It wasn’t until my senior year in college that I started to hear incredible stories from some family members about their immigration experiences. Although I have always known that my parents came to the United States illegally, it was not until midway through my senior year of college that I finally got the full story of their migration from El Salvador. Throughout 22 years of my life, I had only ever heard that my parents tried to get across the border by land unsuccessfully, finally managing to get into the United States by air using visas.
Although I had asked several times for the full story of their experiences, my parents’ answers were never that descriptive. My father always told me that his grandfather’s uncle had been working as an attorney in San Salvador and was able to get him a visa to come to the United States. My mother’s story was that she obtained a visa from one of her aunts and was able to come to the United States under the guise of a vacationer. That’s always where their stories began and ended, however, and they never recounted their failed attempts to get across the border by land.
While vacationing in El Salvador my senior year, those stories surfaced as most secretive stories do in my family: through a discussion at a large family gathering. They had not been lying to me when they told me that they had relatives who helped get them get visas to come to the United States, but they purposely left out their initial and harsh failed attempts.
Upon their arrival in the United States, my parents found that their struggle to become part of America did not end once they arrived in the United States. The American society within the US did not have any explicit borders that they could simply cross. Even though they physically resided within the US, they did not live in the same space as “legal” Americans. They were forced to behave like second-class citizens, living each day in fear of imprisonment or deportation. As soon as they told me what had happened to them, I felt a surge of emotions: anger, sadness, a desire for revenge, and so many more. It hurt to hear how my parents suffered. I imagine that this is what many children experience as they learn about how their parents were treated simply because they desired a better life.
The picture above is of my family and I at the end of my senior year in college.
