Nobody Can Turn Us Around

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet. Posted October 17, 2003.

Growing up in the Chicago area, Alheli never realized there was anything different about her. It wasn't until she was a high school student, wanting to get a driver's license and thinking about attending an Ivy League university, that she learned the term she and millions of other residents like her are branded with -- "illegal."

Alheli had come to the U.S. with her family from Mexico City when she was nine years old. Her parents told her they were coming for a two-week visit to her aunt, but they never left. She assimilated to life in the U.S. easily and became one of the top students in her school.

"I grew up here, went to grammar school here, high school here, I had the best grades in my class," said Alheli, now 20. "It never crossed my mind what my situation was until I was a senior in high school and I wanted to go to one of the best universities, but I couldn't get scholarships or financial aid because I'm undocumented. I started feeling embarrassed, like I did something wrong. I was angry, depressed and mad at the world. I couldn't get a drivers license, couldn't get a state ID. My parents had never talked about this, it was part of their culture not to and they were afraid."

Through friends Alheli eventually got involved in immigrants rights activism with a local group called the Southwest Organizing Project. "Then I saw there were all these other people just like me," she said. "That was a real eye opener because I had thought I was the only one in this situation. That was a real turning point in my anger and depression."

For two weeks this fall, Alehi and thousands of other immigrants rode on buses across the country as a call to end the fear, shame and uncertainty that the approximately eight million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. live with everyday. The event was called The Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides, in reference to the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights movement, which had the similar goals of calling for dignity and respect and ending racism, oppression, and exploitation. Riders of all races, including some of the members of the original Freedom Rides, joined immigrants from all over the world on the buses. The children of immigrants and immigrants who are now citizens or legal residents joined undocumented riders to bring home the point that this is a land of immigrants and everyone who works and lives here should be entitled to the same rights and dignity.

The last week of September, 18 buses holding close to 1,000 people took off from 10 cities including Seattle, L.A., Tucson and Chicago,. They wound their way across the country holding rallies and meeting with immigrant communities in a total of 100 different cities and towns. They rallied at immigration detention centers, joined demonstrations for specific labor struggles and spoke at colleges and health clinics.

The riders came up with several themes of the trip: "reward work," meaning legalize all undocumented workers; "renew our democracy," meaning create a viable path to citizenship for immigrants; "restore labor protections," to give immigrants workers regardless of status labor protections including the right to unionize; "reunite families" by reforming immigration policies that make it extremely time-consuming or sometimes impossible for family members to join immigrants in the U.S.; and "respect the civil rights and civil liberties of all."

"It was very exciting," said Jessie Bhangoo, 37, a Sikh native of India who lives in Tucson. "There was a lot of support in the cities, we heard from a lot of people who said it was the first time anyone had ever done an event about immigration reform there. Some immigrants were afraid to come out in public, but the organizers would get calls afterwards. That reception meant a lot to us."

The two buses leaving from Tucson got a first hand view of the constant fear and uncertainty that immigrants live in, as they were detained by Border Patrol agents near El Paso, Texas while going through an immigration checkpoint. The agents held riders on the bus for several hours and then placed them in cells in the immigration detention center. The riders were finally allowed to go, thanks largely to intervention from concerned citizens and politicians.

"That's something very difficult for people who haven't dealt with it to comprehend," said Bhangoo. "For a lot of people it was really surprising, for others it was something they live with every day. For several hours we just had to sit there and we couldn't get up to get water or go to the bathroom. People who had to take medication couldn't take it. That sort of built up the tension. But once people were inside the cells people felt better, they felt they were supporting each other."

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