Name left at border in search of new life

An American story began in 1993 at the border between the north and south. At the checkpoint between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, Calif., a father, a mother and a 1-year-old girl wrapped in a blanket and held close in her mother's arms, crossed into America and began a new chapter in their lives.

They crossed with a pretense of legitimacy. Passports and visas in hand, the family claimed they were taking a vacation to the United States. In reality, the names on those documents were left at the border. Over the next year the passports expired, but the "vacation" continued. Without names, without a home, without the ability to communicate their needs, the family followed the California roads further north to Southern Oregon.

Their life in America was now "illegal." And the little girl had no name.

It was her mother who talked her father into leaving their home in Ensenada, Mexico. Her mother wanted the girl to grow up in a place where hard work was rewarded and success seemed possible. A relative had told them that they had relatives to stay with and that work was easy to find in Medford.

But it was not easy. The language barrier proved to be much more difficult to cross than the border itself. Without English, the parents were limited to labor positions and those jobs were filled quickly by a growing influx of immigrants into the Rogue Valley from Mexico — and Russia, Thailand, China, The Philippines, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

A month passed with little hope. The mother finally found a job as a house maid. The work was sporadic and the pay marginal. But it did slow the financial hemorrhaging of the funds they had brought with them from Mexico.

After three more months, money began to wear increasingly thin and the little girl's parents began to reconsider their decisions. Perhaps America was not the bastion of hope that promised in the stories they had heard. Perhaps returning to Mexico would not be such a bad idea.

Her mother began to pray. She prayed that everything would work out in America. She desperately wanted her child to grow up with all the opportunities she never had. She wanted her little girl to go to school and to college. She wanted her to get a good job and grow up to be a good person. She wanted her to learn English and play sports and enjoy life. In Mexico, there was always a barrier. It was either a lack of school or a lack of skills or lack of jobs or lack of decent pay. In America, however, hard work could make up for such gaps in education.

The baby's mother had never received much schooling. It simply wasn't offered in the area of Mexico where she grew up. She eventually crossed the border and lived in a two-bedroom apartment with 12 roommates. She worked whatever jobs came her way — in the orchards, in restaurants, cleaning houses.

But her mother had returned to her family with a heavy heart. She fell in love, married and had a child. The future she had dreamed for herself in America did not fade. Instead it transferred to the small, brown-eyed baby girl, who she was struggling to care for in America.

The mother resolved to raise her daughter in an American system. Her father had found work in a restaurant and they were beginning to create a new life here. However, she still needed a name. The name that had been left at the border was not safe in school. It was not safe at the store, or the bank, or even the church. As she got a bit older they allowed her to pick a new name to live by. She chose "Crystal."

Crystal says she took this name because she liked that way it sounded: strong, positive and beautiful. She would need those characteristics to deal with the risks she was about to take as she entered kindergarten. There was only a handful of Mexican children at her school, and they all spoke English. Crystal didn't. It was 1995 and there were no English Second Language classes, no special curriculum and no teachers whom spoke fluent Spanish.

Crystal "stuck out" and this was another risk — for her family. Despite her age, she was still an illegal immigrant and she was putting herself in a situation that was very public. Immigration could find an "illegal" at work, at church, on the street. School was no different. Her parents decided that education was worth the risk, and the challenge.

While Crystal went to school, her parents worked all day. When she went home she stayed with her relatives while her parents worked most of the night. It was difficult to not see their child, but they say it was worth it to provide her a better life. Her father was promoted and her mother picked up more work. Money became less and less of an issue and the family began to settle into their new American life.

Meanwhile, Crystal sat in class quietly. The little girl with the long black hair sat in the front row of a classroom filled with 30 children and listened to her teacher talk all day in a language she didn't understand. This is when Crystal remembers worrying for the first time.

"I just didn't know what was going on," she says. "I would sit there all day and not know what the teacher was telling me."

Once every two weeks, a bilingual specialist came to the school and worked with Crystal. But it was too difficult to learn in one day the math, science and writing that the other children had learned in two weeks. She says it was mostly copy work as she had no building blocks in English and therefore had no idea what words she was looking at.

"The only time I learned English was when the other kids who spoke Spanish would teach me," Crystal says. "They had to explain what was going on is the classroom and what other people were saying. I learned simple words, but I only picked those up when I paid really good attention."

After three years of floating through school Crystal had a conceptual understanding of English, but she was still far from fluent.

"By the end of second grade I finally started to understand what people were saying," Crystal says. "But I still didn't talk much."

Crystal's second-grade teacher approached the family through a translator. She explained that Crystal would require summer school and private tutoring to have a chance of graduating from elementary school. So, the teacher tutored the girl privately for the entire summer. But after three months of work, the teacher returned to Crystal's mother with the conclusion that the girl would never graduate high school.

Crystal's mother wanted to tell this teacher that she didn't know what she was talking about. She wanted to tell the teacher that this was just a little girl, that she was shy, that she could do anything she wanted to do and that she was still learning. The problem was that Crystal's mother didn't speak English well enough to say it.

The problem was clear: This was an English speaking country and they didn't speak English. If they were going to live here, they were going to speak the language. Crystal and her parents began to speak English as best they could at home. They couldn't afford special classes so they spoke to bilingual friends, they read books and they had Crystal share what she had learned at school. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough.

By immersing themselves in the language, they began to feel more comfortable with it. Crystal began to speak English at home, and then at school and her grades slowly began to improve.

"When I started to understand English my world kind of shifted," Crystal says. "I wanted to learn so I went to school early and stayed later. I studied so that I would pass my classes. I wanted to go to college."

Crystal passed fifth grade. In sixth grade she got mostly C's and B's. In seventh grade she got B's and A's.

"Mostly A's," Crystal says. "My mom and dad expect those now."

With language no longer a problem, Crystal spent the summer playing on two soccer teams and training for cross country. On days she wasn't practicing, or didn't have a game, Crystal job-shadowed at a lawyer's office.

"That's really what I want to be — a lawyer," Crystal says. "I want to be an immigration lawyer and help those who need it. I want to help the people who can really do something in this country."

Crystal is involved in the immigrants rights movement as well. She says she understands both sides, and knows what is going on and why.

"I don't want to help people who break the law," Crystal says. "But for the people who come here and really try hard, I think that they should at least get a chance."

And now, with fall term underway at school, Crystal finds herself busy again. Five-thirty in the morning, just before dawn, she is up and getting ready. She takes a shower, brushes her teeth, reviews her homework and walks to the bus stop. From 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. she goes to school. Then she heads over to cross country practice until 5:30 which gives her half an hour before soccer practice starts. When she gets back home at 8 p.m. she eats dinner and spends the rest of her time before bed doing homework. This is eighth grade. Next year, in high school, Crystal plans to continue competing in multiple sports.

"I don't really get tired," she said

Even on Saturday when she ran her cross country race at 7 a.m., played in a soccer game at 9 a.m. and a played in a second soccer game at 11 a.m. she still came home and played soccer with her sister until it got too dark to see the ball.

"I want to play as many sports as I can," Crystal says. "As long as I can keep my grades up."

Her mother nods in approval. She has taught her well.

But perhaps the actions of Crystal's parents speak louder than words. Her father is now the manager of a restaurant and her mother is running her own business. Money is less of a worry now, but that is only one of the family's concerns.

They have stayed on the right side of the law and now have a lawyer working to help them become citizens. It can take years for the application to go through. Despite all the success this family attributes to America, it is still a very scary place for them.

Sometimes, her mother and father still wonder if they made the right decision. Breaking this one law is the only "bad thing" they have ever done.

But for Crystal, she wouldn't have it any other way.

"It makes me different," Crystal says. "It makes me who I am. And I like that."

And so, she works as hard as she can. She can't wait to go to college. She can't wait to become a lawyer so she can help others. She can't wait for the day she can visit Mexico without having to worry. But for now, above all else, she waits for the call from the lawyer that tells her she can take her name back from the border.