The Border Fence, Brownsville 
My Life As an Illegal
You’ve heard enough from the politicians and the activists, the demagogues and the bleeding hearts. Here’s my story. I only wish I could put my name on it. By Immigrant X
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And I don’t think there were any schools there for my son. He has special needs. He’s smart, but he has speech problems. He does not communicate all that well. So he’s in a special program here. And even though my wife and I speak Spanish, he speaks it very little. He speaks much more English. If you ask if he wants to go back to Mexico, he will say no and start crying.
We don’t really have a plan if one of us gets deported except to come back as quick as we can. When I lived with my sister, I saw other illegals leave money with somebody they knew well, like a cousin or a friend, somebody who you know is not going to spend it. Leave, like, $1,000 or $2,000 and say, “If something happens, just send this down to me in Mexico.” Then the friend would send a MoneyGram from the Money Box store and sometimes it would go to a bank or sometimes you would pick it up. And then you would be back here in a week.
My wife and I have each other for that. And I tell her to keep some money in her wallet to get a hotel or to eat in case she gets thrown out, and then just try to get back. If she cannot, I’ll send the kids to her and stay here and work. But we don’t want to do that. That’s something we don’t like to think about, really. It’s depressing.
THERE IS A GUY on one of Austin’s all-Spanish radio stations who everybody listens to called El Chulo. That’s where we hear a lot about the immigration protests. Chulo is on early in the morning, from five-thirty to ten, and I hear him when I’m at work. It’s like a talk show, not much music, and it’s also on in Dallas and San Antonio.
May 1 was Mexican Labor Day, and there was a protest in Austin that day. For that protest, Chulo was telling us, “Don’t go to work. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t buy food at McDonald’s or Jack in the Box, nothing. Stay home. Don’t watch TV. Don’t do anything that day.” That’s how he is. He always talks about real life. Some guys don’t like him because he talks about sex a lot and girls call in and he flirts with them. But sometimes people call in with crazy stories, like about girls being raped by the Border Patrol or about people coming from Mexico and having all their money taken away. Every day there is a subject, like immigration or coyotes. He helps people. When Immigration was here after the protest, some guys called and said the migra was at H-E-B. Chulo told us about it and said not to go there.
I heard there were a lot of raids in Austin after the protest, but I didn’t see them. I was at work one Monday morning, and I went to lunch, and when I got back, some guy said, “Hey, Immigration came by.” Everybody had run away. Some of the guys were from San Antonio, and they got all their stuff and left and never came back to the job. But I don’t know anybody close to me who was deported, and I have many close friends who work construction. So maybe it happened, but who knows? Even if it did, I think the protests were good. Everybody wants to get legal somehow, so we do this protest in as nice and positive a way as we can.
My kids don’t know we are illegal. Sometimes kids talk to other kids at school, and the other kids talk to their parents. We try not to tell everybody that we’re not legal because you never know. Like my neighbor here, he doesn’t know. He always talks about wetbacks, and he doesn’t know he’s got one next door.
So we just tell the kids that we don’t have passports. Maria took two of them with her to a protest in Austin before the Labor Day protest, and they asked her why they were going. She told them everyone was going because they wanted to get papers. When it was over, they asked her, “Mom, why didn’t you get your papers?” She said, “Maybe it will take a little longer. Maybe a few more protests. Maybe we’ll have to walk to Washington.”
I couldn’t go because I was busy with work. And I didn’t want her to go. But she said she wanted to go because it is an important time. And when it was finished, she said she felt like she had freed herself. Everybody was there together, feeling the same way as her, whether they were illegal or American citizens trying to do something to help somebody else.
I WANT TO START by being a legal resident, and then I’d like to be a U.S. citizen. They could change the law like that. You start with a permit to work, and then if you don’t get in any trouble, they give you the citizenship to stay here and go in and out of America legally. Maybe after eighteen years of the permit, you could get citizenship.
I know they have a test you take now. You have to learn to read and write English good to pass the test. Some guys tell me it’s hard, but sometimes they just don’t know much. One guy told me that they ask how many states America has and what are the colors of the flag. And they ask you to write something in English. That guy failed the test because he couldn’t write the word “yellow,” which is funny, because he is a painter.
There’s a lot of people that don’t like us to be here, but the thing is, we are here. Those people might be mad with guys doing something wrong, like bringing drugs. I agree with them on that. It’s okay to be mad at those dudes, but don’t be mad at everybody. It’s like the way they look at everybody who has brown skin and is dressed like a cowboy and say, “He must be a Mexican,” even if the guy is from El Salvador. We can tell somebody’s not from Mexico by the way they talk, by their face. But here everybody thinks, “That’s a Mexican.”
I heard about the three-year guest-worker program. That has been on the news a lot. I think I would like to do that because it’s the first step to be legal. But I need to see what’s going to happen after three years. If you have to leave after that, then no, I don’t think that will work for me. Three years go fast.
I could go talk to an attorney, but sometimes you are afraid to do that. Nobody is looking for us right now. But if we start getting into this process and they look for more information, that might be when they say, “Okay, here they are,” and then we get deported.
I want to be legal. I want to buy a house, like a bigger house with more rooms. But because we are illegal, they would ask for too much interest on it. And I would like to be able to take my kids home to see where I grew up and maybe see my old friends. We are not far from Guadalajara. It is only a sixteen-hour drive. I would like to be able to get in our own car and drive there for a couple weeks and then come back.
I guess there’s hope when my son turns 21. Then he can apply for citizenship for me. It’s too late for me to do like some guys who get married to a U.S. citizen, because I’m already married. Who knows, maybe I’ll win the lottery. I bet they would give me citizenship then.
But until then we will just keep doing everything right and waiting.
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