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For Undocumented Sisters in Huntington, a Dream Deferred

Posted September 22, 2010 by Ted Hesson

As the cloud-filtered daylight wanes on a quiet mid-September evening outside the Guzman* household in Huntington Station, inside, the after-school vibe is in full swing.

Kimberly, 11, snacks on mac and cheese with chopsticks (she’s practicing); 15-year-old Jonathan barrels through the door and recounts his newest skateboarding maneuver; Caleb, 4, runs around in his underwear; and their mother, Maribel, rests in a plush chair after a day’s work at her house cleaning business.

The two elder sisters in the family, 21-year-old María and 17-year-old Briceida, are in the living room; María encouraging her one-year-old son as he waddles across the carpeted floor, and Briceida cradling the family’s newest addition – Lucky, a two-month-old puppy.

María and Briceida talk about college. María wants to be a kindergarten teacher and Briceida wants to be a lawyer.

But despite getting good grades in high school, María never went to college. Briceida, who is entering her senior year at Walt Whitman High School, probably won’t go either. Not in this country, at least.

While their mother is here legally, and their younger siblings are US citizens, María and Briceida are undocumented immigrants, brought to the US illegally as children. As a result, they can’t receive federal or state financial aid for college and can’t work legally. They can’t even drive a car.

On this particular afternoon, the family is hopeful that legislation in Congress might help María and Briceida come out of the shadows.

Maribel and her daughters have been following news about the DREAM Act, a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US before age 16, and who attend two years of college or enlist in the military. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had recently proposed attaching the legislation to an upcoming defense spending bill.

María, who has been in the US for nine years, would qualify for the DREAM Act. Briceida, who has four years of residency, might be eligible depending on the date that the bill would be enacted.

The sisters were optimistic about the bill’s chances, and their future plans. That was a week ago.

On September 21, a filibuster by Senate Republicans – who were joined by the two Democratic senators from Arkansas – blocked the legislation from being added to the defense spending bill, with 56 senators voting for the measure and 43 voting against it. The measure needed 60 votes to succeed.

For María, that means shelving her aspirations to become a teacher. Instead, she’ll continue to take odd jobs when friends and family have work available, devoting her free time to childrearing, her local Pentecostal church, and her neatly groomed garden.

Briceida faces a difficult decision. If she wants to become a lawyer, she has an option available: study at a two-year college in Suffolk and then return to El Salvador for college and law school.

“I don’t want to be around here just doing nothing with my life,” she says.

Briceida and María at their grandmother’s country home in El Salvador, circa 1996. Their mother, Maribel, was living and working in the US.

Like María, Briceida grew up with their grandmother in El Salvador – “Mamá Chun,” as they call her.

But their grandmother passed away four years ago. That’s what prompted Briceida’s mother to bring her to the US, and now, Briceida’s closest family members live under the same roof in Huntington.

If she chooses to study in El Salvador, there’s another complication. The coyote that brought the then 13-year-old Briceida to the US handed her over to immigration agents at the Texas border, so she has a standing deportation order. If she leaves the US, she may not be able to return for 10 years without a special waiver.

“I went to court, but I lost the case,” Briceida says. “They give you three months and then you have to go back,” she says. Although she doesn’t clarify, returning to court would likely mean deportation.

Briceida knows she has a choice to make. She could stay in Huntington like her sister, and forsake her career goals. Or she could return to El Salvador, a country that she hasn’t known since she was 13 years old, and try to build a new life there. Returning to El Salvador could mean leaving her family for a decade.

Most of Briceida’s other friends at high school are talking about what schools they want to attend next year. She knows other students in similar situations – at school in Huntington, she once ran into a friend that she had met while being held at the youth immigration detention center in Texas. But most of her friends are planning the next phase of their lives.

“It’s sad because there are a lot of kids that want a future,” Briceida says. “They want to go to college; they want a future without their life interrupted.”

In school, Briceida is most interested in history and politics, and she likes to debate. At home, she’s still a teenager in transition to young adulthood, watching “iCarley” on the Disney Channel and playing with the puppy.

But when she starts talking about politics, she’s plunged back into debate mode. She argues about SB 1070, the immigration law in Arizona, referencing the historical civil rights struggles faced by African Americans. After María interrupts her, she exclaims in Spanish, “¡Ya me perdiste la emoción!”

But she hasn’t lost her emotion. Not when it comes to the DREAM Act.

“I think we all have dreams, and we want to make those dreams come true,” she says. “We have the right to fight for that.”

María chimes in:

“I think you’re going to be a good lawyer.”