Un Dia Sin Inmigrantes

by Adriana Diaz/PNN Community Scholar

I could feel the hot piercing sun beaming down, transforming my olive complexion to a golden brown. The ever so powerful words, “SI SE PUEDE,” Yes We Can, rolled off the tongues of demonstrators. The day was May 1st, Un Dia Sin Immigrantes, A Day without Immigrants. I was marching with thousands of peaceful supporters to downtown San Francisco’s city hall to support undocumented immigrant’s rights.

The hot sun and lack of water brought me back to a day I never want to relive.

It was my last year of college and I was sitting in my room starring blankly at the computer screen trying to concentrate. I had to write my final paper for my Theories of Media class on Cultivation Theory. All of a sudden the phone rang and the alarming sound shocked me. I felt as if I was back in high school sitting in 4th period, daydreaming, while the bell rings snapping me back to reality.

My best friend, Josie who I worked with at our neighborhood summer camp, called. Her words were coming out so fast I could barley grasp what she was saying. Josie was hysterical. “The Romero family was deported yesterday to Mexico….,” she said.

At that moment my heart left my chest and I dropped the phone. I remember again starring blankly but this time I was looking at my Janet Jackson poster I got from her 98’ Velvet Rope Tour. I wished that this was a nightmare and I would soon awake.

The Romero’s are beautiful, faith based, and hard working people. Jose was a cook at an Italian Restaurant in North Beach while Marisol worked two jobs 12hour days as a nanny and house keeper. Both shared with me their same frustrations: under paid, overworked, and unappreciated.

Jose and Marisol left their four amazing children (Christina, Miguel, Dominique, and Letty) at San Francisco’s youth summer drop-in program and in the care of my hands while they went off to work. I grew extremely attached to them and their story especially the eldest, Christina. I admired her courage to initiate the responsibility of her siblings during the hours her parents worked. A drive and passion to succeed in life pumped through the veins of this fourteen year old.

All four children are US citizens and both parents crossed over undocumented. Their savings they managed to conjure up was working towards getting their citizenship. I remember helping Marisol with her paper work and translating everything for her and Jose.

“Hello…hello, Adri you still there?” I could hear a muffled voice from a distance. I looked down and saw the phone. Tears strung down my cheeks I could feel the blood rush to my face and I could not grasp a single breathe I began to cry uncontrollably and feeling my stomach turning I had to throw up. It was not a dream and Josie was still on the phone. The news about the Romero family was true. I felt as if I let them down. I had to go back to school and leave them in San Francisco to struggle and now they were gone.

I am relieved when discovering my parched tongue is refreshed with a cool glass of water. . I am reminded why I am here in this nation wide event surrounded by thousands of Immigrant’s Right Supporters.

“The Mexican immigrants are providing a fairly adequate supply of labor…While they are not easily assimilated; this is of no very great importance as long as most of them return to their native land. In the case of the Mexican, he is less desirable as a citizen than as a laborer,” said the U.S Congress Senate in 1911. Although a great deal of time has passed, many would say that people do not think like that anymore. And I would have to question that statement; you see that is why I stand in front of city hall today. It is because “last December 2005, the Republican-controlled U.S House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 4437) making it a felony to be an undocumented worker” (www.getactive.com/ United Farm Workers e-activism campaign) as well as aiding or employing undocumented workers.

For a long time I hated the system. But as the year progressed I transferred that negative energy of hate to anger, with anger grew a passion for equality. As I look around at the many women, men, and children who come here in front of City Hall to protest I see a fierce fire in their eyes that will not burn out and with that I am hopeful.