Hard road to citizenship in the United States

“Soccorro” crossed the border into the United States with the help of a gangster named “El Coyote” 31 years ago. She obtained her legal citizenship in 1998 under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. She now lives in Medford with her husband and four children.

From the sidewalk, Soccorro's home looks just like every other house in the neighborhood. There is a fence around the lawn. A big, new truck is parked in the driveway. Her husband is outside washing screens for the windows. But, when she opens the front door, her guests are transported from Medford and straight into the heart of a Mexican family.

It's dark inside. The truth about Soccorro's history has been kept locked up behind closed doors and out of the public light. Her family fears that some people may not understand or appreciate what she has gone through just to be able to live in the United States. For that reason, she has chosen not to use her last name or the names of family members in this story.

Everything is tidy and neatly arranged. The bathroom by the kitchen is painted pink. A little girl runs through the hallway and out into the back yard. The door slams behind her. Nobody else is inside. From a dim corner of the dining room comes a noise like the gentle ruffling of feathers. Soccorro lifts the cover over the cage and a dove peeks out from behind the bars. Its name is Bird.

The house is bigger than it first appeared; they converted the garage into a bedroom when their growing family needed the extra space. Soccorro and her husband have three daughters and one son. All of her children had the privilege, according to Soccorro, of being born in the United States. They had at birth what their parents struggled to achieve: U.S. citizenship.

Her story, though secretive, is shared with millions of other illegal immigrants. Soccorro was born and raised in Morelia, a little town west of Mexico City. Her family had a history of breaking the law to be able to live in the United States. When she was little, her father would tell her stories about the wonderful country north of the border. She grew up believing that the United States was a country where mommies and daddies went to work, and kids went to school, and families lived in big houses in nice neighborhoods. She knew that someday she would call the United States her home.

Her father made plans for his family to live the American dream. Soccorro was very young when he left. He went to Texas to get a job working in a market. But tragedy struck before their family could be reunited. He was trying to break up a fight when a stray bullet ended his plans and separated them forever. She lost the father who had inspired her dreams and his death was very hard for her to accept. All she could do was hold on to his stories. She took them with her when she left Mexico.

Soccorro's journey to the United States, and citizenship, began 31 years ago with a walk on the beach.

It was broad daylight and she wore a hat and sandals. She carried nothing except for the clothes on her back and dreams that made her bold enough to cross a border. She knew where she was going but had no idea how to get there.

A man called "El Coyote" walked ahead of her. She moved when he moved. She stopped when he stopped. She followed his instruction: Don't stare at the Americans. She hid her awe as the pair tried to blend into the crowd — a common gangster and a 16-year-old girl. Nobody noticed them.

It was less than 10 miles by road from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Ysidro, Calif. However, this journey lasted a grueling seven hours. They crossed the border at the beach and then traveled inland. The sand from the beach got under the straps of Soccorro's sandals and each step became more painful than the last. Her feet were swollen and bleeding by the time she arrived safely in America, the land her father had told her about. The land of her dreams.

From San Ysidro, Soccorro traveled with friends to Los Angeles. Then she moved on to Washington to be with relatives. She found work as a field laborer traveling between Seattle and Yakima.

In the fields, Soccorro mostly picked asparagus and earned 25 cents per bunch. She could start at one end of a row of asparagus and by the time she had picked down to the other end the plants had grown up again behind her.

In the heat of the day the perspiration beaded on her brow and trickled down her cheeks. Her fingers were numb from the task of cutting the crop. When her back felt like it would break from the strain of leaning over the rows, she gritted her teeth and focused on her goals. At that moment her goal was to just pick the next bunch, but each bunch brought her closer to the end of the row. And every row she picked brought her closer to earning a future in America.

"You feel bad about yourself when you work in the fields. You feel like nothing," she says. "Sometimes when I was working I was crying."

She worked through the tears, saving her money one dollar at a time.

Soccorro moved to Medford in 1988 when she was 28 years old. She met the man she would marry at a Mexican music concert at the Medford Armory. Both were illegal immigrants. They married a few months later in Soccorro's hometown of Morelia, where almost 1,000 people attended their wedding. Her family dug a huge barbecue pit and roasted an entire cow to feed all of the guests.

They had their first child, a girl, in 1990. Their son was born two years later.

Soccorro's journey took a new direction in 1993 when President Clinton took office. His administration focused on reforming the country's immigration system and eventually passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The law strengthened enforcement against illegal immigrants and increased criminal penalties for immigration-related offenses.

But it also allowed some illegal immigrants to become citizens. There were certain requirements: The immigrant had to have been in the country for at least 10 consecutive years, have good moral character, have not been convicted of a criminal offense, and have a spouse, parent, or child who was a U.S. citizen.

Until then, Soccorro had been avoiding the law by living in the shadows. When she realized she met the criteria for citizenship under the new legislation she applied. First she got a work visa and then she started studying for the citizenship test.

"I studied in my house all the time," she says. "When I was cooking I put the book by the stove."

She took her test in 1998 and only missed one question.

At a ceremony in Portland, Soccorro finished her paperwork, sang the national anthem with other new citizens, and cried when the judge handed her a flag. She cherishes what the judge said to her as they shook hands: "Welcome to the United States."

"I have my papers and it was easy," she says now. "Mr. Clinton helped a lot. He approved the amnesty."

Now Soccorro and her husband, who got his citizenship a few years after his wife, are both legal citizens. Years later, Socorro is proud of her steps. She is proud of the life she has made for herself in Medford. She has three jobs, and her husband works, too. They work hard to afford the house they are raising their kids in. Their four children go to school during the day. Soccorro cleans house and makes dinners, like carnitas with homemade tortillas and Mexican salads. They all come together for meals in the backyard on the patio that her husband built.

The Spanish news channel plays on a television in the background. The volume is low, but Soccorro turns it up whenever the news anchor talks about Mexico or immigrations issues. She is a U.S. citizen now, but she still cares about the life and country she left behind.

She visits Mexico often, usually making the trip by car, to keep in touch with her relatives. When she goes, she takes her passport, some money, and presents for her nieces and nephews. Soccorro keeps a stash of teddy bears, action figures, and back packs on a shelf above the TV. They will soon be packed up and taken to Mexico to be passed out to kids who dream of better things to come.