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Immigration Kids
Listen to this
poem!
By Daniel Cacho
1981
A baby boy was born in tiny Caribbean town in Belize called Dangriga.
He spent the first three years of his life playing hide and seek in the neighborhood
cemetery. Like many other immigration kids, he had no idea what was about to
happen
1984
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, his mother disappeared. The kid was
left to make sense of the same poverty ridden life his mom left to escape. Abandonment
and abuse was a daily routine.
1995
Just when the kid entered teen-hood
he received a one way plane ticket to the U-S of A.
It was a bitter sweet mother-son reunion. For the first year he called his mom
“miss and mam.” He didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t give any answers. Between
the pressures of adolescence, finding new friends and the strain of chasing
a lost childhood, immigration status was the least of his worries. But time
slowly cracked the screaming silence in the house like an eggshell. Tears fell.
1998
A masochistic fear turned pain turned anger. Lifestyle inevitably catches up.
He was stuck in a stank holding tank. Thinking. Blinking. Back to the day he
decided that a gun provided the safety and security he sought.
“ID # & Social Security card please.”
Confused, the immigration kid finds himself in the Inglewood courthouse, confronted
by the public defender, face to face with deportation or jail time.
By the time he got out of jail, he was 18, and in the country too long to be
eligible for a visa. Why didn’t you do it the right way? was what he really
wanted to say to his mom. But feeling so grateful for having escaped Dangriga,
the kid couldn’t confront her, and what good would it have done any way? Couple
years passed, and he was stepping into adulthood. Could he go to college, and
get a job? Suddenly, he stood facing a wall he never knew was there, and it
was way too tall to climb. The boy eventually found an under-the-table-job.
Little pay, lotta taxes.
2002
The kid had a kid. Premature, born before due. More bills to pay and by the
way, rent is due. This is a bad situation, but worse for who?
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