I’ve changed my mind about undocumented immigrants – and here’s why

Amidst the ongoing debate around immigration in the U.S., I've decided to republish (with some edits) a text I originally published on my blog a few years ago.

Immigration is not new – human beings have always been moving from one place to another in search of better living conditions. We just have to look at history – and we don’t have to go very far. For many of us, it is just looking at our origins. My family, for example, is from Italy – my great-grandfathers moved to Brazil looking for a better life. My husband's roots are also Italian. And lots and lots of decades after our great-grandfathers left Italy to Brazil, we left Brazil for the U.S. The circumstances were totally different, for sure, but I guess that exemplifies how moving from one place to another is not a new behavior - and I don't think it will ever stop.

According to a survey released by the World Economic Forum, 15% of the global population would migrate if they could. In Brazil, the United States is at the top of the list of the most desired countries to move to. There are several factors that make America at the top of that list – and one of them is the way Brazil is influenced by the American culture – like movies, music, products, and brands. But Brazilians are not the only ones who dream of starting a new life in the U.S. People from all over the world - Central America to Asia - see the United States of America as the land of opportunities. But the wish to seek a better life is not enough to grant you a "legal" right to live here. Which doesn't mean it stops people from doing it anyway. It never has, it will never will.

The number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. varies according to the methodology used, and there is also a delay in estimates because it takes time for accurate data to be available. As of January 1, 2022, the Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) estimated that 11 million people were living in the United States without authorization. Among the countries of origin of these immigrants is Mexico, which represents almost half of the undocumented population, followed by Central America and Asia. About two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the United States for 10 years or more.

Illegal immigration is a delicate and complicated subject. It wasn't how I got here. In 2013, before coming to NYC to spend three weeks working on a client's project, Thiago, my husband, was encouraged by coworkers to change the location on his LinkedIn profile. According to them, this was a great way to measure his resume's competitiveness and chances abroad. The result? It was good – after all, he started getting messages from recruiters after doing that. We moved to the Big Apple four months later because an NYC-based startup had hired him.

I know that a lot of Americans have no idea how complex and time-consuming the path of legal immigration is. Insecurities, fear, restrictions, and time – a lot of time – are involved in the long and exhausting journey of getting a Work Visa and then a Green Card. No, it is not a matter of comparing the pains, because this is not a suffering contest. There are many privileges involved in being able to be here on a "legal" path – and there are many obstacles and difficulties that make you tired and affect your self-esteem, and perhaps that is why it has always bothered me so much to see people cheating on the system. Yes, I have already judged and strongly condemned those who choose the other way, but that mindset has changed, and I want to explain why.

Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

It has been 11 years since I moved to New York, and these were the most transformative years of my life. It is no secret that living outside your comfort zone can be, of course, uncomfortable sometimes, but I grew up a lot as a human being and learned a lot through this experience. I don’t know what my life would have been like in Brazil – and, as a time machine hasn’t been created yet – I will never know what path I would have taken if I had stayed there. I think the change I went through is a mix of being in a city as intense and diverse as New York, the maturity, my therapy process, and the content I consume, in addition to my friendships. That said, I also cannot ignore the way I was raised.

My family has never been wealthy – my parents, for instance, grew up in minimal conditions – from not having shoes to walk to school to having to start working when they were still kids. I grew up seeing my mother raising me, my sister, and my brother, and only after this, she went to college – so different from the timeline expected by society. I studied in a public school all my life (and public schools in Brazil are not always the best ones) – but I was able to go to a private college when I had the chance. I never had to work, and our home never had a food shortage. I was a kid and, after this, a teenager with small limitations – far from being a life of suffering and without opportunities. Quite the contrary, I know I had many privileges, especially if you consider Brazil's context.

Despite learning the concept of meritocracy when I was young – and having believed in it for a long time – from an early age, my parents tried to teach us good values, such as humbleness, generosity, and gratitude. There were many stories they shared about their childhood with limited resources. My father was always very generous, kind, and soft-hearted, trying to help everyone whenever possible. One of the most beautiful memories I have as a child was gathering things that my sister and I no longer used – from school supplies to clothes that didn't fit us – for my father to take to a family with children of our age. I still remember him telling us how happy the kids were when they got the things we had donated.

I am very grateful for the values ​​they taught us – because I know that they shaped a lot of my personality and made me the restless and determined person I have always been. However, looking back, I see that I lived my life without seeing a lot outside my bubble for a long time. I always knew that being prejudiced was not cool, that sexism sucks, and that there were people in conditions different from mine, but I never stopped to think about it the way I should. After some years of living in NYC, I became more aware of the place I occupied and started to question things that had been sold to me as "normal" for a long time. And I know some people roll their eyes about this kind of conversation - but it's easier to do that when injustices don't impact our lives.

Now, going back to the "illegal" immigration subject, I've always been extremely bothered by the stories of those who hacked the system to be here. It was too difficult for me to accept such behavior. It was not the path I'd taken; it was not the path I would take. And this is where the misunderstanding begins: when you analyze other people's lives using only your example as the only possible outcome. Looking at each person as unique and each story as unique makes us understand that you cannot put everybody in the same basket.

The first time I realized that was when I watched Living Undocumented on Netflix. Throughout the six episodes, we get to know the story of eight undocumented immigrant families in different parts of the country while facing a potential deportation process. They were people from various parts of the world, with distinct backgrounds and their own motivations, who saw the U.S. as an opportunity for a new life. People who come from places where poverty is routine, where the threat of death is constant, people with such different realities. It was also interesting to understand more about the immigration/deportation system itself – I always thought deportation was something instantaneous, but it is not.

The second time was when I interviewed Mauricio (fictitious name), a Brazilian who has lived in New York for 4 years and stayed beyond the term of his tourist visa, for one of the episodes of my podcast (this episode is in Portuguese). Mauricio shared his story – which involved childhood abuse and growing up without his parents, and later starving and being homeless in New York City. He told me that he wanted to go to college (for an Advertising Degree) but he needed help from his family, who did not support the idea, since they believed that an Advertising Degree was not worth it. That night, after the recording, I went to bed with and overwhelming. I’ve always had a nice life, I’ve never starved, I went to college, I now live a comfortable life in one of the best cities in the world, I have my documents – and, suddenly, I wondered: but what if I hadn’t the opportunities that I had? And what a person like him is supposed to do? Accepting his miserable life and that’s it?

The path to legal immigration to the United States requires criteria (and MONEY!) that are not met by a huge portion of the population. To get an H1B work visa, for example, you need a college degree, advanced English, and extensive experience. Take any other visa, such as a work transfer visa, artist visa, or startup visa, and you will see that they all have the requirement for extraordinary skills in common. These skills demand dedication, effort, money, and privileges to be achieved. Yes, there are stories of people who overcame difficulties - even though they had minimal conditions - and "made it." These stories, as inspiring as they can be, romanticize the "working hard" cliche. Headlines praising kids from favelas in Brazil or from projects in the U.S. who achieved extraordinary things despite their circumstances should not be praised as something incredible (not saying it's not!). But for each of these kids that make it - how many others never will?

It's the same with the conversation around immigration.

"There is a right and a wrong way when it comes to immigration." Yes, the "right" path exists. But the truth is that it is not available to everyone. And it was precisely at that moment, thinking of the example of Mauricio, of the immigrants in the documentary, and of so many other stories that we see out there, that I asked myself: then what? So, a person without the same conditions and privileges has no right to seek a better life? When we say that there is "right" and "wrong", we end up judging someone's life considering the opportunities we had. We ignore the privileges, and the other person is placed in an "equal" position - which is simply unfair.

And let me be clear: I'm not justifying anything or encouraging people to come here regardless. No. The so-called "wrong" path involves deprivations, suffering, and humiliations that are often immeasurable. After all, you pay a very high price for making that choice. I don't know if I would be okay living in fear, uncertainty, and many limitations. However, my goal with this conversation is to bring more clarity to the issue. It is about looking at that person who has not chosen the "right" way and who, through the eyes of an immigration system – outdated and broken, by the way – is committing a crime - and trying to understand their motivations as a human being. And also realizing that not everyone can make the same choices and that choice remains "wrong" by current conventions, but also understanding the reasons why someone makes a decision like this. It is putting aside the judgment and trying to see the circumstances.

No, I don’t have a solution to this problem. I don’t even know how to start debating what the United States should and shouldn’t do about it. But I chose to empathize. Just try to understand the other’s decision. It does not mean that rules have not been broken. It doesn’t mean that I would do the same. But it is simply understanding and not condemning. Reflect. Analyze. Recognizing our privileges will not make us lose them – it will make us more human.

And remember: an immigration status does not define someone’s character. There are bad people – documented and undocumented – and there are a lot of good people, too – documented and undocumented. Nobody wakes up one day and decides to move to another country and overstay a visa or cross a border because it is cool – and it looks easy on a shallow analysis. It is a path that involves living without many rights, having limited opportunities, and being in the shadow of fear, which is certainly not the best thing in the world.

Some useful resources

And because I believe knowledge empowers - and that was how I educated myself - here are some great resources about the topic of immigration.

Books

• Deported Americans: Life after Deportation to Mexico -In Deported Americans, legal scholar and former public defender Beth C. Caldwell tells Gina's story alongside those of dozens of other Dreamers, who are among the hundreds of thousands who have been deported to Mexico in recent years. Many of them had lawful status, held green cards, or served in the U.S. military. Now, they have been banished, many with no hope of lawfully returning. Having interviewed over one hundred deportees and their families, Caldwell traces deportation's long-term consequences—such as depression, drug use, and homelessness—on both sides of the border. Showing how U.S. deportation law systematically fails to protect the rights of immigrants and their families, Caldwell challenges traditional notions of what it means to be an American and recommends legislative and judicial reforms to mitigate the injustices suffered by the millions of U.S. citizens affected by deportation.

• Little America: Incredible True Stories of Immigrants in America - Nearly everyone in America came from somewhere else. This is a fundamental part of the American idea―an identity and place open to everyone. People arrive from all points distant, speaking a thousand languages, carrying every culture, each with their own reason for uprooting themselves to try something new. Everyone has their own unique story. Little America is a collection of those stories, told by the people who lived them. Together, they form a wholly original, at times unexpected portrait of America’s immigrants―and thereby a portrait of America itself.

• In the Country We Love: My Family Divided - Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family. In the Country We Love is a moving, heartbreaking story of one woman's extraordinary resilience in the face of the nightmarish struggles of undocumented residents in this country. There are over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, many of whom have citizen children, whose lives here are just as precarious, and whose stories haven't been told. Written with bestselling author Michelle Burford, this memoir is a tale of personal triumph that also casts a much-needed light on the fears that haunt the daily existence of families likes the author's and on a system that fails them over and over.

• Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen - Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,” tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms. “This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book––at its core––is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can’t. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home. After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.”

Podcast

Mauricio’s episode is in Portuguese, but you can listen to this other episode I've recorded - in English. It's called “Crossing the border: the truth about opportunities and privileges” Luis Yanes was born in Guatemala and today is an American citizen and lives in New York with his wife Sarah. But, his journey was neither easy nor obvious. Lui and his family crossed the US border when he was only 6 years old. That was all I knew about his story when we turned on the microphone. Throughout our conversation, I was able to learn more about his history, about the reality of his life before this risky step his father decided to take, and how opportunities are not the same for everyone.

On this podcast, Jose Antonio Vargas, author of the book that I mentioned above, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, talks about how he finally had a chance of obtaining a visa after living undocumented for 31 years.

On TV

Living Undocumented | Netflix – From executive producer Selena Gomez, Living Undocumented follows eight undocumented immigrant families who have volunteered to tell their stories as they face potential deportation. Ranging from harrowing to hopeful, their journeys illuminate and humanize the complex US immigration system and depict the struggles that many must endure in their quest to pursue the American dream.

Immigration Nation | Netflix - This documentary series offers a unique and nuanced view of the ongoing struggles in America's broken immigration system. It features ICE work, the department responsible for deportations, with unprecedented proximity. In addition, it brings portraits of immigrants and analyzes American immigration in-depth today.

Little America - Apple TV - Inspired by the true stories featured in Epic Magazine, "Little America" goes beyond the headlines to bring to life the funny, romantic, heartfelt and surprising stories of immigrants in America. The first season consists of eight half-hour episodes, each with its own unique story from different parts of the world. Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick, “Silicon Valley”) is the producer and every episode was written by someone from the same country as the immigrant portrayed on the episode. It is a beautiful and inspiring series.