Stories
We’re Really Hardworking, Says Colorado DACA Recipient
When Acacia Mendoza was a baby, her parents, who had been laid off from their finance industry jobs in Guadalajara, Mexico, brought her and her twin sister to the United States, where her uncle worked as a tax preparer in Dallas. Her mother went to work for her uncle’s firm,… Read More
Dreamer Pays Into America, Asks Only for Opportunity to Continue
Elvis Saldias knew when he was 9 years old and his mother brought him to the United States from Bolivia that he was from then on classified an undocumented immigrant. “As a kid, it always weighed on me. I was paranoid and afraid of the police,” he says. “It definitely… Read More
Ohio Dreamer One of Many Healthcare Workers U.S. Could Lose Without DACA
After many years of struggle, Diana Marquez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, is living the American Dream. A licensed phlebotomist, she is a supervisor at a Columbus, Ohio, blood bank and owns a three-bedroom home, which she shares with her husband and her 4-year-old son, who was born in the… Read More
Changes in Immigration Policy Dash Dreamer’s Plan to Serve Her Country
Yeimi Lemus, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, had plans to join the U.S. Army on her 18th birthday. Her dream is to become a police detective, and she thought that military training, combined with a college degree, would enable her to reach that goal. But unless current U.S. policy changes,… Read More
With Nurse Aides Needed, Trained Dreamer Fears She Will Be Deported
Leyla Sabag is a nurse assistant who is about to start working at a nonprofit clinic for low-income Kansans. “It’s not a job for the weak, definitely — you have to work 16-hour shifts, and you have patients who scream, hit, bite, spit,” she says. “It’s one of those things… Read More
Ohio Student Eyes College, Still Worries About Younger Dreamers
For most of her childhood, Itzel Marquez had no idea she was an undocumented immigrant. Family members had brought her to the United States when she was just 3 years old. When she was 9, she says, “I started hearing about undocumented immigrants on the news, and I asked my… Read More
If Allowed, Dreamer Could Help Ease South Carolina Nursing Shortage
Nineteen-year-old Lenda Vazquez works six to seven days a week at her father’s landscaping business in Gilbert, South Carolina. “I’m pretty much his right-hand man,” she says. Vazquez is an undocumented immigrant, but her protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have allowed her to obtain a driver’s license… Read More
As Reservist Deploys, Fears His DACA Fiancé May Be Deported
Esmeralda Tovar-Contreras is an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the United States from Mexico City when she was 2 years old. Thanks to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which provides qualifying young people like her some protections, the 21-year-old has been able to get a job at a… Read More
New York’s First Undocumented Lawyer: ‘We All Have a Voice’
In 2016, Cesar Vargas became New York state’s first openly undocumented lawyer. It was a major personal accomplishment for Vargas, whose mother brought him to the United States when he was 5 years old, and for New York, which became the third state in the nation to allow undocumented immigrants to… Read More
Dreamer Wants To Teach Kids, Instead Lives in Fear
In 2016, when Laura Perez was granted the right to legally work in the United States, she was finally able to come out of the shadows and,contribute more to her community and family. Perez is one of Utah’s more than 13,600 recipients of Deferred… Read More
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