Thought
Leadership
Corner
By: Raymond Partolan
About the Author
If you have come to this page looking for an older Thought Leadership piece, please scroll down to the archives.
Undocumented and Unafraid:
My Parents, My Heroes
Twenty-three years ago, one cloudy afternoon in September, my mother, my father, and I packed our bags and boarded a plane bound for the United States—the brave new land of opportunity.We carried little more than the clothes we had on our backs and some old mementos from the family we would be leaving behind, some never to be seen again. I was a little over a year old and have zero recollection of that fateful day. The only real piece of that day that still exists is a small, broken set of plastic wings, once worn on the chest of a flight attendant, who gifted baby me with it after saying I was the best-behaved kid on the plane.
My father had given up his dreams of going to Medical School because he longed for a taste of the American Dream. At the time, he had been told that it was much easier to immigrate to the United States as a Physical Therapist than as a doctor. When he met my mother and fell in love with her, his America-bound aspirations grew even stronger as he pledged to her that, one day, he would take her to the states and build a family with her in the place where, if you worked hard enough, you could do anything and be anyone you could ever want.
When my mother met my father, she was working as a Paralegal in her uncle’s law practice. Someone in my mother’s family put an ad about her in the local paper originally as a joke. My father, instantly enamored, replied to the ad and made plans to meet her. She wasn’t convinced at first, but he was persistent. He showed up every other day with a new gift to woo her and to grab her attention. Finally, he confessed to her that he was applying to immigrate to the United States and wanted no one else but her to accompany him on this new journey. She gave in, the couple married, had a honeymoon baby (that’s me!) and set off on a new adventure.
In the states, life was initially what they had dreamed. My father began practicing physical therapy at a well-known rehabilitation center in Macon, Georgia where I grew up. My mother had my brother four years after me and she became a full-time caregiver for the two of us. Life was going quite swimmingly. Then, we applied for Green Cards and hit a major roadblock.
In order to qualify for Green Cards, my father had to pass a comprehensive English examination that covered speaking, reading, writing, and listening skills. He passed every section of the test with flying colors, except for the speaking section, which he failed over and over by very small margins. Several times, he came within just a few points of a passing score. Despite the fact that he could communicate with his patients and his colleagues effectively, his thick Filipino accent and struggle with the specific nuances of the English language tanked him. Eventually, our Green Card applications were denied and we became undocumented.
Soon thereafter, he lost his job as a Physical Therapist and was unemployed for over two years. My mother picked up four different jobs, working seven days a week, morning and night, to support our family, which had now grown to five people. To this day, I remember waiting outside my childhood home waiting for my mother to come home from work late at night to hug her before going to bed. Not long after my father lost his job, they foreclosed on our house and declared bankruptcy.
My father, once an accomplished Physical Therapist, now works in a warehouse doing manual labor and my mother, once a Paralegal on the road to a bright future potentially in the legal world, now works in restaurants and cleans houses and hotel rooms. Their stories are like so many millions of others’.
My parents are my heroes. I feel incredibly privileged to be where I am now. Today, I work as an Immigration Paralegal at one of the most well-known immigration law firms in the country. I travel the country, sharing these stories on the national and international stage to shed light on the faces behind our country’s immigration policies. None of my own personal success would have been possible if it weren’t for the drive and motivation that my parents instilled in me very early on. Work as hard as you can. Don’t take any crap from anybody. And always stay positive.
My parents are not villains and they should not be demonized for bringing me here and for having us overstay our lawful status in this country. With the Trump’s decision to end the DACA program and punting the issue into Congress’ court, I am cautiously optimistic that Congress will act. There has never been this kind of urgency. I can only hope that our lawmakers pass a bill that maintains family unity and doesn’t call for hyper-enforcement measures that will uproot entire communities of people that have built lives here. At minimum, we need a clean bill protecting DACA recipients and we need it now.