ok so im sitting here on my sofa, just taking a stroll through the net.
when suddenly i stumble upon a post on this forum about a guy that claims to be an illegal alien in this country, and therefore after is severely insulted by many users of this forum.
i was shocked to say the least.
and i was also surprised to see how people reacted so negatively to 1 word he said, and how, you could see they treated different people who also posted on the thread completely differently simply because they said "applying" instead of "illegal", as if they weren't talking about living human beings at all, and instead about another piece of document, properly or improperly filled out! and i wouldn't be surprised if many of those people considered themselves good or religious people.
I am an illegal immigrant to this country.
however i innitially was so unwillingly. i moved to this country when i was 8 years old, and have been living here for 7 years. i moved back to my native country (Brazil) to visit family, stayed there for a year, and have recently returned, in the hopes of a better life.
the only thing that ticks me off is when people who only have blind hate, talk about stuff they do not comprehend.
i will not lie to you, i don't "love" the people of this country, i am not what you would like to consider in your perfect little image of the american dream, as an american. And that is all due to the people in this country themselves. the first seven years of my stay here, were very suffered. me and my parents stayed here legally fo a years, and then the IRS negated further extensions, but we were forced to stay anyhow. i will explain what i mean by "forced*" later on.
when we arrived, we stayed at a missionary's home, living with his family (which were african-americans) and his family. we had about 3500 dollars to start our new life, leaving nothing behind. all of this money was drained by this family's abusive conditions for our stay, we were paying all the bills for the 7 people staying in that house and still giving money to the missionary himself.
we didn't speak english, had no money to go back*, and now, we were alone. we moved to a trailer home, rotting, literally, that we got for 300 dollars a month. at night roaches infested the kitchen, through holes from under the cabinet, whenever it rained the entire yard got covered in ankle deep to knee deep water. we didn't have any options. my father desprately looked for any type of work, to put something on the table. my mother was pregnant when we arrived in the us, which was born a month after we arrived, so now it was me my mom my dad and a newborn american baby girl. my dad had a spine fracture carrying huge tree trunks on a job he got, for 45 bucks a day, working from 5:30 to 8pm.
now sick, tired, desperate, alone, and with a baby to feed as well, we had to stoop even lower, and this is where our story begins.
with no other options left, we started digging through garbage-that's right, the same ones you put outside of your house-for anything we could sell.
i went to school, walking about 1.5miles to get there every day, because the school refused to change the route, and there were none that went closer to my house, being that it was the closest school to where i lived. it was one of the worse rated for the district.
school was out by 3:30pm, but i got home around 4pm.
i had time to eat something, and by 6pm me and my dad were leaving the house to start our daily overnight search for something to sell. we stayed out usually until about 2am searching through trash for something to sell.
i would get home and drop dead tired on my bed, in my cubicle room, with a door that wasent even the right size, that i just leaned over the doorway.
we didnt get weekends off either, much to the contrary, we sold the stuff we found on the weekends, at a flea market not too far from where we lived. by "we" i mean me, as my parents didn't speak english and i was the only one that knew how to say anything past "hi, sorry, and thank you".
thats how i spent my childhood, and i was damn happy then too.
after a year of living like this, avoiding the police, in fear of getting in trouble for rummaging through the trash, and fear of getting deported.
we suffered numerous verbal harrassments from people in this country, we were repetely discriminated for being illegal immigrants, and didn't even get the basic, human rights many times. god forbid we got sick, the local hospital required a social security number to treat us, or proof of legal stay. i won't lie, throughout this time period we met a few people who would make the founding fathers of this coutry proud, people with big hearts, that helped us, or at the very least, treated us like an equals.
after this period life started to get a little better, my mom got a tip from a friend of a house cleaning job on the rich side of town, and from there she was reffered by the owner of that house to more people, due to her excellent work. my dad started working as an assistant to a tiling professional, soon learned the trade, and took off on his own, and even after the housing bubble popped, he was one of the few who remained with a lot of work to do around these parts due to his efficiency and perfectionism in his work.
we are now decently established here.
my mom and dad each own their respective company's, pay taxes, own cars with valid drivers licenses, own a 3bd/2ba house pay taxes on it and everything. even though i missed school a lot (and i mean a LOT, im talking 80 absences in a single year) due to the hardships we went through, i always passed school with above average grades on the advanced course, and my teachers always said i was a genius, and would be a model student if i didn't miss school so much.
better then many "citizens" if you ask me, and nonetheless, not even given the slightest consideration, not even for the tax dollars my parents paid all these years.
This country was ment to be the greatest of this world, at the moment, it still is, but china is soon to pass it.
it could be a paradise, if only they treated other people equally.
back in brazil where im from, all people are treated equally, no matter where they are from. racism is so scarce, you dont even heard about it.
if you go there, you can stay as long as you want, and if you do choose to do so, live your life there with no bureaucracy attached to it.
might be a third world country, but treats people like people.
and just to kill off a few obnoxious replys, i'll go ahead and explain, a few things.
why come as a tourist and stay illegally instead of applying for citizenship and and coming in here the legal way?
because that is MANY MANY MANY more times difficult, time consuming, and the chances of you being succesful are so close to chicken **** you can smell it. in other words, unless your already so rich that you don't have a reason to want to come to this country and become an american, you won't be succesful. if you are poor and without options, and need to start a new life, you wont be given a chance at the american dream.
THEY TOOK OUR JEWBS!
really? ill trade my job of carrying cinder blocks all day in the hot sun from 6am to 6pm for 100 bucks for you office job in an air conditioned place, typing on a computer and filling out forms all day. no really, i will, and for 33% less then you are paid right now.
YOU COME IN MY COUNTRY AND WANT ME TO PAY FOR YOUR LIVING COSTS AND PUT YOU ON WALFARE AND GIVE YOU FOOD STAMPS!!!
seriously, i would love to just have a little piece of paper that says i can stay in here without fear of being deported. a work permit would make a cry too.
LIAR, YOUR NOT EVEN AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT!
if i read this, i would be feeling like bill gates telling some guy named gary that has never heard of him that he is one of the richest men alive, and gary not believing him.
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