My freshman year is 5 exams away from being over. Say what?! How did the time escape me so quickly? Wasn't it just yesterday that I unpacked my belongings, my life, into that tiny, un-airconditioned dorm room? I had 4 magical years awaiting me; 4 years of carefully walking the line between freedom and obligation. Those 4 years have now dwindled down to 3. Time passes far too quickly for my liking.
Last week I completed one of my final reading assignments for my Intro to Hispanic Studies course. The subject of the piece was Ecuadorian illegal immigration to the United States-- depicting both the trauma immigrants experience on the voyage into this country and the hardships they face if they do succeed.
This article got me thinking about a friend of my grandmother I once met years ago. I know little more about this woman other than her status as an illegal immigrant and that she earned her living by taxying friends around in her car for a few dollars fee. I came to meet this woman when my grandmother called upon her to drive us to the mall for a shopping trip. Though I was aware she was an illegal, nothing about her status particularly struck me as extraordinary; living in a community heavily populated by Hispanics, I was accustomed to these kinds of stories.
Now that I have read this article, however, I am suddenly awed by this woman. Despite her status, I had never bothered to consider what she had experienced just to reach the U.S. Had she laid face down in the bed of a truck covered by straw and hay? Had she endured days, weeks even, in the cramped, hidden quarters of a ship? I honestly don't know how she journeyed here, but to think that she may have experienced anything of the sort is mind-blowing to me. To think that hundreds of thousands of people currently residing in the United States are harboring such traumatic personal histories that others will never understand-- that I just can't even fathom.
