2 of 2: Undocumented Identity, or, Sketch from Memory of an Illegal Alien
Part II: You are not Undocumented. You were never Unafraid.
For Azul Uribe.
“Exiles look at non-exiles with resentment. They belong in their surroundings, you feel, whereas an exile is always out of place. What is it like to be born in a place, to stay and live there, to know that you are of it, more or less forever? — Edward Saïd
Our bodies are tired. Our spirits are translucent. We move through the space we occupy with all the trepidation of a soul seeking to escape from purgatory. Others glance at us, we think they might be able to tell our secret. The nameless secret. We don’t know what to call ourselves besides the name they have chosen, a name which feels like a strike across the face every time. When we attend an immigration clinic looking for a miracle and when they ask us what we are, we stumble with our words and in hushed tones say, “I don’t know, illegal, I guess”. We see others like us waiting their turn to see a lawyer or to fill out an application. There may be a speech or a presentation about the movement or the organization putting on the clinic. We begin to learn our name. We begin to learn that we are not experiencing the consequences of our crossings alone, but that we can fight or that there are those fighting on our behalf. By contrast, those isolated by geography and other factors remain nameless. Their secret must be held tighter than they hold their children because everything depends on the gothic cathedrals of lies they have told and tell to keep suspicion, if not away then at bay. Sociological factors determine who learns they are Undocumented, who is still Illegal. Sheer luck decides who become Dreamers and individual moral fortitude decides who rejects or embraces each term. But, floating above all the monarch butterflies pudding on pools of blood are the nameless. They are who I weep for.
In the first part of this essay I sketched from memory my experiences of illegality on the somatic level and recalled those of other illegalized peoples who shared them with me with the intention of setting the ground to ask an important question. Avoiding in this essay, out of necessity, the centuries-long debates about the nature and existence of a personal identity and social identity, in the context of the illegal and after decades of activism and media campaigns, I ask: Is there an undocumented/illegal identity? Without intent to argue against the uniqueness of personal experiences, the legal and social transformation of a person, one who had an identity established and sustained through their life, into an illegal migrant or simply an illegal, creates the scenario for shared experiences that shape self-image. It is undoubtable that illegal alien or undocumented exist as exogenous categories applied by media, politicians and society to people who may or may not self-identify in that way? But, is it a self-identity? Can the consequences of an immigration status be molded into a distinct identity and become part of a person in the way, say, nationality does? Can I feel Undocumented in the same way I feel Mexican, or Queer, or the other constituent identities that cohere into what I describe as my self? Why would I want to? Who wants me to?
We immediately are confronted by the question with what it means to be illegalized. We can say roughly that the illegalized are those whom through means of their migration status are targeted for discrimination, invisibility, marginalization, capture, torture, deportation and the gamut of violence that the State gives itself the permission to inflict upon them. The illegalized become illegal in various ways: entering without approval from the government (crossing the border), overstaying a visa, or violating the terms of the visa they were granted (I am not a lawyer, there may be more ways). From this starting definition, we already see divisions emerge: those who overstay face a civil matter while those who enter illegally are considered criminal aliens. In the case of those who reenter after deportation, they may and frequently do face felony charges with long prison sentences. The stakes are different for the illegalized depending on how they managed to first set foot in America. These differences extend to options for legalization as well, as those who overstayed visas have pathways to regularize their status that those who crossed borders may not. We are all illegalized if we are deemed to be illegal aliens, but we do not face identical legal realities.
But, thornier questions emerge. Who were we before our migration? Our class, racial, ethnic, gender, sexual and linguistic background, etc. sets the stage for the experience of being illegalized, as do the conditions we lived in and the events which displaced us. Those ethnic minorities illegalized after fleeing armed conflict arguably will experience illegality in America in a different sense than those middle class urbanites who flee after currency crashes. Our illegality seemingly flattens this, but residues of our former selves remain. It’s a common complaint among illegalized Mexicans that they’ve been reduced or demoted from the social status they once enjoyed in their home country, especially if they have degrees or owned businesses, and for them to take this out on their fellow illegalized coworkers. Horizontal discrimination and abuse happens within same-ethnic communities of illegalized migrants more commonly than it should. Even as we experience the same, denigrations, abuses, denial of basic services and healthcare, the potential kidnapping by immigration officers, unbearable allostatic loads and nostalgia that can make us physically ill, our slightest differences work against our potential solidarity and coherence. As an aside, in the movement, it also leads to the dynamic of those most well-positioned in their home countries becoming leaders in the organizations for migrant rights.
It seems that we share somatization of our status, that we are equally frozen in the same Migrant’s Time, that we claim to share similar political visions, but we are so fractured by other experiences that the idea of a unified illegalized people or undocumented immigrants seems like a fabrication of the media, of politicians and government attorneys whose job it is to deport us. That we have collectively undertaken a project, such as initiatives like Drop the I Word or the work of organizations like United We Dream, to rename and reclaim this agglomeration to advocate and mobilize is another matter.
I argue decades of this advocacy have created an Undocumented identity predicated on activism, organizing and especially the act of confessing one’s status as paramount. The act of confession transforms the illegalized migrant’s from possessing a stigmatized, passive spoiled identity into an undocumented migrant who has the appearance of agency and even pride. But, this is unstable, ill-defined and constantly threatening to collapse under the weight of its own unanswered questions. It would be simple to resolve this by categorizing illegality as a technical term applied to a subset of migrants that is resolvable via a change of status or removal; simply put, to see illegality as only its legal meaning and eschewing its other dimensions. But, the enormous amount of labor that has been undertaken to create a acceptance and self-acceptance, develop a universal terminology, to build organizations, to create visual and literary culture, to gain political power, etc., around an Undocumented identity, makes it irresponsible of us to not insist on seeing if there is not something beyond being illegalized and seeing one’s self as illegalized than that immigration status. Some of us are fortunate enough to learn that we are Undocumented, a euphemism I detest, but do we embrace this as a core part of our identity or is it a condition in our lives we can end at any moment if we choose to or if the law changes? I argue it is of course, both. But, the extent to which undocumented can be a personal identifier is limited by external events, personal and often national. I argue, Undocumented is a para-identity, a necessary answer to the question of “What am I, who am I that is caught between the law and the abyss.” It is an attempt to deflect stigma or reclaim it by constructing an identity to build mass identification in the service of a mass movement. But, because it must stretch so thin to include so many, it feels inauthentic and without gravitas. Dreamer, despite its evisceration in activist circles, is another such necessary evil because it fulfills this role for young students who have been selected by their K-12 systems to obtain higher education. But, do we come to understand ourselves as Undocumented and see ourselves in this way? I return to this question again and again. Am I Undocumented in the same way I am a Homosexual, or is being Undocumented like my having HIV—a permanent, irrevocable part of my person or something I acquired, a malady I attend to and which will take a miracle to cure?
Beginning with two basic, but essential questions to understand the extent to which Undocumented is its own identity and ones which I find difficult to answer confidently is: Can one still identify as an illegalized migrant or undocumented once one’s immigration status changes? Are the deported still identified or can they identify as illegalized migrants or undocumented? I’m not so certain. The experiences of being illegalized and suffering through what can be terrifying experiences leave psychological imprints; this is undeniable. The years spent hiding an aspect of your life with tremendous consequences leave scars. The ties and new ways of seeing the world acquired by participating in advocacy or even merely witnessing it change the illegalized person and their way of being in the world. If at one moment someone identifies as illegalized or undocumented, but then regularizes their status via marriage or other means, is their identity transformed instantaneously through the magic of USCIS approval or does it endure like a surgical scar? In other words, is it potentially transient or permanent? At the other extreme, if someone is deported after being caught driving under the influence, from the room they rent in Guatemala, can they still identify as Undocumented? Is the identity only contained within the legal realm, or is it also territorially bound? I am reminded of the slogan used by radical organizers, “With or without their papers, we will always be illegal.” They seemed to suggest illegality is a permanent identity, an irreversible, unforgettable, perhaps unforgivable experience. The stigma, the denial of rights, services and dignity, the distance from “home,” all this and more constitutes the Illegal or the Undocumented as an enduring identity from the perspective of those organizers in that moment. Shared trauma, indignation, suffering, and fear–this is the substrate of the Undocumented identity upon which so much else has been built and that non-profits and others use as raw material.
If this is the case, and I believe it is, then Undocumented or Illegalized Migrant can be a potent and enduring identity that can even remain with a person after they have crossed geographic or legal borders. However, the degree of identification, the specific way in which it is interpreted as either a legal status or as a group identification and whether it is public or intimate vary strongly from person to person based on their unique life circumstances. This suggests to me that it is also an ill-defined, misused, and, as I mentioned before, externally developed identity in flux that struggles to fully encapsulate what it means to live as an illegalized migrant in the United States. To identify as Undocumented is an attempt to give these experiences meaning, but in truth, it is simply reiterating what one is called by the law and the nativists in the language of foundation board rooms.
Undocumented is thus an identity which refers to our legal status, but which more importantly describes our relationship to hegemonic American culture and our place within it.
For others with whom I’ve spoken with, the time in their life where they were Undocumented is simply a short moment that once resolved no longer carried meaning. As I mentioned, the route we take to become illegalized and the persons we were before in our homes affects our experiences in America and it seems to shape the extent to which we claim Undocumented as an identity or reach for its synonyms to describe our experiences in a unified way. This would suggest that the adoption of Undocumented as an identity is uneven, more likely among those with access to activist organizations, college campuses and friendly media outlets than those in rural communities or otherwise isolated. Undocumented is thus an identity which refers to our legal status, but which more importantly describes our relationship to hegemonic American culture and our place within it.
I arrive at the idea that Undocumented has become an identity through sheer force of university and 501(c)3 money, but that it is redundant and burdened by questions of authenticity and universality. Most importantly it is stuck on its sandbar because there is no consensus as to whether it describes a legal status and/or a specific ontology with a distinct phenomenology and that there are too few scholars with an interest in answering this question. Is there a definitive history of the term? Is there documented dialogue or debate about the adoption of the term as a self-identifier? Who chose this for us? And why this word specifically? I am pessimistic regarding whether we can resolve these questions.
From México, after having self-deported four years ago, I still feel like an illegalized migrant. It is a part of my identity and my time in the movement is part of my life’s story. In that sense, I cannot say that what I experience was merely a failure to obtain status, but rather an experience over time and through space that marked me forever.
What happened to us is not a clerical error.
However, I am not Undocumented. What happened to me and so many others is not a lack of documents. On the contrary, the United States produces immense amounts of documentation about us throughout our lives. What happened to us is not a clerical error. While Undocumented is semi-solid and widely adopted, it’s odious and infuriating for its literal meaning. You are not Undocumented. You are a displaced person being denied rights and marginalized for having the audacity to survive the world we have inherited. Perhaps no one word can encapsulate that, perhaps attempting to identify through this experience is building a fort on quicksand, but our shared experiences cannot be denied. As a citizen now, in my own country, I can say: with or without their papers, I will always be illegal.
All this having been said, in the pit of my stomach I suspect Undocumented will not endure much longer as an identity, but will reveal itself as a Faustian pact. Already the Federal government uses the term as it deports “undocumented noncitizens” to countries where they are killed.
Congratulations Directors, Media Personalities, Deans and Elected Officials on your excellent advocacy to ensure we forget the I-word and instead learn to be missing pages in unfiled forms.
Works Consulted:
Bauböck, Rainer. “Citizenship and Migration – Concepts and Controversies.” Essay. In Migration and Citizenship: Legal Status, Rights and Political Participation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007.
Clarke, John, Kathleen Coll, Evelina Dagnino, and Catherine Neveu. Disputing Citizenship. Bristol: Policy Press, 2014.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. S.l.: Penguin Books, 1990.
Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Swann, William B., Jolanda Jetten, Ángel Gómez, Harvey Whitehouse, and Brock Bastian. “When Group Membership Gets Personal: A Theory of Identity Fusion.” Psychological Review 119, no. 3 (2012): 441–56. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028589.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.