talking to each other about their irregular status. They lived with it, in silence. Even so, she credits her family and her faith with getting her through .

She lived, María said, scared.

Her junior year in high school was marked by depression. She never knew what to answer when her friends asked her why she didn’t drive or have a driver’s license, or why she couldn’t participate in the many activities that seemed so normal to her peers. Nothing that required a social security number or government I.D. was open to her.

“It was so difficult,” she said. “And I knew I couldn’t build my life on lies. I don’t blame (my parents) for bringing me here. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I were in Peru. They wanted us to have a future.

"They are just regular people who work hard and want to take care of their children.”

In 2004 she graduated from high school and enrolled in Montgomery County Community College. She attended part-time, paying international student tuition rates — much higher than in-state or out-of-state ones — out of pocket. No financial aid was available to her. Then, like now, she earned money by babysitting and at odd jobs, and put it all toward her tuition.

It took María five years to get her associate’s degree while she worked and saved money and took what courses she could. She maintained a 3.98 GPA, and majored in social science. She’d like to continue on to get a four-year-degree — she’d be the first person in her family attain that — and to some day go to law school.

But no matter how hard she works and what she accomplishes academically, María knows the future she faces is limited by her undocumented status.

“I consider myself an American,” she said. “Everything I know — all my friends, my ideals — come from this country. I want to make my life here.”

María had hopes that the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) — bipartisan legislation that would have made an estimated 65,000 young people eligible for permanent legal status upon completion of two years of college or two years of honorable service in the military — would pass in Congress. That dream was dashed in December of 2010, when the Senate rejected the bill.

The DREAM Act would have not only given María an eventual path to legalization, but would have made it possible for her to continue her education at an in-state tuition rate.

“My parents sacrificed everything for me to be able to continue with my education,” María said. “To know I couldn’t felt like I was letting them down.”

And, she had tired of hiding.

March 19th she and six other undocumented youths “came out of the shadows” and told their stories at a rally at of Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

“We decided to share our stories,” she said. “All we want is to continue our education. We want to do the right thing, we want to contribute. This is the only country we know and we consider it home, and we wanted to put a face to the immigration issue.”

“I know that there were undocumented youth listening” in the crowd of 150 people that gathered, she said. “I wanted to talk to those (in the crowd) who feel as alone as I had.

"A state DREAM Act bill would be great — then (young people) could afford to go to college and not be dropping out of high school.”

The crowd at the rally, mostly high school and college age people, according to María, were receptive. “They give me hope,” she said.

Her advocacy for a pathway to legalization for immigrant youth (she is the co-founder of DreamActivist Pennsylvania and DreamActivist.org) has been supported by many people — the representatives from Catholic organizations who have stood by her at press conferences, her Filipino boyfriend (who is also undocumented) and her siblings.

María’s sister, 21, dreams of becoming a pediatrician; her brother, 20, a Navy SEAL. Both are experiencing the same frustrations María has, and the same thwarted desire to give back to the nation they love.

Her parents, though proud of their eldest daughter, are scared for her, she said.

And now they must be panicked.

Yesterday (April 5) María was one of seven young people who delivered a petition to the president of Georgia State University asking him to keep the institution's doors open to undocumented students — something GSU is slated to stop doing as of the fall semester.

The seven proceeded to engage in civil disobedience — including marching through the campus and disrupting traffic. An hour later, according to the Dream is Coming web site — which is tracking their tweets — all seven were arrested and placed in an Atlanta jail.

It is quite possible, maybe even likely given the jail's alleged working relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they will be turned over to ICE.

“(Deportation) is always in the back of your mind,” María said during our interview March 24. “But this is something that is much bigger than myself. Our cause is just and it is right. That’s enough for me.”


A Philadelphia vigil for María Marroquín and the other six undocumented youths who participated in the civil disobedience at GSU will be held tomorrow (April 7) at 5 p.m. at Senator Toomey’s office at 1628 JFK Blvd. in Philadelphia.

Photos of the March 19th rally courtesy of María Marroquín.