J.M.

What is being an undocumented immigrant like for you?  

“Being undocumented meant making myself unseen. It meant shrinking myself down to the point of near-non- existence.

I was sitting on the school bus. There were two Korean students sitting diagonally behind me. They were debating whether there were any undocumented students attending our high school. “No,” said one, arguing that you needed documents to show your identity in order to attend the school. “Yes,” said the other, arguing that you didn’t. Disregarding the irony of the situation, I started to wonder, did my mom have to show any proof of my identity before I entered high school? Well, I was there regardless, so I guess she didn’t? I was a student at this school, wasn’t I? When I got home, I told my mom about this conversation I had eavesdropped on. I laughed as I told her, and she laughed as she listened, joking that I should’ve turned around to wave at them and say, “I’m here!” And we laughed some more.

If I could see those two students on the bus again, I would tell them that in fact it was not just me, there were so many Korean undocumented people in this country, and that they were not aware of this fact because we were made to be invisible...”

What does justice and safety look like to you?

“‘There will always be limitations but we have laws for a reason. We have law enforcement for a reason. We have borders for a reason.’

I wish people would examine those "reasons" more closely and recognize that those reasons fundamentally do not consider my community's safety, my complicated woven layers of identities, my sadness and grief. I want justice to point towards this - rather than asking us to accommodate to the existing structures that have denied us, to consider how to create spaces that let us speak our voices fully and loudly.”