NEW JERSEY.- A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Vilchis and a group of Dreamers were invited to a special performance of the play “Latin History for Morons”. The production was created by and starred John Leguizamo, who was inspired by the lack of Latinos in his son’s history class.
For Elizabeth or Liz, as her friends call her, it was like stopping to reflect on her own personal history.
“To regain strength during this difficult time for the Dreamer’s cause,” she said. “For a long time, I have felt I have to do things to prove I deserve to be here. As the play shows, we have so much history starting with the Native Americans who were killed. European immigrants did a good job eliminating their legacy.”
Liz never gives up, but her legal options to remain in the country before the imminent cancellation of the DACA program are very limited.
“I have thought about moving to Europe, but not because they’re kicking me out, or because I’m running away but by my choice. She says her grandfather lives in Mexico. They have a home and land but her eyes are focused in another direction.
The awakening of an activist
Liz’s family decided to leave a town in central Mexico when she was 7 years old. “My parents decided to leave Mexico after the economy collapsed in 1994. My family was struggling to meet basic needs. For a long time, all I remember eating were tortillas with salt. My family decided to come to the United States because they knew at least they would not have to worry about where our next meal would come from,” she said.
Growing up in Mexico, Liz was raised by her mother and grandfather. “As a child, I had an incredible freedom. I could go anywhere, from the fields where my family picked tomatoes to any neighbor’s home in our small town. From an early age, I was good at math and my teachers would send me to other cities to compete,” she recalls.
Back then she only had a younger brother. Her family grew and she now has four brothers in all. Two of them were born in the United States. They have been living in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
They weren’t allowed to socialize and lived in fear of deportation because neither her parents nor her older brothers had legal status in the United States. But Liz decided to stop focusing on those limitations and began to see the opportunities. One day she watched a news story that talked about a shortage of talent in careers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM for short), a field in which she had always stood out.
“I went to a public school in Yonkers. I attended CUNY City College in Harlem, where I obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering. My first job was for my high school teacher, who was an architect. He drew floor plans in AutoCAD, ” she said.
At that time, her brother was an activist with the organization New York State Immigration Coalition. “I saw him in a documentary and then became involved in activism. I began to be more visible,” she said.
The New York Times published an article on the contributions of Dreamers to the economy and chose Liz as a key figure in the piece. Following the story, they offered her an opportunity to be part of an immigration panel on CNN in which the young woman had a tense exchange with Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, who told her to return to Mexico.
“I felt he did not value me as a person, it is so easy for him to say, ‘You grew up here but now go somewhere else’. That’s heartless,” the young dreamer said during an interview with journalist Jorge Ramos of Univision.
The incident touched her in three ways: “First, it was only after the program that I realized I had just come out as an undocumented person on national television and 90% of people who knew me did not know until then. Before the program started, all I could think about was how I was sick and tired of being treated as less than a human being because of my immigration status. I felt that no matter how much I do for this country, I would never be accepted. After 20 years of waiting for an answer, I was ready to take my future into my own hands.
Second, during the exchange with Santorum, I realized how uneducated most of the members of Congress are on immigration. They had limited knowledge of how the immigration laws of the United States vary by country. It became clear that needed to be the focus when I speak about the subject.
Third, after returning to the audience, I received support from people who had expressed strong conservative views. Something I said made them empathize with my situation. That, along with encouragement from Michael Moore, who was there that night, made me see the power of my story and the need to share it with people across the aisle.”
Liz worked for two years as the head of the STEM educational program at Samsung’s headquarters in New Jersey.
She’s now a part of organizations like fwd.us, United We Dream, Dream Vote 4 and LatinoTech. She’s also part of the board of directors as the founder of the company HOMERLogistics, a financing platform for restaurants that has 1,000 employees.
Her new perspective
Elizabeth Vilchis has permission to work until March 2019. She’s looking for opportunities that will help her gain experience in venture capital and technology investments to take to Europe, if necessary.
After 21 years of waiting, she says she’s not going back to working off the books. She’ll continue to build her career independently. If she stays in the U.S., she recognizes her skills and experience would be exploited because she could not earn what she’s worth under the current immigration laws.
Lea esta historia en español, “Elizabeth Vilchis:“Quiero que mis contribuciones sean reconocidas””.