about this author

Living the American Dream

As the debate on illegal immigration continues, I’ve been thinking more and more about my own journey from Mexico to the United States twenty-one years ago. My parents left me in Mexico for five years while they worked in the United States. Being left behind scarred me for life. This is why, in 1998, I began to write about my childhood. Growing up in the U.S., I never read any books that dealt with the experiences of children who were left behind, even though it is common for parents to leave their children when they come to America.

This June Atria Books is releasing my first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains. It is the story of a young girl in Mexico whose father leaves for the U.S. and is never heard from again. This story is fictional, but it is based on some of my experiences. The girl’s fear of never seeing her father again is real. Her fear of being forgotten is real. Her struggle to maintain her hope alive is real. I lived it.

In 1979, my father became one of the many illegal immigrants entering the United States. He left my family — my Mom, my sister Magloria, my brother Carlos and me — behind in Guerrero, Mexico. We lived in a little shack made of bamboo sticks and cardboard. Our bellies were full of parasites; our hair was infested with lice. We went barefoot and had no money for school. We had no running water. We bathed in a canal littered with trash, with horse dung floating by. We went around gathering cow dung to burn in order to keep warm and scare the mosquitoes away. My father left because he had two choices: 1) Stay in Mexico and see his children suffer, with no possibility of a better future or 2) Leave for the United States and give us a chance to succeed in life. By choosing to leave my father gave me the greatest gift a parent can give a child—the possibility to succeed.

A year after he left, my father sent for my mother. He returned home five years later and brought me and my siblings to the United States. I was almost ten. On our first attempt to cross the border from Tijuana I became sick and suffered from fever most of the way. My father carried me on his back, up until we were caught. I don’t remember if it was the first attempt or the second attempt when we found a dead body hidden under the bushes. There were flies all over the dead man, and he had a big bump on his forehead. My father said that sometimes coyotes kill their clients to rob them.

The second time we got caught again. I just remember waiting at the immigration office while my dad was been interrogated. The immigration official gave me a soda. By this time my father was getting frustrated. He wanted to take us all back to Guerrero and forget the whole thing. He said we would try one more time. The third time we tried to cross the border at night. I remember the darkness, holding my sister’s hand and being afraid of getting lost in all that blackness. I remember the helicopter flying above us, and running, trying to find a place to hide. The coyote made me leave my sweater and my socks behind because they were a light color and could be seen in the darkness. I remember running across a highway, my father picking me up and helping me over a fence. These are all flashes of images. All I know is that on the third time we crossed we made it.

Life in the United States was not easy. I was enrolled in the fifth grade in Aldama Elementary in Highland Park, CA, although in Mexico I was just finishing third grade. I was put in a corner to be taught by the teacher’s assistant. My teacher didn’t speak Spanish, so for the rest of the year I could not communicate with her. My father taught us to value education. He drilled into our heads that we were lucky to be living in America. He often threatened to send us back to Mexico if we didn’t learn English and get good grades. He talked about the importance of having a stable job, a retirement account, owning a house.

Now I am thirty, living the American dream. By leaving Mexico, my father changed the course of my life completely. Because I live in the United States, I am a college graduate and a teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. I have my own house. I have a car. Best of all, I am a published author. Only in America can a person go from being an illegal immigrant to a published author.

I teach English as a Second Language to adults, most of whom are illegal immigrants. I see my parents in them. Some of my students have children in other countries, and they struggle daily to find a way to be reunited with their sons and daughters. In my classroom I see hardworking people who came to this country to flee miserable poverty at home. I don’t see criminals. I see human beings who want what’s best for themselves and their children.

People in the United States are divided about what to do about illegal immigration. Even I find myself confused as well. There are many sides to the issue, but the one thing I am certain of is that both the Senate and the House of Representatives are not addressing the root of the immigration problem—poverty. The fact is that as long as there’s a choice between making $5 a day or $5 an hour, people are going to keep coming to the U.S. Proposals to increase foreign aid should be a crucial component of the immigration debate, yet, sadly, that issue has been neglected. Lawmakers make no mention of how the U.S. can assist other countries to better their economies.

People who are opposed to immigration keep saying that illegal immigrants should go back to where they came from. Go back to what?

Extreme poverty? Under education? Over-population? Disease? Civil Disorder? Environmental degradation?

Up to now, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars on the war in Iraq. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the Pentagon spends $6 billion a month on the war. That money could have gone to improve education, health services, and Social Security here in the U.S., and it also could have helped impoverished countries improve their economic opportunities, health care, and education as well.

The House of Representatives responds to the plight of disadvantaged countries with a proposal to erect a wall and keep those people out. In short, lawmakers want the United States to turn a blind eye to all the poverty that exists south of the border– as if by building a wall Americans can ignore the plight of those who have nothing.

Immigration is a complicated issue, but this is what it boils down to: When faced with watching their children suffer or giving them a chance at a better future, people will do whatever it takes to come to the United States. If my father hadn’t come here, I don’t know what my life would have been like, and honestly, I don’t even want to think about it.