Fernando Erazo is a current senior at Princeton Day School. He enjoys filming and playing basketball. He will be attending Rowan University this fall. At the age of 7, Fernando arrived to the United States with his mother, who was dealing with persecution due to her job as a news reporter and her political views. After a couple of court experiences, Fernando was granted a status that we are unfamiliar with as it is not commonly known, resulting in a difficult time with the college process. In his interview, he talks about his fears with college as an immigrant. He had to navigate the financial aid aspect of the college process on his own, ultimately dealing with uncertainties. Despite all these hardships, Fernando has maintained a positive attitude and hopes to help his family in the future.
What was your/ your parent’s decision to come to the United States?
“Initially it was my dad’s idea, my dad had originally, uh, left the country and immigrated to the United States when my mom was pregnant with me… When I got to a certain age, my father was like, ‘ I will buy you a coyote’, so we were kinda forced to migrate to the United States. Also, my mother and I, back in my country we were dealing with persecution due to my mom’s job; she was a news reporter, and there was a lot of backlash going on with her and the and the country because the public didn’t agree with her points of views and political beliefs. There was a lot of corruption, so we decided to leave that hostility and come to a country where my father already lived in, so the United States was the way to go.”
What was your parents’ hopes for life here?
“ My mom wasn’t a big fan of leaving. She loved her country, and I was kinda very young so I didn’t know what was going on too much. I was like 7 years old so in my mind I just took the journey as a game, and just went along with it. The hopes for my father was to get a fresh start in our life, and have more security (or be more safe) with him.”
Why come to the United States instead of any other country?
“Well my father was already here, so it would’ve just been better to reunite with him, and for me to meet him for the first time since I just never got to see him in my childhood."
Did you know if there was any other options?
“ Not really, we were limited to just moving out of the country due to my mother’s situation and my father’s forcing us to move and meet with him.”
Who did you come with, and who did you leave behind?
“ I came with my mother and an uncle, who wasn’t really my uncle, sort of like my mom’s uncle, and an aunt who is second in hand. We split off with them after we crossed the border; they went their separate ways, we went our separate ways. I think my uncle lives in New York now, and my aunt lives in California, but it’s just me and my mom that stayed together.”
“I left behind my entire family: my grandmother, my aunts(in first place), my uncles, my cousins (some cousins that I just never got to meet because they were born when I was here, so I have yet to have met them in person). ”
What was the most difficult part about leaving?
“ Saying bye to my grandmother. My grandmother has been like a rock to me. I remember when I was a little kid she would take care of me when my mom went to college and when she worked in the news station. Just, spending time with her seeing my mom on the TV with her… so definitely leaving my grandmother was the toughest part of it.”
What was the journey like?
“ Pretty much for me it was playing with toy cars, y’know not really taking it seriously ‘cuz I took it like a game, but looking back at it I could see it was a very tough journey. It was walking two days and two nights in the desert; in the day it was hot and in the night it was cold as brick. Definitely looking back at it it was a tough journey.”
What was the most difficult part about coming here?
“ Once we arrived, my mother and I had difficulties with the language; I learned the language fairly quickly, my mother was the one that struggled the most. I remember getting on the bus and hearing ‘America’, getting on the bus with my mother and her having difficulty expressing herself to the bus driver ‘I’m trying to get to this place’, or ‘I’m trying to go there’. Seeing her cry due to the fact that she communicate with somebody, and I was just trying to lift her up. Definitely the language, trying to adjust to a new culture, a new lifestyle, that was the hardest part of coming to this country.”
What was the United States like when you first arrived?
“ The United States was something I just didn’t picture when I was on my journey. I had this perfect picture of, like, gold cities and just rich, and the streets being full, like how they picture it in the media of like the lower class. But when I got here and moved to Trenton with my father, that just opened up my eyes and I’m like, ‘This is not what I pictured’. I thought it would just be like, not a lower class or poor people I guess. But yeah, I was surprised.”
Was there anything that surprised you the most?
“That there was more diversity than I thought there would be. Definitely moving to Trenton I saw more Hispanic people, more people of my kind. I thought I was just gonna be overruled by white people, but it was just not the case where there was more people of my kind.”
What do you miss most about Guatemala?
“ The connections that I had with my culture, just because being here I don’t really have an escape to my culture. I’m more forced to the American lifestyle of the food, the festivities, just everything. There’s nothing that I can really go to for my Guatemalan culture here in the United States.”
Who was the most helpful in getting you settled? Or was there no one?
“ At first, my father worked with this Italian person, but he had connections, like lawyers and stuff like that. So he helped us, his boss, helped us settle and get our legal status going. At first, we didn’t have lawyers, we didn’t have connections. So definitely my father’s boss helped us a lot to have the status that we have, to be legally settled with a work permit and social security, and be able to start our lives here.”
Knowing that immigrating can be hard, where did you find strength in difficult times?
“ My story really helped give me hope. Knowing that it’s not a unique story, I know a handful of us Hispanics and immigrants go through that. But whenever I tell it to someone, they’re just shocked about it and I guess it gives them some motivation and hope. My story helps me to keep going, and to not give up, gives me strength.”
How do you think that migration has changed you?
“ It’s definitely helped me open my eyes up to different possibilities. I don’t mean to sound cliche, but it gives me a different perspective in life knowing that we all just come from a different background, and to just appreciate the people that God puts in my path. I have a lot of people behind me, trying to help me become a better version of myself each and every single day just because of my Hispanic background. They’re just trying to lift me up and make it out.”
How has your experience been compared to what you expected?
“ I didn’t look too far ahead when I was a little kid, I just lived in the moment.”
What have been your biggest challenges?
“ My legal status has really held me back from a lot of things, but I try to not let that get me down. Just with college, it’s held me back from getting federal aid, help from the government, and it’s just sucked, but I had to find other ways and alternatives to get that help for college.”
What has been your greatest source(s) of joy?
“ My family has really been my number one, when it comes to my support. My two brothers, my mom, my father, even though my father’s not there physically, he’s still there emotionally, financially, etc.”
Overall, how do you think your family is doing after immigrating?
“ After being here for ten years, I feel like we’ve just been on hold. We haven’t been making improvements, like we have just been staying still economically. In our overall life, we don’t have healthcare, we don’t have access to other sources like federal aid. It’s just, for the past ten years you would think that we would have attained some sort of help I guess, but we haven’t.”
Have there been any times that you have felt unwelcome?
“ There have been times where I have experienced racism. An example would be, my family and I went to the beach, we sat behind a couple (they were older), and they looked back at us and just kinda sniffed at us, nudged at us, and just walked away and sat farther away. Those little moments where you realize there are people like that in the world, that they don’t want us in this country, and they have their own beliefs we have our own beliefs. It’s just moments like that that open up your eyes.”
What’s your status?
“ I’m under withholding/ removal, so that means it’s kind of like an asylum, but the judge, from what my mom has told me, says, ‘I’ll leave in this country legally, so I’ll just put you on withholding/removal and just give you your social security number, your work permit, and then maybe in the future we can fix your legal immigration and hopefully you can become a U.S citizen,’ “
How does that legal status affect your life?
“ Recently, it’s really hit me, because I’ve gotten very frustrated from making so many calls to college and being like, “Am I eligible for federal aid,” because in my financial aid package they’ve given me federal aid. So then, I was talking with my college counselor, because I know I’m not eligible for federal financial aid, and so I’ve just been going back and forth with my college, just making sure that if they did order me that letter, will it at some point go away, because maybe they’ve realized that they’ve made a mistake. So it’s just been a stressful time for me to figure out if I am awarded that, that I am 100% sure and that if they take that away from me, I’ll be left with zero and I’ll be left to pay for college fully. People have told me, “why can’t you leave your withholding status for a DACA student,” but I don’t want to go through that process; it’s very difficult, because I don’t know what the outcome maybe. Even if I’m DACA, they may not 100% give me the federal aid.”
So for this part, we asked him for his opinion on specific ideas/concepts. If he doesn’t want to respond, he doesn’t need to.
As you’ve heard, Trump has planned for tax funds to go toward the building of the wall at the Mexican border. Thoughts about that?
“ Of course I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it, seeing how things are going.”
The administration office has said that “ Families that come to the border and can’t provide documentation have to be separated, and children will be put in detention centers at the border”. Now, they are instituting DNA testing to ensure that the parents are the actual parents of the kids coming over. With the reports on violence in the detention centers, talk about your point of view.
“ My point of view is that it just makes me grateful. From my perspective of making it out from that, it’s just a ten year difference, and I’m blessed to have made it, because if I got detained at the border and then separated from my mother it would have been tragic. My mom is the overall light of the world, and she’s always been there for me.. I would have kicked, screamed, yelled… it would have definitely been a difficult time for me.”
There’s critiques that people who discuss this do not know the perspective of immigrants themselves. What would you like to see done to acknowledge the immigrant’s perspective in this debate?
“ I think a fresh perspective on the different statuses that there are out there, because mine is a rare status that not many people know of. Going back to the whole college process, when I would apply to college, when I would tell them my status, it was never an option; it was either a citizen, a non-eligible citizen (which I am not), you are a permanent resident, etc. And I would need to send extra documentation to prove my status. Then I’d have to call, explain it to them, just the whole process goes south. Definitely educating the public of different types of statuses would have definitely made my college process much more easier.”
So you have been to the immigration court, and there is a lot of belief that the immigration court is corrupt (judges told to swear statues not entirely recognized in the US, lack of translators,etc.). Based on your experience, has it changed?
“ From what I remember (my mother and I had gone to a court in California), when we got to the court we had not planned on using a translator. But when we arrived, the court had provided us with one. There’s been people that have helped us along the way, that have connected us with people that we just don’t know about. But from what I remember, the judge was trying to get us out of the way so that we didn’t have to go through the process of asylum.”
Do you have a story about someone you care about who has been deported?
“ I had a family friend who passed away three years ago, and I was shocked to see that he couldn’t have been buried here because of his legal status, and he to be sent back to his country to be buried. And the thing is, you have to pay to have your body sent back, so the friend need to pay to get sent back to Guatemala to be buried.”
What is the thing you are proudest of and why?
“ I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished in regard to my education, being able to attend such an elite institution such as Princeton Day School. It has been a monumental part of my life, just like when people ask me, ‘Oh where do you go to,’ and I’m reply, ‘Princeton Day School’, they kind of straighten up and take me a little bit more seriously. Knowing that Princeton Day School has such a far reach and it’s known for its education. But I’m definitely proud of how my family has handled situations, we just try to overcome them and keep going.”
What are you hoping to accomplish in the future?
“ The number one thing I am trying to accomplish is the freedom I would get financially from my family, not just for the family that I will create, but the family that created me. Just give them what I was not given at an early age in my life. I hope to not have to deal that in the future with my family.”
What do you think will get in the way of those dreams?
“ I think it would be myself, just the overall mindset that I would have. I can’t just be like, ‘Oh I can’t do this because of my legal status’. I shouldn’t let that be my excuse; it should be me holding back from it. If I want something, it should be me looking into different paths to help me, and not let my immigration status be the number one excuse.”
What do you think may help your dreams come true?
“ I think it’s a little too late to fix my citizenship status. If I fixed it at an earlier age, it would have may today a lot more easier to handle. But I guess now that the college process is done, I don’t see fixing my citizenship status as a need anymore. “
“The people that I would meet would help me achieve my goal. It would be the connections that I make in college, the connections that I build upon in my future that would help me get me to branch off into different things in my life that would hopefully get me to someplace in life to achieve my goal.”
If someone you knew were planning on coming to this country, what would you tell them to expect?
“I would tell them that it’s such a hard time to do that now, like with me I barely made it through. If I would have came three or four years later I wouldn’t be in the same position as I am in right now. I would tell them to wait for things to die down (if things do die off). I would just tell them to hold off.”
“If they do come, I would try to help them reach out to different resources to help them get settled here, because the number one thing my mother and I had difficulty with was settling. It was like a two to three year process until we finally had a home, and for me to go to school. Overally, just to have a steady day.”
What do you wish more people knew about immigrants?
“The stories that everyone has to tell; everyone has a different story, but we all have the same dream. I want everybody to know every immigrant’s story and appreciate what they are doing for their lives. Trying to battle and every day for a better life.”
What is an important thing that people could do to make the process of coming to a new country better?
“ The number one thing would be to not hide. Just, not be intimated of the outdoors, and branch out to difference sources to help better their status.”
Are you happy here?
“Yeah, I’m pretty happy here. I am happy with the health, my family. Everyday I try not to think of the things that make me sad, and just overall be happy. We only have today to be happy.”
Would you go back?
“ I would definitely visit not live in Guatemala. I don’t see myself living in Guatemala. I’ve built my life here already, and for me to start over, there’s no point in it. My mom would love to go back and live in Guatemala again, just because she’s lived her entire life in Guatemala. She overall is not happy here, which is weird because it’s the opposite for me."
Anything you’d like to add?
“ I think you guys touched on everything. Thank you very much.”