Despite attacks on people like me, I am building a future.
When I was just 14 and living in my home country of Honduras, my mother sent me away. It wasn’t because she didn’t love me, but because she loved me so much that she made me take the difficult step of traveling unaccompanied to the United States and Iowa, to stay with my aunt.
Although I don’t feel safe here in the U.S., in Honduras I was even less safe. A cousin of mine was killed, and a gang cut off his fingers. The adults tried to keep it from the children, but we found out anyway.
Back home, people think that if you move to America you’ll have lots of money and a good life. But that’s not the case. Immigrants here work really hard, sometimes two and three jobs, all the time. They work so hard they can’t even take the time to call back home. They’re scared all the time, sometimes too scared to go outside because ICE might grab them.
Immigration Status in Flux
I’m scared, too. I just turned 18 and am finishing high school. With all the changes in immigration law, I am afraid I will be put into a detention center. Right now, I have Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, so I am authorized to be in the U.S. and to work. But who knows if that is going to change?
I’m eligible to apply for a green card, but there’s a backlog in the immigration system. My attorney, June Keith, says it will likely take several years. She also says that there is an ongoing lawsuit that might also affect my immigration status. It’s all very scary, but I don’t tell my mother about it because I don’t want her to worry.
I do cleaning work so that my aunt and I have money, but I have dreams. I am struggling to learn English, and I want someday to have a job in an office. Any office. It doesn’t matter what the work is. I want to be a professional.
Following a Dream
Like so many other immigrants before me, I’m here and I stay because I have hope for a better life. That’s what they say the American dream is all about. I want to make my mother proud.
At church, they say you should never give up hope, so I don’t. I will finish school. If I’m lucky and the laws hold out, I’ll stay here long-term. I’ll get an office job. l’ll hug my mother and she will be proud of me because I have made a better life.