In Episode 2 of Talk Policy to Me, host Jasmine Jones speaks with immigrant rights activist and Goldman student  Jesús Guzmán about his personal story, the future of DACA, and the complexities of growing up in a mixed-status family.

Speakers featured in this episode

Jesús Guzmán is a second-year MPP candidate at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. While at GSPP, Jesús has served on the leadership teams for both the Labor Policy Group and the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative.

Jesús has also served as the program analyst for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Jesús is currently completing his advanced policy analysis with the Marin Economic Forum with a focus on the housing shortage and income inequality. Jesús’ policy interests include labor economics, equity in energy policy, and economic development.

Prior to attending graduate school, Jesús was the Program Director for the Graton Day Labor Center in Northern California where he developed innovative workforce training programs and advocated for inclusive immigrant and labor policies.

Jesús was born in Jalisco, México and grew up in Sonoma County where he now resides with his wife Stephanie and daughter Victoria.

Transcript

Jasmine Jones I'm Jasmine Jones, and this is Talk Policy to Me. Hey Jonathan, what's good with you?

Jonathan Stein How are you Jasmine, it's been a crazy week for me. But like a good kind of crazy.

Jasmine I totally understand. It's been a real crazy week for me as well with all these tests, but I'm here. And I recently had a chance to speak with Jesús Guzmán. He's a current student at the Goldman School and he shared with us his personal experience as an undocumented immigrant and the complexities of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Legislation. I was so moved by the story of his adolescence. We all struggle, granted as teenagers, but compound that with the fear of being deported at any moment.

Jonathan Or the fear that your parents could be deported any moment. What do you do if they're not there when you come home from school? Undocumented folks have to live with this anxiety and these contingency plans that we never have to think about in their heads every single day.

Jasmine He points out the problems with DACA framing immigrants as good or bad and the implications that has on mixed status families, given that he is from a mix that is family.

Jonathan Right. I work in a civil rights organization that works in immigrant communities and we work with undocumented youth. We don't use the word "dreamer" anymore because it paints some immigrants as the good immigrants, the sympathetic immigrants, the ones that everyone can get behind. But that creates an absence of empathy for all other undocumented folks. We have an undocumented young person who lives works in our office and he says, every time you call me a dreamer, you push my parents further down the pipeline to deportation.

Jasmine And Jesús has a personal connection to that. So let's hear his heartfelt experience with immigration.

 [Towards Jesús] Jesús, thanks for being here today.

Jesús Guzmán Thank you for having me.

Jasmine You were just a baby when you came here. What made your parents decide to come?

Jesús Guzmán I came to the U.S. from Mexico. I was one year old. So I was born in Mexico and came with my parents to California. I've been actually in Sonoma County here in the North Bay since the age of 1. I still currently live there. I'm 28 now so I've spent 27 years of my life. My dad came here to the U.S. first, saved up some money and then sent for my mom and me to come. So I came here with my mom a little after my first birthday here in the U.S. and yeah, it was really that vision of...There was very limited opportunities where we were living in Mexico and coming here was really going to afford us a chance to raise their children. My sister and myself, with opportunities for education and career opportunities that we might not have otherwise.

Jasmine So your parents came here for a better life, but this whole time you've been undocumented. How do you find out?

Jesús Guzmán I think I've always since I could remember known that there was something about my our family being in the U.S. that was sort of tentative, or that the immigration was always kind of part of that. So I remember very early on, experiences with law enforcement being ones that we were very cautious about, driving without a driver's license. My parents were always just very cautious and fearful of being pulled over and having the car impounded and that potentially leading to interactions with ICE too. And so that was a regular topic conversation around the dinner table, was talking about how some family member got pulled over right and this is what happened. So it tended to be interaction with law enforcement that tended to be the most real for us because that was kind of the conduit to, "hey, we don't actually have legal status to be in this country so what does that mean?" We don't tend to see ICE as often as much as we see police. And those two, for us, we saw people in uniform very very early as a reminder that we were undocumented and that there was something to fear, and that we might not be able to come home right.

Jasmine That sounds pretty scary. Right,  just interactions with police officers. I know in my organizing work that that was what we were fighting for right to make sure that police officers weren't in schools and harassing and criminalizing young folks. I can imagine how how much more scary that is if you have a situation like being undocumented. You mentioned a feeling of being different and understanding that you were different early on. And it wasn't until you were a junior in college, where you had the ability to get conscious and get plugged in to doing something, to change this reality. However, leading up to that point, what what was that feeling of being different? What did that feel like and how did it shape your identity of who you were?

Jesús Guzmán The first thing that I really struggled with was in my teenage years. Besides just being a teenager and all of the emotions that come with it, just the hormones changing and just all the peer pressure. There's just so much stuff happening that... One of the first things that I was experiencing at that time was, I was really resentful at my parents for having put me in a situation. I was really upset with them. First of all, I was upset with them as a teenager for a lot of things. But I saw the things that my friends were able to do, get a driver's license, they were preparing to take honors courses–and all this stuff too because the path to college was always part of their future. And it wasn't really for me. So in knowing that I was I couldn't do those things, it was really...The first people I got upset at were my parents. I mean, this is stuff that is hard years later to unpack. But I was also just very embarrassed about being Mexican at the time. Like somehow I put those things together, of being illegal and also being Mexican, and I was trying to distance myself from that. Try to have more white friends and try to just separate myself from what I thought was causing me harm in my life and things that were embarrassing. I also didn't want anybody to find out I was undocumented. That was just not something we talked about with people outside of our commnunity that we knew. Family, we all kind of knew right. Other folks that I trusted, that were part of my community, we talked about this. But anyone outside of that, we didn't talk about it because it put us at risk and it was also embarrassing. For me, it was embarrassing at that time. There's obviously been, over the years, a shift and a maturity that's come from that, but that was kind of where I was in my early teenage years. It was very problematic to have those feelings.

Jasmine I can imagine. I can definitely imagine. I resonate, that resonates a lot with me in me just growing up and understanding who I wasn't and who I am as an African-American woman. So a lot of what you just said definitely resonated with me. You mentioned, you have a sister. Your sister was born in the U.S. correct? What was that dynamic like? Where your mom and you and your father are all undocumented and your sister was here. What kind of dynamics did that create for you all?

Jesús Guzmán Yeah I think this is a dynamic that a lot of mixed-status families go through. I think my the conversations I've had with my sister over the years have been ones where she's felt really guilty about the fact that she's the only one that has the right to be in this country legally. She was born here and yet...and so she'll say things like  "I didn't earn this, I don't deserve this." And so, she's been also my number one partner-in-crime in the immigrant rights movement, pushing back against these policies that criminalize our families. In 2009, 2010 or organizing around the DREAM Act, or when we were organizing around car impounds, pushing back against the car impounds of folks that didn't have a driver's license. Back in those days, we still didn't have the laws that we have now in California which allowed people to drive legally with a license, so people's cars would get impounded. And so, she and I were right there together, pushing for local policies so that local police departments were impounding people's cars. She and I were right there together pushing for the California Dream Act in 2009, 10 or 11, years are a little bit fuzzy at this point. And so she was one of most ardent advocates out there because she knew, and I think she'd come to believe that she was born in this country and she had rights that she thought all of us should have and that she didn't think she should uniquely have. And yet, one, I'm glad that my sister doesn't have to go through this. I will be the first one to say... You know the fact that she has her papers, that's fantastic. And I think she's also wanted to see all of us have that as well. And so I think that was a testament to the inclusion that I think we're all trying to fight for.

Jasmine That's awesome. Sounds like his sister is amazing. I take my hat off to her, she sounds really awesome. And so we're talking about policy stuff, right? We were talking about DACA and, you know, it was released in September that they might end DACA. In your opinion, and just kind of like what you know, what's next for DACA, what do you think is going to happen next?

Jesús Guzmán It's hard to predict anything with the Trump presidency [laughter] or this Congress. But but here's some here's some possibilities that I see kind of before us. There's the possibility of a clean DREAM Act, which I think a lot of folks within the immigrant's rights movement and most Americans in this country would like to see. It's that the DREAM Act come before Congress and vote on it without any other sort of requirements like funding for the border wall or stepped-up enforcement. If there was just a clean DREAM Act that provided a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients...For a lot of us that have DACA, it's really difficult for us to accept some sort of a deal where we might possibly be throwing other folks under the bus. So if I'm able to get a pathway to citizenship, but that means that it comes at the cost of other folks, that's just gonna be a no-go. But there's also the reality that our elected officials might not actually listen to us and that, that's a really troubling fact. That for those of us that are being affected by this, by the by rescinding DACA and not actually asking DACA recipients, "is this a deal that we're willing to take?" That's that's a really troubling possibility we're confronted with right now, and then there's this third and fourth option. This third option is that there's a Republican proposal called the Succeed Act that's being put forward. It's a more conservative version of the DREAM Act that would restrict the would restrict a few things. The first thing it would do is it would extend the amount of time the folks have to be on this kind of conditional pathway to citizenship. So it would take much longer to become a citizen if the DACA recipient got on that pathway. It would restrict someone who got their citizenship and then was able to petition for family members. It would increase the amount of time that people that were eligible for it would have to be serving in the military or being college. In other words, there's just a lot of things that would trip people up along the pathway that just makes it much more difficult to benefit from it. And then, the fourth option is just that nothing gets done. In that, come March 2018, a lot of us just fall out of status, or our DACA expires. It's a rolling expiration for a lot of folks. But starting March, and thereafter, for those of us have two-year work permits, as they expire we can renew it and we're back to square one.

But I will say that even if that happens to be the case, a lot of us have survived over the years without DACA. You know we didn't DACA until 2012, so we were making it somehow before that. There's a level of resiliency and just survival that people have developed over the years. I have a lot of faith in the people that I've worked with over years, in the communities I've worked with, to continue to fight back and find ways and means to survive.

But at some point we're kind of tired of just surviving. We have to start going beyond just trying to make it to the next day and actually thriving and flourishing as a community. And so there are some possibilities in terms of a legislative fix. Some are really concerning, some are downright, really alarming. But there is also possibility that a clean Dream Act comes up, and that's a bizarre thing to say in a Trump presidency that that might actually happen. So I think all those options are possible. It's hard to predict what's probable at this point.

Jasmine Thank you. Thank you for sharing that and breaking that down for us. One of the things I want to  talk a little bit more about, and I think you alluded to it a little bit in in some of your answers already, but what I want you to explicitly have the conversation with me. In some of the conversations about DACA, people in different groups frame the discussion around "good immigrants" and "bad immigrants." What do you think about that framework?

And and I think you alluded to it. You're saying that we don't want to throw our community under the bus, how is that throwing out your community under the bus?

Jesús Guzmán I think the question that you're asking gets to the heart of the debate with with the DREAM Act and the DREAM Act being emblematic of the issue with this framing with the larger immigrant rights movement or with the larger gun rights debate I should say.

And that's because the kind of the original premise of the DREAM Act was saying "look we're going to carve out this particular group of very sympathetic young people." And I think at face value that's really compelling because, yeah, there's  these individuals that are undocumented but they came at a very young age and was at no fault of their own. And it's that framing that's really problematic is, the last part of that is, that they came at no fault of their own because that implicitly says that somebody is at fault here, right? And somebody did something wrong, so they need to be punished. And so, for me to hear the debate framed as, "well look Jesùs, you came at a young age. You did nothing wrong but your parents did. So we have to do something about that. We have to punish them." I mean,  that's my family. They're the ones who made the sacrifice to bring me here in the first place. So that for me is really troubling that both, there is a proposal to try to change my legal status so that I can stay in the country, but at the same time is also setting the groundwork to then criminalize my parents. And that, as an advocate, as a DACA recipient,as just a son...there is a lot wrong with that. [Pause] Yeah, okay. I'm okay. I'm OK.

So your question of how do we think about this good immigrant and bad immigrant is that the original seeds of it go back to that conversation in 2001 about the DREAM Act. It drove a wedge in a lot of ways between people within a single family. My parents will be the first ones to say, "hey look, mijo, you know  we want you to be here and we want you to be well. Don't worry about us," but that's been my parents our whole lives. That's been true for a lot of parents, they they made that sacrifice to put their lives on line and cross a border that's claimed the lives of many,  be here in this country, and yet, there's no way that, after seeing everything they've done for me, that I'm going to turn around and say "oh yeah, I'll take the DREAM Act and forget about my parents." Like, that's an absurd notion. So for a lot of us growing up in organizing and coming of age in the undocumented youth movement, a lot of us adopted this language early on because we saw it as an opportunity. We were also furthering the same narrative that then we're trying to undo years later saying, "OK, we're twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-eight now," that was really problematic language that was appealing at 17 because we didn't know much better. We're trying to make some progress but it's taking a step back at this point our lives. That's not good enough. And in fact, we have to go back and deconstruct and say that what was originally part of our movement early on was really toxic. And we have to exercise that and say really what we're looking for here is that all 11 million of us...we're looking at this often through our own families and saying that  if there's a clean Dream Act and it doesn't harm anybody else, then OK. We can have that conversation. But really, we're still pushing for what the larger goal is, which is that we're all immigrants. There's no bad or good immigrant here right. We're all human trying to make the most of what we've got. And that. Yeah, that's still our central goal here.

Jasmine We've talked a lot about the implications of DACA, where it is right now and what could possibly happen. You shared with us that the language that you felt was right when you were younger is clearly not what is needed right now. Things need to change. As you're thinking about all that, and as you're doing this work, and as you still engage, and as your family's engaged, do you regret at all signing up for DACA? Do you feel like that was a bad move? Share that.

Jesús Guzmán Yeah that's that's a really good question.

My first response is No.I don't regret having signed up for DACA. I think some of the reasons why I don't regret having signed up for DACA was that it was in and of itself not something that was gifted us by President Obama, but it was something that a lot of us had worked for. I suppose it was to some degree was one of the few victories that we've actually had. Especially these young people, we didn't have a lot of victories in our short lives, we didn't have a lot of victories in immigrants movement for a few years. So it meant a lot that we were able to to push for something and effectuate policy, and then we were able to benefit from it. That just doesn't happen enough. I'm so used to getting our butts kicked and going to state capitals or going to wherever to advocate for a certain policy. And more often than not, we're getting doors slammed in our faces and we're having to constantly push, push, push and agitate and try to to make change. We don't see enough victories and so that was one where, about a year or two earlier, we had here in California had pushed and won for the California Dream Act. And that was a huge for a lot of us, we said, "hey you know what? We can win something!" And then for a lot of folks not just in California but across the country, continuing to push for DACA and saying to President Obama, "hey, look, you came into office in 2008 saying that we were going to see some sort of immigration reform. We haven't seen that right, and you want to run for office again? Right. You continue to promise to the least the Latino electorate and others, right? You're promising you're going to see some sort of U.S. immigration reform, in the second term. But you said that in the first one and we didn't see anything. So we need to hold you accountable and, actually, you need to follow through on that." A lot of us were calling President Obama out saying things like, "you need to actually do what you said you were going to do you know especially if you want folks to come out and vote for you."

I think that was that was part of what was in the calculus for President Obama as well. I think he wanted to do this but there needed to be pressure from the ground, from people who are being affected by it and saying, "look there's a contradiction here and what you're saying and what you're doing. And so, seeing DACA implemented and then, for a lot of us, knowing that that was the fruits of our labor. We pushed for that. We're often the first ones that go signed up because there was other people that were really hesitant about it. On August 15th, 2012 when this was first rolled out, when the first applications  were opened, folks said, "do we trust the federal government with our information? Like they were just a few months ago threatening deport us and right now all of a sudden things have changed? Can we really trust these folks?"

And so for those of us that had been in the movement pushing for thism, we had to be the first ones to go and sign up and say, "yeah, I mean, this is something we fought for. We're going to get a work permit..." And so, we were often the first one to sign up and say, "yeah, we have to continue to lead and show that this is something we want and we'll continue to build on afterwards." I think the sentiment at that time was that this is just the beginning. We just won the California Dream Act, we got Daca, you know, we're moving forward and we're going to create more change. And next will be the dream act and then immigration reform or–something along those lines. So, the risk of the possibility that this information might be used against us, because DACA might be rescinded, was pretty small.

We we were looking the other way, that we're going to continue to grow and win more victories. But I mean, I would be lying if I said  that wasn't part of the thinking in the moment, but it was I think all those other factors were really compelling for us to say.

We need to go apply for DACA. And looking at it now, right, in hindsight, OK, Trump won. Wow, that happened [chuckles]. From 2012 to now, it's very very different circumstances. But I think one thing that we've seen as a lesson learned from the ACA fight this year,has been that it's pretty dang hard to try to take benefits away from people once you've given them. Given them to two people.  So to try to take someone's Medicaid away,  you're going to have to fight them  really hard to do that. If you try to take people's social security away, you're going to have to fight them and the AARP really hard. It's going to be tough to take benefits away. That's why legislators try to fight it from the beginning and not afterwards because you can't do it. I think that some of that same principle applies to DACA. It's the fact that these benefits have been given to a lot of us that's going to make it really  hard to actually take them away. And even though Dark has been rescinded, I'm seeing legislators that didn't want to talk about this but they are now having to come to the forefront and even support some version of the DREAM Act.

It might be really problematic which DREAM Act gets through or if something gets through, but I think it's part of the political principle that you can't take benefits away. There's just too much of a backlash from folks. And so, again, I don't regret it because I don't think all the cards have been played yet. I think there's still a lot happening that's very fluid right now these next few months and as much as immigrant youth can continue to increase their voices and organize and push. I think the better off that all of us will be.

Jasmine Thank you Jesús and I'll ask you this last question. There's a lot going on, right? There is so much uncertainty, we don't know what the future holds. We just know that there's power in organizing. We know there is power in bringing people together and speaking truth to power. But with all this uncertainty and all this turmoil in–I'm not even going to go into the administration–how do you stay hopeful? What is it that brings you joy? How do you get through each day?

Jesús Guzmán I mean the first part, my daughter. First and foremost, she's the joy of my life. And she's the best thing that ever happened to me. And so I'm grateful that I get to be her dad. That's the coolest thing that I get to say every day that I wake up. For a lot of us, I think the thing that continues to push us... I mean, one, we have to. We have to do something. The status quo just isn't good enough. So we're forced to continue to do something even if we're not terribly hopeful.

We have to be in motion, we have to continue to use the energy that we have to put it in the right places that we think will create some change. I think we have enough in our history to say two things. One, like we've had some victories in the past. Even though we haven't had as many wins as we've had losses, we've had enough wins to say that we need to to continue pushing because it's possible to create some change. It's crazy that we're saying that under Trump. And even if there isn't a DREAM Act that gets through,  there's a lot of stuff and lot of places that we continue push on a state level. It is to some extent a privilege to live in California versus some other states where its far more punitive against immigrants. But if you're in California or whichever state you're at, local state county government, different levels of government, there's ways to continue to push for some change. And so there's hope, there's always hope there.

At least I like to think that in most cases you can effect change at a lot of different levels and try to improve people's lives to some extent. Get involved with an organization, donate some money, there's a lot of different things we can do. But you know,  I'm 28 now. I've been here 27 years of my life, I'm still here.

Fortunately, I'm still here. So I have to continue to push one way or another, so that gives me hope. And until that changes, I have to continue to push and remain hopeful. Last thing I'll say is,  to quote Colonel West, "I am not a prisoner, I am not optimistic, but I'm a prisoner of hope," and I just have to say hopeful that  things will change and hopefully trying to be a part of whatever is happening.

Jasmine Well, I love ending on that note, and so I really, really appreciate all of your time today Jesús. Thank you for coming on to Talk Policy to Me.

Jesús Guzmán Thank you for having me.

Jasmine Talk Policy to Me is a production of the UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans. For show notes, visit us at talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode and by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Talk Policy to Me's executive producers are Bore Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. Alyssa John Perry is our producer and engineer, I'm Jasmine Jones with Jonathan Stein.