When following the law gets you nowhere: Column

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A wall doesn't mean much to a mother trying to protect her child.

We've heard Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump say he loves Mexicans (and by that I assume he means all Latinos) and he welcomes anyone who comes here legally. But here’s the problem, the system is broken, and the line between legal and illegal can be awfully fuzzy. That’s why Silvana Quiroz, a law-abiding U.S. resident, had to send her son back to Bolivia so he would have a better shot at legal status. As a result, she hasn't seen him in five years. And she’s not the only one. 

Back when she lived in Bolivia, Quiroz felt that the way she could help her community was by helping keep them informed. Unfortunately, Cochabamba was not a city where anyone could feel safe raising a child while working as a journalist.

To call the climate in 2003 Bolivia volatile is an understatement. In many ways, it reflects the problems in employment and police/community relations we face today in America — but amplified to the extreme. Bolivians were angry with their government and people took to the streets, which resulted in the death of 14. Bolivia’s president fled the country. Quiroz decided to follow him. Today, she's grateful for the respite from Bolivia's chaos that America offered her, but she has also learned that the U.S. immigration system is more capricious than benevolent. 

Quiroz was able to stay in the United States because she is married to a U.S. citizen, but her son couldn't stay given a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) investigation into their case. For him to be eligible for legal U.S. status, he had to go back to Bolivia to apply.

There was a glimmer of hope in 2012 (a year after Quiroz had to send her son away) when President Obama established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country before their 16th birthday — and before June 2007 — to receive a renewable two-year work permit and exemption from deportation. But Quiroz had already sent her son back and he wasn't quite the right age to be eligible. 

It hurt to be so close to a solution but just outside an arbitrary cutoff. New hope arose two years later when, once again, Obama announced a new executive action aiming to protect the parents of childhood arrivals (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans  and Lawful Permanent Residents) and expand the benefits of DACA. But a Texas court challenge stopped Obama's plan this year. All hope seemed to be lost.

For Quiroz, the fight isn't just about her son but about everyone like him. And she is using the tools of her lost Bolivian journalism career to take the battle to mainstream American media, through a documentary featuring the reality of women who have been separated from the families they were trying to protect and keep together. She went from informing her community to giving other mothers in immigration “purgatory” a chance to share their stories and be heard. A Bolivian sharing stories with Mexican and Salvadorian mothers in Arizona, bonding over lost children. That’s what makes the Hispanic community in the USA so strong. While there are clear differences, there’s a commonality among our struggles.

Having an immigration system doesn’t mean it always works. For too many Hispanics, following the rules leaves us trapped between worlds — a future in the United States and a past of turmoil in Central or South America. That's why there is a renewed surge of children at the border that the government doesn’t know how to handle, that's why there is a law-abiding resident living for years without her only son.

Quiroz sees the U.S. political climate as hauntingly familiar. And although she realizes that most of the people she has met while researching and filming her documentary are not citizens, she’s bringing their plight to the attention of those of us who can vote.

The tricky part is that those Latinos who are able to vote are mostly second or third generation. They’re just as dissatisfied with the state of affairs but maybe not for the same reasons. That voting bloc is the one feeling sore that Sen. Bernie Sanders didn’t get the Democratic nomination, or the one’s saying they’re not voting because they don’t like the options.

For Quiroz, that’s a cop-out. She implores to those who can vote but don’t want to, “Vote for your neighbor, for your server, for your nanny, for your cleaning lady. … If you don’t want to vote, vote for those who can’t.”

Josh Rivera is Your Say editor for Paste BN. Follow him on Twitter @Josh1Rivera. 

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