Yanet Amado attends Sacred Heart Catholic Church and has a part-time job there. (Photo by Jay Paul)
A banner in front of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in South Richmond holds special significance for Yanet Amado, a 21-year-old, Mexican-born Virginia Commonwealth University student who lives in Henrico County.
The words displayed are from Pope Francis, addressed to the people on the island of Lesbos on April 16, 2016, expressing admiration for Greek residents’ willingness to welcome people who have been forced to migrate: “We must never forget that immigrants, rather than simply being a statistic, are first of all persons who have faces, names and individual stories.”
Those are encouraging words for Amado, who attends the church and has a part-time job there doing secretarial work. These are anxious times for immigrants like herself, whose long-term status here is far from secure.
The future of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — which protects her from deportation and allows her to have a work permit, a driver’s license and in-state tuition — is uncertain under the new presidential administration.
Last Monday, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced that the Richmond Police Department would continue its policy of not inquiring “as to the place of birth or immigration status of individuals with whom it comes into contact,” and would not participate in a federal program that provides local agencies the authority to conduct immigration enforcement. Critics blasted the order as promoting lawlessness and jeopardizing federal funds the city receives.
Heated debate has surrounded immigration-related measures in the Virginia General Assembly, including a House of Delegates bill aimed at prohibiting a locality from declaring itself a sanctuary city and a Senate measure that would make such cities liable if an undocumented person causes harm. Amado and some fellow students have lobbied against the measures.
“Right now, my parents are not able to be as free as they used to be,” she says. “My mother is very concerned that she’s not going to be able to do the simplest things, such as drive my sister to school." Though both parents are undocumented, her father was able to obtain a Virginia driver's license under rules in effect before the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Pope Francis’ quote, Amado says, reminds her that her parents brought her here to pursue opportunities lacking in their hometown of Puebla, Mexico. “Now that we are here, people tend to label us, but forget that we are just trying to survive."
Often, she says, people make assumptions without knowing the full story. In her case, that story starts with crossing the Mexico-U.S. border at age 8 with her mother and 4-year-old sister. Her father, a landscaper who had been working in the United States for several years previously, reentered separately.
She says her parents’ plan was that her father would stay in the United States for five years and be able to save money to start a business in Puebla. But he had a harder time finding work than he expected and wasn't able to save enough money. So, instead of him returning to Mexico permanently, the family decided to join him in the U.S. Says Amado, "I asked my mom, 'Why did we come?' and she said, 'I didn’t want your father to leave me alone again.' "
The Amado family made their way to a relative’s home in Coachella, California, and then traveled by car to the Richmond area three months later.
Here is Yanet's account (as given during our interview) of growing up as a child in an undocumented immigrant household:
I went to Skipwith Elementary School, then Tuckahoe Middle and Tucker High School. At first, it was only me and two other girls who were Hispanic. In a year, I was able to speak English, and in two years I was able to read it. I’m really grateful that I went to Skipwith at that time because there were these two ESL teachers who did everything they could for me to learn English. We were there maybe three hours a day. They read to me. My first book was a Nancy Drew mystery. That’s how I was able to learn. I really loved those stories, so I was able to read more and more of those stories. They took us to see Jamestown for the first time because they said it was something we needed to learn from the culture — where Virginia is from. They literally held my hand to [help me] learn English.
My parents would always tell me, “You don’t have any papers. You’re undocumented.” I didn’t know what that meant exactly for me until I got to my sophomore year in high school. I was like — oh, well, no license for me then, no scholarships for me. When it really hit me was junior year when I wasn’t able to receive financial help from the colleges that I applied to. I didn’t have a Social Security number. I remember my counselor telling me that the only thing I could do is just work. I was like, well, I do not want to work because I want to finish my education. I didn’t know there were scholarships for undocumented students. I didn’t know there were institutions that help undocumented students.
Yanet Amado does secretarial work at Sacred Heart Center, across the street from the church. (Photo by Jay Paul)
I started to investigate. I knew that private institutions would accept me. I did apply to private small liberal arts schools and I got into all them. Most of them covered me up to probably 65 percent, but they said they couldn’t cover any more, and I couldn’t afford to pay the rest. There was no in-state tuition. DACA was introduced my junior year, but I wasn’t able to apply for it until my freshman year in college. You have to establish a domicile with DACA for a year before getting in-state tuition.
I went to Reynolds Community College. I got my associate’s degree in social science, and I was able to transfer last semester, in the fall, to VCU. I’m still a sophomore. I got in-state tuition last year, spring semester at Reynolds.
DACA, in small words, is my whole life. It enables me to have legal presence — a job, a driver’s license and in-state tuition. Without those three things, my life and the lives of many others are surely going to be ruined. I don’t ask for anybody to pay my tuition. I only want the opportunity to continue.
Mine expires October 2018. We’re supposed to apply 130 to 150 days before it expires just to make sure our acceptance letters come exactly at the right time, or we could lose our driver's license and jobs. I will be a senior. There is hope that the Bridge Act (proposed bipartisan legislation) would protect DACA for three years. That could probably help us, but other than that I don’t know what’s going to happen. I talked to my friends about it and they’re like, “I don’t know either.” Nobody knows. The only thing I have is to live every day just as if it was a normal day.
We try to inform ourselves as much as we can through our friends at Virginia Tech and other places — U.Va. GMU, Marymount, Georgetown, JMU. They’re all DREAMers, and all started an organization on their campus to inform individuals that they’re present in their campuses, in order to have more allies that see our struggles every day. I’m hoping to establish VCU DREAMers next fall. [The name stems from the proposed DREAM Act, for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.]
We would focus on educating people about undocumented lives and be able to help the metro area and inform schools on what to do with their undocumented students, be involved in the General Assembly and be able to lobby for causes.
My major at VCU is political science. Eventually I would want to go after my master’s at the University of Richmond and study international business, and in the long run, be able to work in the American Embassy.
What I would like, if people do read this story, I would like people to know that I’m just a girl with that American dream of one day giving back to the city or to the state, giving back what I received back when I was little. I don’t want to take anybody’s space. I don’t want to take anybody’s job.
My hope is that we continue to fight, not just for myself and any DACA student, but for my neighbor, for my parents, for those people who actually come here and work and do not disturb anybody — for this parish that I work with, that I see the struggle every day just to come to church because it’s the only way that they feel safe. That’s what I hope that in the future happens, that they feel safe to come here, to feel that they’re not being watched every second. That’s why I chose political science, too, because I want to be able to learn and defend our rights.
I don’t imagine myself anywhere else. I think this is the place where I belong and this is my home. I’m grateful that my parents were able to bring me here. It’s what I’m becoming, it’s the woman I’m becoming, the woman that is tearing apart all these walls, where discrimination and fear are not going to tear me down, and I’ll become stronger as the years go through. I’m able to learn and take all this in and continue fighting for what they came here, for their American dream.
Yanet Amado at Sacred Heart Church in South Richmond (photo by Jay Paul)
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