"Everyone or No One": My Family's Journey, My Journey, By Diana Sanchez

I was born in Puebla, Mexico in 1998. Let’s go back a few years to how my family came to the U.S. My mother and father first met when they were just kids. They were actually neighbors who later on started dating when they got older. At age 16, my mother had my older sister, their lives changed completely. My mother moved in with my father's family and dropped out of school and my father no longer continued to pursue his career. In 1995, my second older sister was born. My father became financially unstable and he decided to go to the U.S because everyone said it was a better country to get a job. He endured some of the toughest situations while trying to come to the U.S. My father finally arrived in the USA for the very first time in 1996. Originally he planned to be living in the Midwest since he had a set employment there but the coyote (men or women who smuggle people into the U.S.) didn’t want to take him anywhere anymore. So another one of the men who was along with him offered him a place to stay and a secured job in Hillsboro, Oregon.

He didn’t last working for long in the U.S, he started missing his family and he came back to see my mother and my sisters. In 1997, my brother was born and again my father left to work again. By the time I was born in 1998, my parents decided to move to the U.S. for a couple of years just to make money to build a home in Mexico, except my father’s plan was to only bring me and my older brother, but my mom didn’t allow it, she said it was everyone or no one. When I arrived for the first time, I was only two months old and my siblings and parents endured again hard moments. The coyotes wouldn’t feed them, my sisters’ clothes ripped, they stole my mother’s bag which had all of the baby necessities.

Ever since 1998, we have never left this country, but we have all our family in Mexico. I have only had the pleasure to meet three uncles, two from my father’s side and one from my mother’s side. So it’s always just been me and my family. As an immigrant child, I have always wanted to compensate my parents for bringing us to the U.S to have a better life and education. They haven’t been able to see their parents for 22 years and they continue to stay here for us.

Except as a child I didn’t realize the difficulty it was going to be to continue my education and goals in life. In 2012, Obama changed the lives of many children like myself to obtain a work employment authorization card. I didn’t understand how this could possibly help us, but then the following year my oldest sister was going to graduate from high school. She wanted to be a pediatrician, and in order to do so you had to be a citizen and it hit me that I would have to work twice as hard to obtain my goals and dreams. Senior year came around for me, I struggled to sign up for scholarships that accepted DACA recipients. I wasn’t eligible for FASFA which continues to be a challenge in my life, I was only eligible for state aid, but when I was a senior it was the first time it became available to DACA students. So I wasn’t sure what to fill out and as much as my parents wanted to help they couldn’t because of the language barrier and without an understanding of how college really works. My siblings had begun college, but a lot had changed since they graduated so they couldn’t even help me either. I had been a part of this great program that helped me so much and to apply for schools, scholarships, and even my financial aid. Through all their help, I obtained to have my four years of undergrad paid for and further scholarships that paid for other parts of my education.

I just graduated in the Spring of 2021 in Public Health and minored in Criminal Justice/Criminology. I am now getting ready to begin my journey at the University of Washington for my Master’s degree in Public Policy & Governance. As an immigrant and a child of immigrant parents who came to the U.S with nothing, I can say anything is possible as long as you push forward to get where you want to be.