The Undocumented Americans

“This book will move you to be punk, when you need to be punk; y hermanxs, it’s time to fuck some shit up.” 

Villavicencio often writes with colloquialisms and profanity, which contributes to the book’s blunt-reality tone. This exhortation is largely for members of the book’s audience who will see themselves reflected in its pages. The image of punk culture and the call to “fuck some shit up” represents the freedom that comes from honesty in the face of oppression as well as from the exercise of using one’s voice in a society that attempts to silence that voice. The quote also contains untranslated Spanish. “Y hermanxs” means “And brothers/sisters.” The “x” takes the place of the typically gendered -o and -a endings of Spanish nouns. There are many instances in the book where the author uses a little bit of Spanish and leaves it untranslated, reminding the reader that Spanish is part of not just the immigrant experience but also the American experience.

“Historically, legislators and immigration advocates have parted the sea of the undocumented with a splintered staff—working brown men and women on one side and academically achieving young brown people on the other, one a parasitic blight, the other heroic dreamers.”

This is an explanation of the primary stereotypes surrounding undocumented immigrants in the United States. The author locates the origins and promulgation of that binary formula with both legislators and immigration advocates—which include individuals who represent and want to better the lives of undocumented immigrants (and others who are both anti-immigration and anti-immigrant). Society often values undocumented students—mostly young people—while it distrusts and fears working adults. These reductive archetypes create an imagined good/bad binary. Many Americans believe that immigrant workers hurt American society, culture, and economy and express these false notions through discrimination. Even positive valuations of exceptional immigrant students are dangerous too, however. The purpose of the book is to move beyond this binary from both ends.

“The fact that The New York Times described them [day laborers] as ‘idling’ infuriates me. What an offensive way to describe labor that requires standing in hellish heat or cold or rain from dawn until nightfall, negotiating in a language not your own, competing with your own friends for the same job, then performing it to perfection without the certainty of pay. Workers absorb exceptional emotional and physical stress every day and, because they are undocumented, they’re on their own, with no workplace protections, no regulations, and no collective bargaining.” 

The first chapter in the book provides an account of the toll of day laboring. The author addresses stereotypes and seeks to refute them. She goes on to provide examples of individuals facing the many perils she lists in this passage, but her quick synopsis serves to render the “idling” image from the New York Times absurd and offensive. The system is exploitative and difficult in many ways, and yet the mainstream image of day laborers is negative and patronizing. Importantly, these people possess considerable skills in many areas of construction and maintenance. They are not “unskilled,” which is a word that circulates regarding manual labor. For their services, however, they do not receive respect or even guaranteed payment.

“Every single day laborer I meet loves, trusts, and speaks adoringly of Pedro. He is an institution in immigrant Staten Island, something of a godfather figure despite his youth and the fact that he is openly gay, and this in the all-male Latinx day laborer community. I ask him how he maneuvers that. ‘I ask them if they’ve ever been discriminated against, and they all say yes,’ Pedro says. ‘So I tell them the LGBTQ community is discriminated against just like they are, and it is their job as people who have been hurt by prejudice to not hurt anyone else. And they all get it.’” 

Pedro leads one of the worker centers in Staten Island. The author presents the fact that the people he knows love him so much as somewhat surprising given his sexual orientation. There are several reasons for the potential conflict. First, day laborers are mostly men, and male-dominated spaces in patriarchal cultures rarely are fully accepting of gay men. Part of the reason for that pattern is cultural history rooted in Christianity—specifically Catholicism—whose traditional teachings consider homosexuality a sin. That cultural history applies to the day laborer community on Staten Island, and yet Pedro’s explanation of logical solidarity between oppressed communities has proven successful in overcoming possible divisions among vulnerable groups.

“Unlike most volunteers, day laborers had the skill set to do extensive renovation projects, including specialized work like painting, electrical wiring, and landscaping. Beyond helping those in need, the workers were networking, giving their neighbors a sampling of their skills in hopes of encouraging future working relationships, but many people just took the free labor and never contacted them again. Some home owners even failed to provide essential tools for cleanup, such as masks, or even mops and garbage bags, and volunteer workers had to bring their own.” 

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, when day laborers volunteered extensively to rebuild the suburban communities on Staten Island, the island’s majority-white resident population took very little notice and offered little support for those undertaking the cleanup and repair work. Plus, the labor was not just free but also physically demanding and highly skilled, of a caliber that day laborers are rarely credited with. In this example (and others discussed in the book), day laborers had extra burdens placed upon them and still responded with high-quality work.

“Contractors have mastered a plantation model in their line of work, exploiting whatever sense of community that might exist among Latinx people. The workers think there are people along the chain of command who are watching out for them, but melanin and accents are ineffective binding substances.” 

In this passage, Villavicencio describes the tendency for white contracting companies to hire Hispanic subcontractors to directly oversee the jobsites and supervise the workers. The author compares this to a plantation, where white enslavers hired or directed African American “slave drivers” or “overseers” to do the daily surveillance work in the fields. These intermediary positions hold significant power compared to the lower rung and occupy a liminal space in the racist hierarchy that defines these labor systems. Villavicencio suggests that there is no meaningful solidarity between the Hispanic subcontractors and the day laborers because racial identity alone is not enough to forge mutual respect and support.

“I learned that no matter how far away you were from New York that day, no matter how much lower than zero the count of the people you lost on that day was, if you were white, 9/11 happened to you personally, with blunt and scalding force. Because the antithesis of an American is an immigrant and because we could not be victims in the public eye, we became suspects. And so September 11 changed the immigration landscape forever.” 

It is hard to overstate the impacts that the September 11 terrorist attacks had on immigration and national security policy and on white public sentiments toward people of color and immigrants overall. Villavicencio identifies a racial divide that defines American nationality as inherently white and any foreign identity as threatening. She goes on in this chapter to document specifics: hate crimes against Muslims, the creation of ICE, new powers for police, the expansion of private prisons, and the revocation of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. These changes have had long-term impacts in the decades following 9/11.

“Paloma was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. Her doctors believe the cancer is linked to her elevated exposure to toxins during the post-9/11 cleanup work. The news made Paloma feel bitter, hopeless, and punished by god. Surely he was punishing her for abandoning her children.” 

This anecdote from the story of Paloma, who assisted in 9/11 cleanup, is emblematic of many similar stories. She incurred multiple health issues from the cleanup work, likely including cancer. This trauma compounded her already difficult living conditions as an undocumented immigrant living in the United States. Immigration often involves dividing families, and she carried guilt with her about leaving her daughter behind—guilt that she linked to her sickness, even though she got sick serving New York City and American communities. The author discusses Paloma in more detail than some other interviewees. Paloma received some money through the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, but that option is not open to all who volunteered because of the paperwork involved in the application process.

“But it’s not just those early years without my parents that branded me. It’s the life I’ve led in America as a migrant, watching my parents pursue their dream in this country and then having to deal with its carcass, witnessing the crimes against migrants carried out by the U.S. government with my hands bound. As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn’t allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I’d have to let go of.” 

Villavicencio is very open about her struggles with mental health and various diagnoses. Some, her therapists have said, are rooted in her early childhood, when her parents immigrated without her. The undocumented immigration experience itself, however, also contributed to various attachment issues and depression. Life as an undocumented immigrant in the United States is marked by abuse, insecurity, fear, and anxiety. Villavicencio was able to access mental healthcare, but affordable healthcare is extremely difficult for undocumented immigrants to obtain. This means that all the illnesses that the author struggles with are likely widespread among her peers who have had similar living conditions and family histories, but many people will not be able to receive formal diagnoses or help from doctors.

“What I discovered was a story about illness and healing in migrant communities through the lens of women—caretakers and rebels.” 

In the Miami chapter, women take the spotlight as healthcare providers through outlets such as vodou ceremony, alternative medicine, pharmacists who will provide drugs illegally, mothers, and wives. The “rebel” part refers to the women on whom the chapter ruminates most centrally. These women have formed activist groups dedicated to immigrant rights and immigrant women’s rights. They recognize their own gendered oppression and defy stereotypes and expectations from their own communities to lift each other up with mutual support, including outings to simply have fun and enjoy friends.

“I’m not sure what to think. I’m curious about vodou because of its anticolonial roots but I also believe an immigration cleanse is bullshit because nobody can protect anybody from ICE, and this cleanse is expensive and the Haitians who would ask for an immigration cleanse in Miami right now are probably scared shitless about losing TPS. Is Naomie a notario? Maybe. But maybe one with powers.” 

The author visits a vodou priestess to experience a cleanse of her fears about immigration and to protect her loved ones from deportation. Villavicencio admits that she is skeptical of the practice but that the religion intrigues her because Haitians invented it to resist French colonial rule, combining African, Indigenous American, and Catholic practices and rituals into an empowering religion. She mentions, though, the elements that trouble her. First, the cleanse costs almost $300. The author wonders if the priestess is a “notario,” someone who exploits immigrants by promising to fix their immigration status, charges a huge fee, and cannot actually perform the job. Villavicencio worries about exploitation from the vodou priestess considering the general anxiety in the Haitian immigrant community as they anticipate the rumored loss of their protected immigration status.

“People think cleaning houses is easy, but it’s a dangerous job. None of them have been personally assaulted, but they all know women who have been groped or raped on the job, who have had their wages stolen, who have been psychologically abused and then forced into silence by employers who threatened to call ICE on them.” 

Many of the women Villavicencio gets to know in Miami work as housekeepers for wealthy families. Though that small group has avoided some of the worst abuses that housekeepers regularly suffer, housekeeping is yet another exploitative and dangerous line of work for immigrants. The chapter also highlights gendered violence that threatens women immigrants in particular. The author goes on to recount some anecdotes of women getting humiliated, abused, or even deported through this line of work. Housekeeping is a common profession in Miami’s immigrant community as well as in other immigrant communities across the US.

“The undocumented community in Flint has been affected by the water crisis in disturbingly specific ways. Flyers announcing toxic levels of lead in the Flint waterways were published entirely in English, and when canvassers went door-to-door to tell residents to stop drinking tap water, undocumented people did not open their doors out of fear that the people knocking were immigration authorities.” 

The public health crisis in Flint, Michigan, made national headlines, but the undocumented residents of the city remained unaware of their poisonous water and orders to stop drinking it because of the obstacles surrounding their immigration status. Chapter 4 is largely about how the state failed Flint residents, particularly residents of color. This passage reveals just some of the ways that the initial announcement passed over Spanish-speaking immigrants who had legitimate reason to fear strangers at their doors and who might not be able to read English-only flyers in public.

“When you walk through Flint the most striking aspect of the streetscape, second only to the boarded-up houses, is the sheer number of bars and churches. I ask Margarita if Flint residents are especially religious, and she says they just need the services the churches provide because the state is so absent.” 

Flint residents obtained clean water through the state only for a period of time following the admission that lead poisoned the city’s water supply. After that period, residents had to start buying their own clean water, but it is expensive to buy enough water to effectively replace the need for tap water. Churches typically have resources to undertake charity work, and they collected donations of bottled water and other goods and services to distribute to Flint residents when political will fell short of meaningful and enduring help for people.

“What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.” 

In this passage, the author discusses some of the big-picture implications of the types of personal anecdotes she collected in Flint. Lead poisoning even outside of Flint is a health crisis that affects children of color at a disproportionately high rate, and it has lifelong implications for a person’s mental and physical health. The author also demonstrates how multiple public health and safety concerns are interrelated in communities of color. Lead poisoning might create a particularly ill generation of Flint youth, and the effects of lead, poverty, and other intersecting factors will lead to increased police violence if patterns of that violence do not change. When the author alludes to how police “respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness,” she is referring to abuse and wrongful killings.

“I am not a journalist. Journalists are not allowed to get involved the way I have gotten involved. Journalists, to the best of my knowledge, do not try to change the outcome of their stories as crudely as I do. I send water. I make arrangements with supernatural spirits to stop deportations. I try to solve shit the way an immigrant’s kids try to solve shit for their parent because these people are all my parents, I am their child, if I wasn’t their child—and I was their child—I should be patented and mass-produced and distributed to undocumented immigrants at Walmarts. I am a professional immigrant’s daughter.” 

Villavicencio has a specific positionality in her research and her writing. She is an immigrant and was raised in American culture and society in addition to having the continued ethnic culture and influences from her home life and wider immigrant community. Like other children of immigrants who grew up in the US, she is adept at helping older immigrant adults with everything from translating English to Spanish to navigating political and social systems. She recognizes this as a service she can and should perform for people in need.

“My job was simple, to tell this story: The government wanted the people of Flint dead, or did not care if they died, which is the same thing, and set in motion a plan for them to be killed slowly through negligence at the highest levels. What I saw in Flint was a microcosm of the way the government treats the undocumented everywhere, making the conditions in this country as deadly and toxic and inhumane as possible so that we will self-deport. What I saw in Flint was what I had seen everywhere else, what I had felt in my own poisoned blood and bones. Being killed softly, silently, and with impunity.” 

Villavicencio wants to highlight not only the ways in which the state and federal governments failed the people of Flint during the water crisis, but also that their failed policies stemmed from sentiments that were more sinister than incompetence or unintentional negligence. She sees racism and anti-immigrant political ideology at work in the government’s response to the public health crisis, and even though the water crisis in Flint was so high-profile and extreme, the author sees it fitting in with wider patterns of abuse, neglect, and violence. By understanding Flint as part of those patterns instead of as an anomaly, the author illustrates the fuller scope of the injustices that the US creates and perpetuates on immigrants.

“When they said goodbye, Javier told her he loved her and made her promise she’d take good care of the children. He, in turn, promised he would come back. When Patricia and the kids returned home, the house still smelled like him. His sneakers were lying on the floor, his dirty clothes were in the hamper, his toothbrush was in the bathroom, not yet dry from that morning. His razor sat in the shower. It would soon begin to rust. He was everywhere and he was gone.” 

This passage refers to the story of the deportation of a man named Javier. The family was in denial about his deportation and hoped for last-minute help that would enable him to stay, but none came. Deportation, the author seeks to convey, is a devastating loss for a family and wreaks havoc on the health of both the deported and those left behind. The imagery here is akin to that of an unexpected death, where the tragic specter of a person remains but the person in the flesh is gone. Javier has children whom he cares deeply about and, despite the trauma he is enduring, vows to return to the United States for the family. Villavicencio does not comment on whether such a feat is likely to occur, but the book demonstrates the many dangers associated with illegal border crossing. This anecdote gives faces to the people who are damaged through deportation.

“Stories in the news often end at the deportation, at the airport scene. But each deportation means a shattered family, a marriage ending, a custody battle, children who overnight go from being raised by two parents to one parent with a single income, children who become orphans in foster care.” 

Villavicencio calls out the disconnect between the simplified and sanitized image of deportation in the public imagination and its dark reality. Few who don’t directly experience deportation, or the deportation of a loved one, think through the long trauma and logistical difficulties of the tragedy. The impact on children is particularly important in the book, as Villavicencio watches one father’s deportation and the threat of deportation for another create mental illness symptoms in their children. In this passage, she discusses particularly likely outcomes, all of which involve extreme stress and some that create heightened exposure to potential abuse for the children involved.

“We’re illegal. Many of us are indigenous in part or whole and do not believe borders should exist at all. I personally subscribe to Dr. King’s definition of an ‘unjust law’ as being ‘out of harmony with the moral law.’ And the higher moral law here is that people have a human right to move, to change location, if they experience hunger, poverty, violence, or lack of opportunity, especially if that climate in their home countries is created by the United States, as is the case with most third world countries from which people migrate.” 

The structure of borders as they exist between nations in the world today is the creation of global colonialism and Western notions of property ownership. That is why Villavicencio remarks that a lot of Indigenous people who saw their nations colonized do not believe in borders. Furthermore, the author notes that the factors that create surges of immigration out of many countries are the results of American involvement in those countries. In Latin America, for example, the United States directly influenced many regime changes during the Cold War that left countries vulnerable to unstable or dictatorial governments and often ravaged economies. The US political apparatus is therefore responsible for immigration but does not legally allow it in many circumstances.

“According to the Migration Policy Institute, around 10 percent of undocumented people are over fifty-five years old. This country takes their youth, their dreams, their labor, and spits them out with nothing to show for it.” 

In the final chapter, the author ruminates on aging as an undocumented immigrant. Since so many immigrants work manual labor jobs for so long, their bodies age prematurely. Many of the middle-aged interviewees in the book apparently look much older than they are because of the physical and mental stress they have been under while living and working in the United States. Many also struggle with loneliness, depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses. Their circumstances change them and harm them, and the goal of acquiring wealth and social mobility in the United States is unrealistic and unattainable for most people no matter how great their work ethic or the quality of the work that they do. The last stage of an undocumented person’s life in the United States is likely sad and difficult.

“Because of her poor health, Altagracia has death on her mind and is thinking about going back to Mexico. ‘There was a raid on a 7-Eleven near my house just last week. And the other day on the bus, a white woman went on a racist rant against me while I was just standing there. All of the racism here makes me want to go back to my country when I die. I’m not wanted here, and I do not want to live in eternity in a place where I’m not wanted.’” 

The author includes Altagracia as one of the case studies of aging as an undocumented immigrant. Altagracia shared that many undocumented immigrants consciously believe they need to have children so they will have someone to care for them when they are older, as social supports available to US citizens are seldom available to undocumented immigrants. However, Altagracia has no children with her and therefore is extremely vulnerable to both physical health and mental health challenges. Altagracia also highlights the everyday fears of deportation and the racism that immigrants face. She explicitly states a common desire among aging undocumented immigrants to return to their home countries as they approach death and at least die somewhere where they are truly seen and wanted.

“Mira theorizes that Latin American culture is so imbued with patriarchal values that paint women as natural caregivers and nurturers that women feel a greater responsibility toward aging parents, and women who are not able to balance or reject those values feel an inescapable burden.”

The author does not personally endorse or refute Mira’s theory in the text. At several points, however, she explores the gendered dynamics of the stories that are so obviously shaped by race, nationality, and citizenship status. These complexities are important in demonstrating the limitlessness of intersectionality—any number of identifying facets of a person, both true to a person and merely projected upon them. She also stresses how such identifying facets converge to shape the way society receives individuals and what types of resources they have access to. Immigrant women will have many experiences in common with immigrant men (and gender nonconforming or nonbinary immigrants will have shared experiences with cisgender immigrants), but each subgroup also has unique concerns.