Last week, Bloomberg ran a story about Julissa Arce, who became a vice-president at Goldman Sachs in 2011 at the age of 28, after having spent most of her life in the US as an undocumented immigrant. At age 11, her and her family moved from Mexico to San Antonio, Texas. She went on to become a top-student at her school and was allowed to attend college after the law stopped requiring educational institutions from asserting the legal status of their students. She majored in finance and joined Goldman Sachs after a summer internship in 2004:
Arce hadn’t seen many Hispanic men wearing business suits before joining the club, and she still does a Hollywood swoon when she describes them. Meetings with successful women were just as important. “I could be ambitious and go-getter without seeming greedy and aggressive,” she says. “There are all these amazing jobs, and there’s all this money to be made.” When the group handed out awards one April, it named her its Future Millionaire.
Arce’s story is strikingly similar to that of Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pullitzer-winning journalist who was born in the Philippines and was sent by his mother to live in the Bay Area at the age of 12. In 2011, he publicly came out as undocumented in an incredibly moving piece published in the New-York Times. Just like Arce, Vargas thrived in school and his writing landed him a job at the Washington Post – they both shared the idea that hard work would bring them recognition or wealth and ultimately earn them the right to remain in the country they called home. And just like Arce, Vargas’ story is that of a heartbreaking rupture. Lacking the paperwork to cross the border means they cannot visit their relatives:
It’s been almost 18 years since I’ve seen my mother. Early on, I was mad at her for putting me in this position, and then mad at myself for being angry and ungrateful. By the time I got to college, we rarely spoke by phone. It became too painful; after a while it was easier to just send money to help support her and my two half-siblings. My sister, almost 2 years old when I left, is almost 20 now. I’ve never met my 14-year-old brother. I would love to see them.
Though unlike Arce, Vargas’ path to permanent residency was once obstructed by the fact that he is gay:
Lolo kicked me out of the house for a few weeks. Though we eventually reconciled, I had disappointed him on two fronts. First, as a Catholic, he considered homosexuality a sin and was embarrassed about having “ang apo na bakla” (“a grandson who is gay”). Even worse, I was making matters more difficult for myself, he said. I needed to marry an American woman in order to gain a green card.
Ironically enough, Arce is quoted saying she once considered marrying a gay US citizen as a mean to obtain residency. As of today, Vargas is still in a legal no man’s land – no one being quite able to determine whether he is entitled to stay in the US. Two powerful demonstrations of how the immigration system is broken and senseless.