Another Side of Life...

          It’s Tuesday morning as I drive to my student Angelica’s house to have our weekly ESL class.  I’ve prepared the lesson and it takes me less than 10 minutes to drive the three miles between my house and hers. It’s close and yet worlds apart.  Last week the distance between her life and mine became even greater.  

As I inch down the steep driveway of her house there are cars everywhere in different states of disrepair.  Angelica’s husband is a mechanic. When he lost his job at the VW dealer a year ago, after 10 years, he kept working.  Now he runs his own business out of their double car garage even though they live in a suburban neighborhood. I leave my car in the middle of the driveway knowing Angel will take my keys and park me somewhere.  It’s like a free valet service for the maestra de Ingles - the English teacher.

“Good morning, how are you?” Angelica greets me in her strongly accented English.  She has a big smile as reaches up to give me un abrazo. Typical of Mexican middle-aged women, Angelica is less than 5 ft. tall.  I like the warm Latin greeting.  I haven’t seen her for several weeks, as she has had to work overtime at the clinic where she is a cleaning maid.  Understandably, she never turns down extra hours of work.

We settle in to a windowless, carpeted room in the lower level of her house where she has set up a table and chairs, lamp and white board…the perfect private classroom. I keep Angelica speaking in English as much as I can even though my temptation is often just to have a good long chat in Spanish.  There is always some catching up with “how is everyone in your family?” and “everything OK this past week?”  She apologizes for the patched ceiling that has been that way for 6 months since they had a leak from the kitchen upstairs and haven’t been able to get it fixed. 

I wait for a pause in the conversation to start our class and see if she has finished homework I assigned.  I have just asked how Viri and Jose are doing, her adult children who live at home and are in their 20’s.  Instead of the expected “they’re fine”, she pauses visibly undecided about how much to say.  She makes a decision and blurts out “they’re in Mexico!”

 

“Mexico!” I exclaim as this is the last thing I expected to hear.  “Did they take vacation from their jobs to go visit?” She had not mentioned this to me before.

“They are visiting the family and grandparents but not vacation, it is a special program she tells me.  You know,” she says reluctantly “ the DACA….”

I have no idea what she is referring to but feel like I should.

“ That’s good, yes?  I’m not sure how to continue. “How long since they were in Mexico?”

 

“Many years…since they were little,” she gestures holding out her hand to indicate the size of a toddler.  I realize they have not been back to Mexico City, since they left 14 years ago.

Angelica tells me they are visiting cousins, aunts, and uncles and family.  “They have special permission to be able to go and are coming back on Saturday.  I am so worried if everything will be OK and they can enter the US again. But they have special papers from DACA.”  Her house suddenly seems quieter than ever knowing her son and daughter are out of the country. I think about how much Angelica and Angel rely on them for language translation, driving them, as they don’t have licenses, and help with their day-to-day lives.  Suddenly Angelica looks totally lost, something I’ve not seen in her before.

“I’m sure they will be fine and arrive back with no problem.” I try to sound soothing still not totally understanding what I’ve been hearing.

She continues, “You know, Kristina, it is very difficult…we don’t have papers.  But my children have work permit and licenses under the DACA program from President Obama.  Now with the election, we don’t know what will happen to us and this program and so Viri and Jose went back to visit.” 

Although I have never inquired, and the Literacy Council in their training reminds us not to ask questions, I now know that they are undocumented immigrants. These are the people I hear about on the daily news and whom politicians are threatening to seek out and deport.  How could I be so naïve?  Perhaps what threw me off was the fact that they live in a nice home they bought two years ago and have a mortgage.

When I get home I do research. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which is a US immigration policy put in place by President Obama in 2012.  It allows certain undocumented immigrant workers who came to the US before they were 16 and before 2007 to get 2-year work permits and be exempt from deportation. But it is not a path to citizenship.  Viri and Jose came as children and they fall under this program.  As for their house, I learn online that any foreigner legal or illegal can purchase property in the US although it may be harder to get a mortgage

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Our English lesson has not even started but all this revelation has left me stunned.  Angelica continues in English to tell me how worried she is about the upcoming elections, how scared they are of Trump and what could happen to them with a change of administration. She goes on to tell me that Viri, soon to be 26, is exploring prerequisites to immigrate to Canada.

“We did something very wrong, a long time ago,” she tells me referring to their coming to the US illegally.  “But we work hard, save our money, and just want to have a better life,” she looks at me as if pleading her case.  

Many small things begin to fall into place…one being our conversation last fall about the Blue Ridge Parkway.  This beautiful mountain highway runs through Asheville and is free and open to the public. Angelica and her family had never ventured on it even though there is an entrance 5 miles from where they live.  I brought her a map, encouraged them to go see the fall foliage, and she told me they did…once!  They were afraid because they didn’t know where it went, if you could turn around, and I suppose they might worry that someone might stop them along the way.  Perhaps it might be a highway they weren’t supposed to be on and that would bring trouble. 

Angelica doesn’t tell me to keep what she has just revealed a secret, but I make a point of assuring her I will not tell anyone.  She says she trusts me.  Still feeling shocked, I’m anxious to get back to my reason for being there – our English class!  And so we do.  Angelica, who is highly motivated to learn despite her basic elementary school education, has done her assigned homework perfectly and we spend the rest of the two hours going over the chapter we left off with.  All is back to where we were...

But it’s not.  On my way home I feel like something has shifted in me.  I can’t stop thinking of Angelica and Angel at home, just 3 miles from me,  and Viri and Jose off in Mexico  I think about Angel who works so hard repairing cars 7 days a week building up his business to now include American customers. That includes my neighbor whom I recommended to her.  I think about Angelica with her big smile and her hard working spirit.  I’ve met both adult children several times and they speak English like Americans, work hard at full time jobs while aspiring to go to college when there is money available.  The stereotypical lazy Mexican just doesn’t exist here. 

Immigration in all its aspects is on the news day and night…whether it’s immigration in the US and the politicians running for office who are vowing to change things one way or the other….or immigration from Syria and Africa to Europe of people desperate to live their lives with some dignity.

 

All last week I thought about this Mexican family I’ve grown so fond of and have so much respect for, and realize what a privileged life I’ve had.  Knowing and working with Angelica has put such a human face on the issue of immigration and been a revelation of what is at stake here.  Now I listen to the news in a different way imagining who these immigrants are as human beings and real people.