Thread: {Sob}An illegal immigrant, UC Davis student tells her story

Junior international relations and Spanish double major Maria Rosas illegally immigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was 4 years old. She became a legal citizen at 15.


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Crossing the border
An illegal immigrant, UC Davis student tells her story
By: PATRICK McCARTNEY
Posted: 5/29/07
At first glance, Maria Rosas is a typical UC Davis student. A junior international relations and Spanish double major, Rosas studied arduously in high school and has a passion for politics. Amnesty for illegal immigrants is her most important political cause, and with good reason: Rosas herself illegally immigrated to the United States when she was 4 years old.



The struggle to survive

Rosas was born into poverty in Morelia, Mexico, but her family is from the small town of Alvaro Obregon, Mexico. She is the fourth of five children in her family. Her older sister was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that would later become one of the factors in the family's decision to cross the border.

Rosas said she hardly ever saw her father because he had to seek higher wages in the United States picking fruits and vegetables and, later, painting.

"I don't remember spending a Christmas with him because he was always coming over here to the United States to work to make ends meet," she said. "They had a lot of bills because my older sister had cerebral palsy [and] they didn't really get help and they didn't know a lot about my sister's disability."

Rosas said her family lived like "peasants," residing in a cement house with dirt floors.

"We [lived off] what we cultivated and selling whatever we could to make ends meet, which was impossible. You can't sustain a family like that," she said.

As a result, in 1990, Rosas's father decided to bring his family to the United States. He was documented due to a 1986 U.S. law that had granted amnesty to undocumented persons, but his wife and children were not. Rosas said her parents spent their life savings to book a plane from Morelia to Tijuana, where they departed for the border. Rosas' father then had to wait for his family in the United States.

After spending a night at a relative's house, Rosas, her mother, and older brother and sister hiked a couple of miles to the border. Rosas said her family paid a coyote, a human smuggler, to lead them across the border. She said a stranger carried her and her sister, while her brother wore plastic bags on his feet so that they would not get wet and muddy.

Rosas said she can still recall the fear of being sighted by the Border Patrol or Immigration and Naturalization Services.

"I can remember someone screaming, 'I can see the car lights.' It was up a hill, and every time [the Border Patrol cars] came, we threw ourselves on the ground," Rosas said.

"It was dark [and] past midnight. Everyone had to be quiet. Everything was happening so fast because if not, we were going to get caught. My brothers and I honestly didn't know what was going on. We just knew we were going to see our dad and that's what kept us going," she said.

Rosas said that after ascending a steep hill, the coyote led them through a hole in a wire fence.

"I guess someone had cut through [the fence]," Rosas said. "I remember they pushed me through, and we were put into a car, into the camper of a truck, and we were driven somewhere."

Rosas said she met her father across the border in a hotel where "you would never want to stay." The family proceeded to drive to Hollister, Calif., taking nothing but the clothes on their backs and memories of a home that did not yet seem far away.

"I don't think we realized how far away from home we were or the fact that were already in the U.S. I kept asking my mom, 'When are we going to get there?'" Rosas said. "But I guess in my mind … I pictured [a place] where all our problems would leave, where I would have everything, [but] I didn't see it."



Becoming documented

The Rosas family spent three months in a relative's house with about 15 other people before moving north to Watsonville, Calif. There, they shared a three-bedroom house with two other families.

"My family lived in a room and we rented out [rooms] to two other families. Old paint buckets were our chairs and our clothes came from Goodwill," Rosas said.

Rosas said she went to a free clinic when she was 5 to receive vaccinations. Her mother helped her sister with physical therapy and later enrolled her in a child disability center. Rosas said such medical services would not have been possible if she had remained in Mexico.

"If I [had] grown up in Mexico, I'd probably be married with children and my sister would probably be bedridden," Rosas said.

Rosas said she occasionally feared being deported.

"I remember thinking, 'Wait, can we be deported?' And my mom would say, 'No, we applied already; our application is in process. Don't worry about it,'" she said.

Rosas said she did not even tell her friends that she was undocumented - a term she prefers to "illegal."

"No human is illegal. It's not like [undocumented migrants] are living off Social Security or something. They're coming over here to work for cheap labor nobody else wants to do," she said.

As Rosas' father became an increasingly successful painter and even started his own small business, the family was able to purchase their house and later purchased a second dispossessed house from the city.

But even after establishing a life in the United States, the Rosas family did not exist in the eyes of the law. Rosas said that changed when she was 15 years old.

"It was my understanding you paid a fee for crossing the border illegally, and my dad ended up paying about $6,000 for all of us - over $1,000 per person," Rosas said. "I don't remember why it was that they allowed us to stay. All I remember is my dad had to pay a really big fine and [my parents] had to prove that they had been married in Mexico, and my dad had really fathered all of us. It took us 11 years … for us to be called legal."

By the time she was a high school student, Rosas said she became serious about her studies after being inspired by Upward Bound, an outreach program for minorities and disadvantaged students. She said being documented allowed her to pursue higher education after high school - an opportunity her older brother did not have until several years after his graduation.

But despite the hurdles she faced, Rosas said she considers herself fortunate.

"I think at a lot of times it was very tough, but growing up you don't see it until you reflect upon it. I did sometimes see kids having what I didn't have and I wondered why, but for me, the fact that I was living with my mom and my dad and the fact that he didn't have to leave anymore made up for everything," she said.



Fighting for change

After being accepted to several universities, Rosas said she chose UC Davis due to its close proximity to the state's capital. She said she wants to make a political difference by speaking on behalf of illegal immigrants.

"It angers me when people think that we want to come here, that it's something by choice, by want, that we want to cross the border illegally, that we want to commit a crime, that we want to come here undocumented," she said.

Anastasia Panagakos, a UC Davis human and community development research associate, said she agreed that many immigrants have no choice but to come to the United States illegally.

"People … come illegally because they are fleeing horrible living conditions, political or religious persecution. They may not have the time to wait for the U.S. government to grant them a work or visitor visa to come here because staying where they are could mean starving or being killed," said Panagakos in an e-mail interview.

However, not everyone holds such a view. On May 1, the Davis College Republicans held an "Illegal Immigration Capture the Flag" game, intended as a protest. Rosas said the game was a demonstration of ignorance.

"I'd just ask for them to really, really, really put [themselves] in our shoes … and realize that it's not out of choice that we come here. It's a life-and-death situation. You have to fight for your life and the life of your children," she said.

At a May 10 ASUCD Senate meeting, Allison Daley, DCR chair and sophomore political science major, acknowledged that current immigration law is less than ideal but said she still opposed crossing the border illegally.

"I realize it's not easy to come into this country legally [but] it doesn't give [a person] a right to come illegally," Daley said.

But the DCR event did not discourage Rosas. She said it has only made her - and others - even more motivated to keep fighting.

"We can go out outside of this campus and make change and seeing a spark like [the DCR game], and seeing the people so angered by that, and so motivated for change, has been a good thing," Rosas said. "I think there is hope for the future, but there's a lot of work to do."

She paused.

"There's a lot of work to do."

http://media.www.californiaaggie.com/me ... 9625.shtml

PATRICK McCARTNEY can be reached at managing@californiaaggie.com.
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© Copyright 2007 The California Aggie

Booooohoooooooo!!

I am sorry that I did not find this article sooner the student involved is obviously ignorant. This article does highlight the problems which have been caused by Sen. Ted Kennedy. There has been a gray area created where just filing for an adjustment is used as an excuse to be here illegaly. Applications for change in status should be made from abroad. I bet that well before they became legal they were part of the local political machine. It does not take legal residency to stuff envelopes and pass out flyers. They were certainly drawing public benefits.

This is just another sob story by someone who came here illegally to
justify their reason for entering the U.S. illegally. As with all illegals
and their supporters, they blame the U.S. for them being here illegally,
and not Mexico for having such bad conditions that they had to leave
their country to find work, medical and better living conditions.

boo freakin hooooo

How many American citizens are born into poverty We need to attend to our own citizens and enforce the lawsa already on the books regarding illegal immigration