Frustruation

It has been a while since I have been struggling with being public or not. There are many opportunities for me to be engaged in shaping the debate about immigration and immigration reform. However, I also face great risks. Risks that could endanger my security and that of those around me.

I have been following the course of the DEAM Act for the past few years. There are various organizations working on this and I am grateful for them to be doing this kind of work. In so many ways I want to help. But then, signing a petition means I put my name or that I lie (like I am doing in this blog using a made-up sarcastic name). And of course, I cannot leave my trace of myself all over--that, again, can endanger me or those around me, who I have to say I love very much and I would be very heartbroken to lose again.

In addition, I have been following the story of the Jorge Alonso Chehade, who now faces deportation this Sept. 25, 2009. His success story has mean nothing to his case. And even today, August 6, 2009, another undocumented students is being deported.... I cannot in any way imagine the fear they must be confronting without much options. This really shows how meritocracy works for selected ones, which takes away the value of hard work.

I was about to call ICE and support Jorge. Was I really going to? Now that I think about it, I was, but opted not to. And I feel guilty. Guilty that I cannot help someone who is facing what I most dare. Guilty that I chose my safety for his. Guilty for fearing.

I am frustrated. I wish I could be of more help and I know that I can't. I am also sure that there are other cases just like Jorge's and that there is really little to safeguard them from the gates of hell, deportation to a place much unknown, where our families are not, where our friends are not, where our lives are not.

How I wish what we have accomplished through hard work here could be our safe gate. But by the examples of these young Americans being expelled from our grate country, there really seems to be that we live in the limbo, a life of fear, a life ruled and determined by others, a life not of our own. Their stories make me very sad. Today more than ever I wish an end to this would happen fast, unlike how politics work--I want this suffering to end.

I am saddened today.

The Honorable P