Election years suck, especially if you’re undocumented. Unable to vote, undocumented immigrants have to watch from the sidelines as millions of citizens decide who will shape immigration policy (and their lives) for the next four years. But voting isn’t the only way to participate politically, and for decades, undocumented immigrants have found ways to have their voices heard and serve their communities.
I moved out of the suburbs when I was 14, but I was curious as to how things have changed (or haven’t) for undocumented immigrants, especially in a post-Trump world. I spoke to three undocumented immigrants in the Chicago suburbs about their relationship to the suburbs, their thoughts on the election, and the political work they’ve done for their communities.
He slowly became politically engaged after high school when he noticed Obama’s handling of the Ferguson protests and the Flint water crisis. “It really changed my view of him,” he says. “I started feeling like the Democratic Party really wasn’t supporting vulnerable communities the way I thought we had.” Instead, he was drawn to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign because of its stance on ending the imperialism that Fernando saw as the root cause of immigration. Noncitizens can’t donate to political campaigns, so he focused on encouraging his friends who are citizens to donate. This year he was an official campaign volunteer, door-knocking with canvassers.
Fernando hopes to one day be a school principal so that he can have a say in moving around resources to address the community’s needs. Regardless of how he does it, providing support for his community is something Fernando sees himself doing for the rest of his life.
It wasn’t until he started as an undergrad at the University of Illinois in Chicago that he met an openly undocumented immigrant. “It was like a shifting experience for me,” he says. “This person talked about being undocumented in class. I want to do that, too. I want to feel brave enough to talk about it.”
In the future, Uribe-Rios wants to keep working in the nonprofit realm, but wants to draw on his organizing experience to do policy advocacy. “My first love has been policy,” he says. “I want to be able to understand and work with and advocate for policies that I researched and learned [in grad school that] are beneficial to our communities.”
