Immigration Reform Impacts Dreams

Boarding a plane with her younger sister almost 10 years ago, senior Keyri Lopez felt both excitement and sadness as she left all her family and everything she knew in Usulutan, El Salvador.

“Our life, or our new life as I like to call it, began in 2005,” she said.

“What I remember from El Salvador is that it was very poor. There are many people who struggle each day to survive. There were some families I knew who went through their day with less than a dollar in their pockets,” Lopez said.

Escaping the economic instability that El Salvador is still facing, Lopez’s father first illegally crossed the border into the United States. Lopez’s mother was able to obtain a visa, and “didn’t want us to be raised without a father, so she decided to also bring us here to America.”

“The image I had of America was basically New York: The streets were crowded, so many cars, so many tall buildings, lawyers in really nice suits. And that there was a lot of snow,” Lopez said.

The family, however, did not end up in New York. Pulling family resources together in Charlottesville, the Lopez family was able to stay with relatives upon their arrival. Lopez finds herself blessed that she has not faced as many difficult obstacles as other immigrants.

“[Some immigrants] do not have the same luck and fortune as I do, or they don’t have their parents. Maybe they’re by themselves, or they live with a grandparent or uncle,” Lopez said.

Fortunate, but other parts of her early life as an immigrant might not seem so lucky to others.

“I shared a two bedroom apartment with seven other people: my uncle, my aunt, my cousin, and then us, my dad, my mom, my sister, my brother and myself,” Lopez said.

Between different apartments and adjusting to school, Lopez says her family’s illegal status still poses a great problem in day to day life.

“This morning, my dad had a car accident. He hit a deer this morning, so he had to call the police. The police came and they gave him a ticket because he didn’t have a license. This is the fourth time that my dad gets a ticket,” Lopez said.

“What our family is most worried about is if the court checks his credentials, his legal status. How will that affect him? Because he could potentially run the risk of being deported, jail time, maybe bail…I’m not really sure what will happen.”

“It seems sort of unjust to me that he has to maybe go to jail or be deported, because he doesn’t have a driver’s license,” Lopez said. “It’s not that my dad wants to be illegal, but the problem is he doesn’t have the chance to apply for a license because of his legal status.”

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows “certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal.”

For Lopez, who is considered a DREAMer (the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors act),  being qualified under DACA gives her the opportunity to apply for a license, social security number, and have a work permit. While it does not grant her legal status, “at any point in time if there’s another president that comes along and disagrees with this plan that was passed by Obama, [they] can one day stop it,” Lopez said. “And all the students who were able to get that permit, [will] not have it anymore.”

It is this kind of a situation that Lopez understands, but she still has other hopes for the American government and its relations with the almost 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

“It’s so difficult to measure the people who are going to be criminals here and which people are actually going to advance this nation,” Lopez said.

Especially with Obama’s recent executive action on immigration, which will extend temporary protections to roughly five million unauthorized immigrants, Lopez thinks the government needs to take a leap of faith without actually knowing the outcomes. “There are going to be consequences, but the government system here is very strong and is willing to make changes, but the first step is to actually do it,” Lopez said.

Whatever the government decides, Lopez is still grateful for the opportunity she has living in America. From her dedication to school and the AVID program, Lopez has learned the importance of education and her future. She has already been accepted to Roanoke College and Eastern Mennonite University, but is unsure of where she will study next year. Her larger goal, however, is to become an ESOL teacher and encourage young immigrants to take education seriously.

“There is something better for me. I can be somebody better, and I can offer something better to my parents. All the sacrifices that my parents have made have been incredible,” Lopez said. “I tell my mom, ‘I can never thank you enough for everything you have given me, that God has given me, like, this will be eternal. I will never be able to thank you enough for everything you have done for me.’”

And looking ahead for her future, Lopez would love to visit El Salvador but, “I feel like I don’t know my country as much as I know the United States,” Lopez said. “I feel like I’m already part of this country. And despite my status, this is where I would like to become a citizen.”

This story originally appeared on pg. 9 of the Dec. 18 print edition.