Becoming a legal immigrant is more complicated than you think

by Mari Herreras

Tucson Weekly

September 2, 2010

The young woman sitting at a kitchen table with her father looks like any other Arizona teenager. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she's wearing jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a large silver peace sign.

Moments ago she was running around her family's house in slippers being chased by a little black puppy her family got her—a perfect distraction from her family's worries that her father faces deportation back to Mexico, where the family came from more than 14 years ago.

At the request of the family's attorney, the Tucson Weekly will not identify her or her father or mother. The family is undocumented, in the country illegally. But this 18-year-old wants you to know a few things about her. She wants you to know that she works extra hard to be a good person. She obeys the law, works hard in school and cares about her community. She is in almost every way a model U.S. citizen.

"I've always had to work harder than most of the other kids I know, kids who have their papers, kids who are here legally and always getting into trouble," she explains.

She entered the United States when she was three years old. Now she plays a bit of a waiting game, hoping for the passage of the Dream Act legislation, which would allow young adults who entered the U.S. illegally as young children to stay in the country and be able to eventually apply for citizenship.

"We've been here for 14 years. My father came here—jumped over the fence. My brother and I came here in a car with friends, and my mother came over in a different car," she says with just a slight accent.

"We've been here most of my life. I don't remember anything about Mexico."