In my mid-twenties I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. My university-provided psychiatrist was the one who informed me clinical depression was not about feeling sad, but about feeling a paralyzing sense of hopelessness. My world, at that moment, was black and white. My grades had tanked because of my health, and I was in danger of flunking out of school. I believed that getting thrown out meant I would never graduate from college. Never graduating from college meant I would continue the cycle of poverty I was born into. Never escaping poverty meant I would never come to know stability, emotionally or materially. The doctor was right: I was paralyzed by the notion my entire future rested on the decisions I made in college – an idea that, I know now, is not anywhere close to true.
Being undocumented, however, for me was another type of depression. Though the depression was situational, it didn’t feel any different from clinical depression. As a second-class person, I had no real future. I couldn’t get a job without a Social Security number and what was available to me “under the table” was exactly the jobs you are likely imagining – landscaping, dishwashing, and construction. The working conditions are exactly what you are thinking as well. My bosses committed wage theft, and I was sexually harassed. Though both these things continued to happen at jobs after I got my papers and worked legal jobs, my vulnerability at that moment meant complaining wasn’t an option. I just took it.
It was against the law for me to drive, meaning I had to take three different buses to work, two of which only ran every hour. At my first job I was a prep cook and dishwasher. My day meant getting to the bus stop by 7:30 a.m. to arrive at work by 10 a.m. After I worked my shift, I’d take two more buses to my second job at another restaurant and work till 10 p.m. Usually by then a loved one could pick me up. The transportation system in south Florida is underfunded and unreliable and sometimes the bus would not come. I was paid a whopping $6 per hour at my jobs. One time I ran out of money halfway through my trip and distinctly remember sitting utterly defeated outside of a Publix supermarket asking people for change. I did not have access to a bank account and could only carry cash. A kind woman gave me a couple dollars and I was able to make it to work.
I made friends with one of the bus drivers, a friendly Mexican man. I would sit at the front and we’d chat sometimes. Once some biker-looking guys got on the bus and started saying racist things to us: “Mexicans were cockroaches that needed to be sent back.” I am Chilean, not Mexican,but that didn’t matter. To these men, Latin America was just one big Mexico. My friend intentionally passed their bus stop while screaming “Viva México!” as they got more and more upset. I was so in awe of the fact he refused to take their shit.
Another time I was working as a prep cook at a catering company and cut my finger deep. Blood got onto my hand and shirt but also splattered into a large tray of vanilla pudding. My boss took a spoon and scooped it out of the tray. It was from an industrial-sized can of pudding that cost $3.75. He could have just opened another. This same boss had slapped my ass a couple days before. This happened right before my shift ended, so I wrapped my finger in paper towels and made my way toward the bus.. My Mexican bus driver friend asked me what the hell happened after seeing the bloody paper towels wrapped around my hand, but there were no seats in the front to explain. I was tired and sat in the back. I didn’t want to talk about it.
Most importantly, as a second-class person I could not go to college. I did not do particularly well in high school. I had undiagnosed learning disabilities. I couldn’t understand how easily school came to the middle class kids. It was as if there were unspoken rules they all understood. The poor students, we got C’s and D’s. I still managed to graduate high school but for years college was out of reach.
I remember the first time I tried to apply to community college right after I graduated high school. The nice woman in the office told me, because the plane hijackers in 2001 had used their tourist visas to apply to flight school, they would not permit people on expired tourist visas to enroll. I had brought my high school diploma and years of old report cards to try to prove state residency. She was nice but apologetic. She said what I could do was enroll as an international student — but then the fees would be five times higher. For me making $6 an hour washing dishes, that was an impossible amount of money. As an undocumented person I did not have access to financial aid or any government benefits for that matter. They may as well have said it cost a million dollars per semester.
So I did what all poor immigrants do: I worked. Two, even three jobs. I was living with my mom, an undocumented housekeeper, in a one-bedroom apartment. The consensus was she paid the rent and the light bill and I paid the internet, smaller bills, and our immigration fees. Those fees ended up being thousands of dollars, but we were very lucky in that there was a way for us to legalize our immigration status. The vast majority of immigrants who entered the country illegally are not offered a pathway to legalization. There are very rare exceptions such as when the president declares amnesty like when President Ronald Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.
My grandfather was able to eventually get his green card through IRCA. Once granted, he could sponsor my mother and I under a family-based visa. But the process is long and, for poor people, complex and expensive. Learning disabilities are nothing new to my family and my grandfather never learned English. It took years to figure out the system. From the time I entered the country until I received my work permit, the process took my mother and I 18 years. For my grandfather, it was longer. The first attorney my grandfather hired just robbed him. He didn’t do anything for us, he just took my grandfather’s money. My grandfather worked as a custodian in this country so money was hard-earned and did not come easy. The second attorney he hired died halfway through the process.
After many, many years my grandfather eventually received his green card and then his citizenship. And then, one hot, sunny day in July, after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, I received my work permit in the mail. I shut the door to the only room in our apartment and cried. Aside from being able to work legally, a work permit was enough to get me enrolled in the local community college. It was enough to get a drivers license. I didn’t have to do everything in fear anymore. It felt like it was made of gold.
I was no longer “illegal” and I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. “Illegal” was the only word used back then and the implication weighed heavily on me growing up. My very existence was unlawful.
I internalized this weird guilt for so long. One time in my teens I was over a neighborhood friend’s house and casually mentioned I wasn’t born here. I thought it was okay to say because I knew there are millions and millions of people in the U.S. legally who were not born here. My friend’s grandmother was in the room. When I said that her eyes got wide, she pointed at me and said, “You’re an illegal immigrant then.”
I could feel my heart drop into my stomach but I didn’t say anything back. It must have shown on my face because my friend nervously dismissed her, but I was terrified. I never went over to her house again and vowed never to mention where I was born to white people. Until I got my papers it felt like a shameful secret to be Latin American. It was a weight around my neck, something that kept me chained to poverty. But after I got my work permit I immediately enrolled in community college mid-summer semester even if I could only afford one class. A million white grandmas couldn’t stop me.
But, if I am being honest, I didn’t discover what real dignity was until I became a socialist years later. I was in my mid-twenties finishing my degree at the University of Florida. At the time, I thought I wanted to become an immigration or gay rights attorney because I was still struggling with liberalism and thought if I could just get access to the system I could change it. That’s what individualism teaches you.
Then I read Noam Chomsky’s Latin America: From Colonization to Globalization and finally learned why there are so many Latin Americans in the United States. It was because of generations and generations of western repression, material extortion, and counterrevolution in Latin America. Most importantly, I learned why I didn’t have to feel ashamed for being here. To paraphrase boricua journalist Juan Gonzelez: those of us from the Global South come to the U.S. to reclaim our share of the resources that had been taken from our home countries by the Global North.
For me it was a huge breakthrough. I had no reason to feel ashamed. I was not here to take from U.S. citizens, I was here to get what was not available to me under the U.S.-imposed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. That became the moment the anger in my heart grew bigger than any fear I felt about the U.S. government. And it was that moment I started to feel dignity and fight back, like my Mexican bus driver friend — but through community organizing. I would make change by educating others about U.S. imperialism and the rights of undocumented immigrants.
Paso a paso, my perspective evolved as I organized through various socialist organizations and continued to educate myself. The process of learning, and most importantly, unlearning falsehoods about socialist revolutions in Latin America made me feel greater and greater pride to be from Latin America and the Third World. Socialism made me understand the solution is not amnesty — it’s about ending U.S. imperialism so no one lives in fear or shame and everyone has access to a life with dignity.
In DSA I sometimes see hesitation from members, particularly from our white comrades, about getting involved in immigrants rights work. This often translates to letting liberal non-governmental organizations (NGOs) lead the work and DSA members merely following. As someone for whom United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) still plays a significant part in her life and the lives of her family, I beg these comrades to reconsider our role in immigrant justice.
President Donald Trump has been threatening mass deportations, perhaps even on the scale of President Barack Obama. We have the capacity to lead the opposition as an organization and with hundreds of chapters across the U.S., to have a significant impact in stopping deportations.
And we can oppose these deportations in a way that advances our broader demands as socialists. Because the difference between kind, well-intentioned NGO employees beholden to their wealthy financial donors and DSA is that we’re a member-led democratic organization that is brave enough to critique the capitalist system and present socialism as the answer.
Socialism taught me not to be ashamed anymore, and it gives me reason to have hope. And a socialist vision that ends all illegal, murderous sanctions against countries like Cuba and Venezuela; a socialism that ends all U.S.-backed wars, military occupations, coercive trade agreements, and climate change that drives human displacement; a socialism that declares if capital can move across borders so can we; that is the socialism that we can declare as an alternative to Trump’s hateful rhetoric.
Solid,
Luisa
Please consider joining our immigrant solidarity working group.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/migrant-solidarity/