Brenda II

Interviewer: Maybe you could start by telling me how you ended up going to the US, how old you were, what the motivation was, what your first impressions were, something like that.

Brenda: Sure. My dad left for the US when I was about two years old. He was there for about half a year, a year, before my mom, my brother and I went to join him. I was three when we went over there. So I was very little. I just remember he would call, and he would say like, “Are you going to be good? You sure you guys want to come over there?” Because my mom still wasn’t very sure if she wanted to move over there.

Brenda: I loved my dad so I was like, “Yes, I will.” It’s like, “You have to learn English and you have to do all this stuff.” I’d be like, “Yeah, of course I will learn it.” So, I would go all around the house speaking mumbo jumbo—no one understood—thinking it was English. I was like, “I’m practicing my English for when I get there with my dad.” So, me being like, “Mom, you have to go, we have to go!” Ended up with my mom being like, “All right let’s go.”

Brenda: We crossed the border and I don’t remember feeling any shock or anything. I remember getting there and I think my mom had gotten behind at some crossing. So, we got there a little bit before her and my dad took us grocery shopping. I remember my brother and I being like, “Oh we eat all of these cereals” and they were brand names cereals and my mom would never buy us multiple cereals.

Brenda: He was like, “Okay, are you guys serious?” Like, “Yes, we eat all of those.” “All of those?” “She buys us five cereals every time we go to the grocery store so you can buy those as well.” It was like, “All right.” So, I just remember being like, “Oh my gosh, this is so nice.” Everything was, it seemed at least I think in my head, cleaner and I was with my dad and we were all together. So, I was just really happy when we got over there.

Interviewer: Where did you settle?

Brenda: When we first got there, we lived in California for about a year, year-and-a-half. Then we moved to Arkansas when I was about four, five—I was in preschool, kindergarten, everything there. I was about to start middle school, we moved to Oklahoma and I finished out the rest of my school there.

Interviewer: So why all the moves?

Brenda: I guess he was trying to find better job opportunities. That’s why he went to California because he had an uncle that was there already. Then at some point, he moved towards that zone and I think he was just looking for a better job, better things. He had been doing, I think, construction for a while and when he moved to Arkansas, he started working at restaurants as a cook and as a dishwasher and he liked it a lot. Once I was in middle school, they decided they wanted to start their own restaurant. That’s why we moved to Oklahoma, because there was a lot of competition in that area in Arkansas. We moved about an hour away and we were in Oklahoma and they started a restaurant and that was the main reason.

Interviewer: In which town?

Brenda: It’s called Tahlequah. It’s a very small town in Oklahoma.

Interviewer: Did that work out, the restaurant?

Brenda: Yes, for sure.

Interviewer: Was it a Mexican restaurant?

Brenda: Yes. Tex Mexican restaurant.

Interviewer: Did your mom work during this time too?

Brenda: Yes, she went back to work when I was about ten or so. Before that, she would sometimes make meals and sell them to mechanic shops or garage shops, anything nearby. A lot of men that didn’t have homes or whatever. So, she would make a lot of food and go sell everywhere. So as long as I’ve been aware, she’s always been working and she went back to work officially when I was about ten, she started working at the same restaurant as my dad as a waitress.

Interviewer: You said you came with your brother?

Brenda: Yes.

Interviewer: How old is he?

Brenda: Yes, my brother is twenty-four. He’s twenty-four right now.

Interviewer: So, he’s older or younger?

Brenda: Younger.

Interviewer: He’s younger?

Brenda: Yes.

Interviewer: So, what was family life like for you guys once you get to the US?

Brenda: I felt it was good. I know when we’re pretty young, up until a certain point, we did struggle financially a lot. Sometimes we lived with multiple families or a lot of our family that were coming over from Mexico. So little by little—I think I shared a room with my brother until I was ten or twelve until we finally were able to get separated into our own rooms. But overall, I just remember always being with my parents and always feeling very, I guess happy they were together, and everybody was there. There was always a lot of people everywhere.

Interviewer: What about school? Is that where you learned English?

Brenda: Yes, as soon as I got into school, I remember I took preschool twice because I started at three years old and the next year I still wasn’t old enough. So, I did it again. I remember the first year and not understanding a lot when I first got there. Then I recall the second year when I first started preschool being like, “Oh my gosh, I understand everything. I know what they’re saying, okay!” And just being really happy that I was understanding because I had promised my dad I was going to learn English when I got there.

Interviewer: How did you like school?

Brenda: I loved it. I was always happy going to school anywhere that we went, and I always did well grades-wise and I always did a lot of extracurricular activities.

Interviewer: What were your favorites?

Brenda: I did theater—I love theater—and I did marching band and choir. So those three, I did all through high school and some middle school and I loved those a lot.

Interviewer: Which instruments did you play?

Brenda: Clarinet.

Interviewer: So, you had the ideal American childhood and education?

Brenda: Yes, as much as I could.

Interviewer: Was it hard to move around?

Brenda: Yes, my parents did drive. Move around like state-wise or?

Interviewer: Yes, like when you started in California and then you went to Arkansas.

Brenda: I think I was always just like, “Well that’s what my parents say what we’re doing, so that’s what we’re going to do” [Chuckles]. In Arkansas, we moved around a lot because it was a big city. So, you moved over a couple of blocks and you ended up in a completely different kindergarten. It would usually happen with like, “Okay, we’re living with this family. We’re not having good boundaries, whatever. We’re going to switch or we’re having an uncle come over, we’re going to go somewhere with another room maybe so they can be in their own separate room.” So, we would move a lot in the city.

Brenda: I remember there was one time where I was like, “Oh, I go to a different school now I take two buses to get to school.” They were like, “No, you don’t. That’s the same bus but it’s one way and then one way back.” I was like, “You guys, no, I go to a different school now.” They’re like, “Brenda that’s not true.” They were explaining and it wasn’t till months later when they realized I had switched schools during one of the moves. I was taking one bus to one school and—

Interviewer: They didn’t know?

Brenda: They hadn’t realized that all. I’m sure they signed the paperwork, I’m sure they signed whatever needed to be done. I’m sure they signed the bus—

Interviewer: Did you finally say, “Okay, they don’t know?”

Brenda: I was like, “All right they don’t understand. That’s fine. [Laughs]. I’m going to another first grade, it’s okay.” Little things like that would happen, but I always made friends very easily. So, I would be like, “I miss these friends” but I would start—

Interviewer: Making friends.

Brenda: —making right away.

Interviewer: We’ve talked to a lot of young women who come over to the States from Mexico and for whatever reason they end up getting pregnant when they’re like fourteen or fifteen. So why do you think that is and why do you think you didn’t? Well, I don’t know if you didn’t, because I didn’t ask you but—

Brenda: No, I didn’t. I don’t know, I think it happens here too, up to a point. It can be like a cultural thing. I have discussed it with my friends and sometimes it’s like, “Oh, you’re not leaving the house until you’re with somebody and with a man and with whatever.” So, sometimes there is a lot of cultural influence all around—and ignorance on sexual health and taking care of oneself and contraceptive methods. Here it’s just like, “Oh no. If you pray, you’re not going to get pregnant and etc. That’s not true and it also it’s like, “Oh, once you get pregnant, I guess now you can leave, now you’re a woman and that you can do all these things.”

Brenda: My parents got together when they were pretty young, not that young, but pretty young. My mom was like eighteen, nineteen. My dad was nineteen, twenty, and so my dad always instilled like a lot of fear like, “You better never get pregnant, you better not whatever.” There was never any discussion of like what I was supposed to do to avoid getting pregnant, but it was just in my head. It’s always been like, “All right my parents said not to do that so I’m not going to do it.” But I think sometimes it’s just that it’s like, “what else are you going to do,” or “how else do you progress into being a woman” unfortunately like other than with a child or with a partner even though it’s by mistake.

Interviewer: How about your brother? How did he do?

Brenda: He did well. My brother has autism, he’s on the autism spectrum. So, when we went to California, about a half a year in he got diagnosed because he hadn’t started talking and he wasn’t really very communicative with us. Then we moved to Arkansas. We made sure he always got into a lot of programs and got a lot of help, as much as he could. He always went through all special Ed. throughout school and he seemed to enjoy it. He seemed to like it a lot. They did a lot of activities I think otherwise he wouldn’t have done. Throughout high school he started getting more grumpy and like more hormonal and sometimes he wouldn’t want to join in with stuff, but overall he enjoyed it a lot.

Interviewer: Is he still in the US or is he back?

Brenda: No, I left when I was eighteen and a half and then I left because we had an immigration process going on and I was told I had to leave before, I guess, my time illegally started counting. So, I left with my grandparents and came back here. Then about a year and half later, we had our appointment in Ciudad Juárez and he drove down with my aunt and that’s when they told us, it wasn’t completely closed, it wasn’t completely rejected, but it wasn’t going to go through at that time. So, he had to come back with me here in the city. So, right now, he’s here.

Interviewer: So, you went all the way through high school, you graduated from high school. Did you start college?

Brenda: No, I got some college credits through some exams that I took. But no, I didn’t start college.

Interviewer: Advanced placement tests?

Brenda: Yes.

Interviewer: Did you apply for DACA?

Brenda: No, I left I think a year, two years before DACA took off, so that was a whole other thing [Chuckles].

Interviewer: So, you graduated from high school and then what were your plans?

Brenda: When I was going to graduate, the town that we lived in, Tahlequah, had a small regional college and Northeastern State. My plan was like, “Well maybe I can just get a job at the restaurant, whatever, save up money,” because they did accept people without any papers. But obviously, you paid a lot more money. I was like, I guess I’ll do that, or I’ll figure out what to do. Eventually, as the time got closer and we knew I was going to have to come to Mexico, I was like, “Well maybe we’ll see.” I just kept saying like, “We’ll wait and see,” because I did want to do my college in the US because that’s what I knew up until then.

Interviewer: So, what happened for you all to come back?

Brenda: We started the immigration process when I was fourteen, I think. My aunt adopted us, she is a US citizen, and the whole thing was supposed to be super easy peasy. She adopted my brother and I, and legally we lived with her because she lived across the street—we lived with my parents, but she was across the street and formally she was our parent. It was supposed to be like, “Here, you’re her daughter and you get papers right away.” It was not that simple or easy. Our attorney just said, “You do have to leave the US” and I was like, “But when?” I was already eighteen. I was like, “When?” It’s like, “Oh, I don’t know.” No one ever included me in the process of what had to be done. So, I had to look it up myself and see at eighteen and I don’t know how many days old, your time starts counting as an illegal alien. I was like, “All right. So, no one’s checked on this. I have months till I have to leave.”

Brenda: My grandparents would visit us once a year and one time they visited us by surprise in October and they were just going to stay for two weeks. My grandpa took me aside and he’s like, “What’s going to happen? What do you have to do?” I was like, “Well, no one’s paying attention to me, but I have to leave by November fifteenth, sixteenth of this year.” He’s like, “What are you going to do?” I was like, “I don’t know. I guess they’re going to buy me a plane ticket. I’m going to go, and you guys are going to pick me up when I get there.” [Chuckles]

Brenda: He was like, “[Sigh]. I don’t like that.” And he was like, “All right, we’ll extend the trip two weeks more.” They stayed a month. “You’ll go back with us. But we’re going back on a bus,” because they had gotten all the way there on the bus because of prices. It’s like, “You’re going to go back on a bus. I’m sorry, but my adventure of traveling cross country via bus is not going to be ended because you want to go on a plane.” I was like, “that’s fine.” So, I came back with them to the city.

Interviewer: So, they just had a visa to come and travel?

Brenda: Yes, they had a visiting visa, so they would always go at least once a year to come see us.

Interviewer: So the adoption proceedings required that you go back to Mexico before?

Brenda: It turns out they did not [Chuckles]. We just had a very badly researched attorney, I guess. He had gotten one of my uncle’s citizenship—and funnily enough, not the uncle that was with that aunt. He didn’t end up being able to get residency or anything, and I don’t know why we went with him specifically. But he just kept saying, “You have to leave.” I remember telling everybody, “Okay, outside of having to leave at this time, I keep seeing that a lot of people that do this immigration process, in particular, don’t leave the US. They never leave the US, they stay there.” Everybody goes, “I know, but you don’t understand it’s different.” I was like, “It’s really not, it’s adoption-based immigration process.” So, I’m always like, “No one listened to me, so that’s why [Chuckle] this happened.” So, we left because that was what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to come here and then we were eventually going to have a meeting at the consulate in Juarez and then be able to go back at some point.

Interviewer: What happened? Why didn’t it work out?

Brenda: We waited a long time. It was about a year and a half because everybody was like, “It’s going to be about three or six months, three or six months.” And that passed, we were finally stuck there and it was because of the Hague Convention—if I’m not mistaken—which is like an international adoption thing that a lot of countries sign into to try to avoid human trafficking for children. Everything that we did with my aunt, which was technically live with her for two years, begin the adoption process before I was fifteen. All of these things that we did, we were supposed to have done them here in Mexico. And we tried to dispute it because we were like, “We’ve never lived in Mexico and my aunt’s not from Mexico. Why would we go to Mexico to do this?” So they’re like, “No, but you can keep appealing it. But that’s the process, you were supposed to do all of that in Mexico.” The point is that we didn’t want to, there was no reason for us to go to Mexico. We’ve never been there, my brother left when he was one and I was three. So, we were always in the US and so it didn’t get declined completely, it just got, I guess, on hold and it’s been like that for the last—when did this happen—like five, six years? So on my end, I’m good being here. I like being here, but it’s because of my brother and his autism and he’s very much in his own world of his habits and what his plans are and everything. It was really hard for him to come.

Brenda: It was a complete disruption to his routine. It was a complete—like being away from his parents, being with people he didn’t really know that well. Being in a different country, like language he doesn’t speak as well—everything was hard. So, I don’t touch that process because I know it’s technically still going on and the hope is that one day he can go back. Me, I’d be happy to just go visit once, maybe often. But for him, because for him, it’s so important to go back to the US.

Interviewer: Do you live with your grandparents?

Brenda: I did. I lived with them since I got here in 2010. Just last year I moved out to live with my boyfriend, but about that whole time I lived with them.

Interviewer: Does your brother live with them?

Brenda: My brother still lives with them, yes.

Interviewer: When you get back here and you’re waiting around, did you go back to school? What did you do?

Brenda: I wanted to. I remember being like, “Maybe I could try school and I could see if I like it here. Then worst case, I get my papers, I do school here and I go back over there—especially, economically it might’ve made more sense.” My mom was always like, “No, three more months, next month.” So, [Sigh] it went like that for a year and a half. When I came back, my brother, I would try to take him out as much as I could. He always chose American places like Chili’s or whatever places. I was like, “That’s fine, but it costs a lot more money.” So, money that my mom would send me that would last me months, in one outing with him, I would use it all because I wanted to make him happier, have him be calm. So, I was like, “This isn’t going to last.” So, I was like, “I need to get a job.” That’s when I started working.

Interviewer: So, what kind of work did you do?

Brenda: I started at a call center that’s not too far from here. It’s called Televista. I was there for six years, almost six years. I started out as an agent and I went through different levels.

Interviewer: Are you still there now?

Brenda: No. I left last year, the campaign I was working with—T-Mobile—left for another company and so all of us were without a job. I am currently at a tech software company called Hootsuite and I’ve been there since last July.

Interviewer: What kind of work do you do here?

Brenda: It’s customer support.

Interviewer: Similar?

Brenda: Yes, it’s over the phone, computer chat, emails.

Interviewer: Do you like it?

Brenda: Yes, it’s really interesting and stuff I didn’t know mattered. I check Facebook, I check Instagram, but there’s so many things that cause things to not work and people are very upset about it and their whole work depends on it. So, you understand it but you’re like, “Whoa, I didn’t know this could affect someone to this level.” So, it’s been a learning experience. It’s something I didn’t know anything about previously. I always liked that, learning things.

Interviewer: Are there things that you miss about the US?

Brenda: I think it’s mainly my family. My parents are still over there and my siblings.

Interviewer: You have other siblings?

Brenda: Yes, but they were born over there, so it’s different. When I left, they were three and five. Since I couldn’t work and I couldn’t drive or anything, I’ve always babysat them. I was their mom up until some point because my mom worked most days and so that was really hard because now the oldest is fourteen and the next one is twelve so it’s a whole world of difference. The three-year-old when I left, he thought I was his mom. My mom told me that when I left on the bus he was like, “Brenda come back, I’ll be good. I promise.” He was just crying and crying. [Emotional]

Interviewer: I’m sorry.

Brenda: It’s been a while and now it’s just … One is a teenager and she had to deal with my family drifting apart when us two left. A lot of things happening because my mom had a hard time dealing with half of her children being here. So, the oldest is very straightforward, very grumpy sometimes. It’s always weird because I think about her when she was five and now, and I’m like so much responsibility fell on her when I left. [Emotional] And the little one [Chuckle], he always says “Hi” to me, but he doesn’t remember me as well anymore because he was two or three when I left. So, I think them too, they’re the hardest part [Sniffles].

Interviewer: I’m sorry.

Brenda: It’s okay.

Interviewer: That’s tough. So, you haven’t seen them since you left?

Brenda: No.

Interviewer: Or your parents?

Brenda: No.

Interviewer: It’s a long time.

Brenda: It’s about to be, in November, it’ll be nine years.

Interviewer: Have you thought about getting a visa and trying to travel?

Brenda: Yes, this last December, I went with my boyfriend to Tijuana for Christmas with his family. And it’s so weird over there because they cross over all the time. They all have visas and it’s like, “I’m going to go grocery shopping”—they go to San Diego. I couldn’t join with them on anything so I would stay home. His mom’s boyfriend was like, “Well why doesn’t she get a visa though?” It’s like, “Because she’s in the immigration process and she just don’t want to move there.” “But so am I.” I think his cousin, or some family member, did this whole immigration process to ask for him to be a resident a long time ago and he’s been in that process forever.

Brenda: He’s like, “But I still do my visa every year. Whenever I need to renew it, they just ask, ‘Oh, you’re still on this process?’ ‘Yup, Okay.’ And then it’s through. So why don’t you have her try? Her thing’s still going to be there.” So, we are thinking my boyfriend’s visa needs to be renewed this year. So, trying to at least do that to visit.

Interviewer: Have your parents gotten papers yet?

Brenda: No, I don’t know. I guess my sister will be eighteen in a few years [Chuckles] and maybe she can request them hopefully. I didn’t think that much time was going to go by. But I guess she might be able to in a few years, hopefully. If not, I know they’re kind of thinking of, at least my dad is thinking of coming here to live. Just because they’ve had … They were doing really well, and they’ve had a couple of years like not so great over there.

Interviewer: What were your dreams when you were there?

Brenda: With all the performing arts things I did, I really wanted to go into theater and major in theater and live in New York and that kind of thing. My parents would be like, “No, if you end up going to college and we end up having to pay for it out of pocket, you need to get something that’s a real job. [Laughs]. That’s nice, but not like a real job.” I was like, “All right, well, I’ll figure it out.” So, I think that’s what I mainly wanted to do. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to have the whole American experience of university and eventually move out and go to a big city. We had visited New York in one of the trips, I think a band trip during high school, and I liked it so much and I was like, “I want to move here, and I want to, whatever.” So, I think that’s what I mainly wanted to do.

Interviewer: Do you think being in the States for those sixteen, fifteen—

Brenda: Fifteen years.

Interviewer: Fifteen years changed you or well—they made you, because you really hadn’t been formed—So, do you think being in the States for those fifteen years made you a different person than you would have been if you had grown up here?

Brenda: Probably. Sometimes I have very optimistic ideas about certain things. I think that—not as a judgment towards anyone—I’m a good kid over there. Sometimes a lot of it was because of fear of if you get in trouble. You need to hang out with good kids, and you can’t be like … I was always told not to hang out with other Hispanic kids because eventually too many of us would make people nervous or something. So, don’t do that. Don’t get into trouble. All of these things made me a very anxious person growing up. But I was always like, “No, because if something happens to me or the police were to find me for whatever I might be doing, apparently, it would involve everybody. We’d all be in trouble.” Here I think I would still do the same because up until a couple of years ago my grandpa was like, “You can’t go out.” I’d be like, “Okay.” I’m still very obedient. All right, I don’t want to get in trouble, and I don’t want to get into arguments with anyone.

Brenda: I just do as I’m told. I think it would’ve been similar, but maybe have … I don’t know, I probably would have started working a lot younger helping my family out and such. Over there because I couldn’t work, it was mainly to stay in at home babysitting my siblings. I think those kinds of things, I wasn’t as exposed to a lot of the world as I was—or am now, here. I think that would have been different with my exposure.

Interviewer: What are your dreams now that you’re here?

Brenda: I do want to go to school. It’s been something for the last few years. At my last job I had to work, I had a day of like ten and a half hours and then I had two-hour commute. So that ate up most of my time, and I was just coming home to sleep basically. But I loved my job very much. I was like, “Oh, I don’t need school right now. I’ll figure it out eventually.” And five years went by and right now I’m like, “This is kind of the perfect job for school because it’s so relaxed.” I am off on Fridays, I’m off Saturdays. I work from home a lot of days. But it’s a lot of stuff that I have to ask my parents to do over there to go get my documents and stuff apostilled—I think it’s called—or certified and then I have to translate them.

Interviewer: All your education documents or transcripts and all that stuff.

Brenda: Yes. So, I can eventually go to school here. Then there’s this fear of like, “Oh my God, what if I don’t get into any of the public schools?” Because I’m like, “No, I want to go to one of the public universities” and if I don’t, that’s another cost and now it’s like I don’t want to leave work because I like working and I’d have to do it on the weekends. Then in my head, I’m already like, “Oh my God, am I already not struggling through to balance a schedule I don’t even have yet.” I’m just already stressed about it [Laughs]. But I do, basically, it’s to go back to school because I do miss it a lot and I do enjoy it.

Interviewer: What would you study? What are you thinking? Theater?

Brenda: I think here it’s harder, I took a course a couple of years ago. It was like a Shakespeare course and it was all in English and I remember being like, “Oh, this is the luckiest thing I’ve ever found.” I took it and I liked it a lot. But I know when I would try to speak to some of the other guys in Spanish, it was hard. My Spanish has gotten better, but it’s still hard to communicate certain things. So probably not theater. I like cooking a lot. So maybe something like gastronomy or I looked a lot into sociology, insight, and psychology. I like those for all being interesting.

Interviewer: Do you think having lived in the US, if you start a family, you’ll raise your children differently than is more of the norm here in Mexico?

Brenda: Yes, probably. Mostly because of my boyfriend since he’s from Tijuana he grew up very Americanized. I guess because he was so near the border. He’s never lived in the US, but his English is as if he had lived in the US. We’re both very sure we don’t want to start a family, which is already kind of outside of the traditional or cultural expectations. But I do know that when we discuss if we were eventually to have children, I think I would still speak to them in English. It’d be a weird Spanglish mix that they would learn. I do that to my dog now and he learns [Laughs]. He’s like, “All right, just feed me, I don’t care what language you do it in.” So, I do think we’d teach them different things or outside of the cultural norm if it came down to it.

Interviewer: If you could change immigration law in the US, how would you change it?

Brenda: I don’t know. I think it’s just tough because I don’t think it can be—what is it they call it—like a blanket solution of “okay, let everyone go through” or “give everyone automatic resident status” or whatever. I remember there was a few things that I saw I think when John, I forgot his name, was really opposing Obama during his second re-election. But a lot of things that I saw were like, “Oh you have to go through schooling.”

Interviewer: John McCain?

Brenda: Not John McCain—maybe I’m thinking of George W. Bush the second time he went through. But I remember it was a lot of like, “Oh, the men going through a military training or going through school or making sure that you’ve gone all these years without any law-breaking and stuff.” I was like, “That’s fair because most immigrants are trying to stay out of trouble.” I can attest to being scared of … “No, we have to be sure that we’re good and making sure going to school or getting a job” and I think that’s just normal basic things to ask for.

Brenda: But I think those would have been great. It’s harder now. I don’t see the appeal right now in the US, sometimes it’s a struggle because of how the political climate has been going since I left. I left when Obama had just gotten into the White House. So, it was really hard to see that transition completely the last few years. But I definitely think a system has to come up because I feel like it keeps getting pushed aside. We’ll do it later, we’ll do it later. Definitely for the people in the DACA program now that they’ve never known anything else.

Brenda: I think I would’ve loved it if I had gotten that opportunity or hadn’t left before it was installed into place. But definitely towards children and teenagers that went there as children and had no idea what they were doing. That’s the only home they know. My parents, my mom she used to be, I think when I was younger, very much thinking about coming back at some point. Since then there’s times we talk and she’s like, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to go back to Mexico.” I’m like, “Mom your English isn’t that great. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here” [Laughs]. But she’s gotten accustomed to it and she’s gotten used to it and she’s certainly used to a certain life at some point that I don’t think she would’ve gotten here if she had stayed.

Brenda: My dad’s more traditional and he’s always been like, “One day we’re going to go back to Mexico.” I was like, “I don’t see anyone planning for it in the long-term.” It’s something I’ve talked with my grandpa about, he’s like, “None of your uncles or your dad have ever sent money to buy a house or buy a land plot or do something for their future and they’re always talking about coming back. I don’t know where they’re coming back to because you guys have their rooms now, so I don’t know where they’re going to stay” [Chuckles]. I’m like “That’s true, they lost a lot of time when they had really good profits coming in.”

Brenda: I was like, “Hey, let’s set this aside just in case, for an emergency.” So, I think it would be great if people could really, or the government I guess, see how difficult it is once you get here because it ends up like, “Oh, this is also not my home.” I know I’m very, very fortunate because I’ve heard some of the stories from my coworkers and friends who live with a far, far, far away family member that they’re barely related to and that’s the closest thing to family that they have. They’ve gotten robbed, it’s just they have a room and that’s it and they’re lucky to have that. Or they live so far away from their job, like the commutes here are crazy.

Brenda: So, I was so lucky to have my grandparents and people that I actually knew and remembered, and I talk to regularly. And I never had to worry about “what am I going to eat? How am I going to eat? How I’m going to ask for food?” Because my Spanish was okay—my parents made sure we spoke it growing up. But it’s so … I’ve seen people get here and they just can’t adapt because it’s so hard. I struggled with being, I’m never going to make friends here, I’m never going to be able to make myself be understood or be heard.

Brenda: As cheesy as this, all the call center jobs that are everywhere and people are like, “That’s the only job you can get?” Well, yeah, but it’s people that … It’s a good pay for all you have above anyone else is English. There’s a lot more educated people than me without jobs here in Mexico—that’s the only thing they don’t have, English—and I might get paid twice as much. And that’s all the friends that I’ve made through the call centers through English, bilingual jobs. I’ve been very fortunate because it’s people that I can talk to in Spanglish with each other and that understand me culturally, which is another thing.

Interviewer: How about the Mexican government? What kind of programs do you think they should be thinking about in terms of helping returning immigrants?

Brenda: I think being a little bit more … From what I’ve seen it’s to become a little bit more accessible. But the program or all the stuff that they have going on for people if they want to go into school—I have so many friends who are like, “I started it and I still haven’t finished. I’m getting all my stuff translated, getting whatever”—having it be more like, maybe, have someone help throughout the process or more available to help throughout because it sometimes feels like a secret like, “Oh, I can go to college here, I didn’t know.” That’s a really hard thing and I think a lot of people would love to go to school if they could.

Brenda: Job wise, you never know what half of the documents are that you’re asked for, like, “A social security number, I didn’t have one there, now how am I going to have one here?” Then you find out you can just go in and get one. Surprisingly a lot of this stuff, what I found out when I got my first job—I remember just going one day I’m like, “I’m going to go see if I can find something.” My grandma was like, “Okay, good luck.” I went on a Wednesday and by Friday it was like, “You’re hired, just get all of these documents.”

Brenda: My grandpa drove me around to get everything and I was surprised by how easy it was because I was just with my birth certificate and my ID or whatever. I was like, there’s a lot of people that sometimes don’t know when they get here, “what do I need or what will I need to get a job? Or where do I go?”

Interviewer: Or they may not have a birth certificate.

Brenda: Or they might not have a birth certificate or have no access for someone to send their birth certificate or have no idea where they were born here or live in like a tiny little town—it’s like, “I don’t know how to get there.” So, it’s hard, and I think just having that maybe be a separate process for people returning or having been able to get help from people that maybe have gone through the same thing would be great. A lot of people struggle.

Interviewer: We hear a lot about that, very much so. So, we’re towards the end of the interview. Is there anything else you’d like to share with anybody who’s listening to your story about your experiences with the system? The system itself?

Brenda: I guess that I was very thankful to be in the US with my family and that it did shape me into the person that I am—how I think and how I assume things are going to work out even here in Mexico. I would love that someone could understand. People understand—just see that a lot of people, how much they struggle and how much they want to be in the US legally.

Brenda: I know for me I’ve never wanted to go back again illegally. Why am I going to struggle again or get in trouble or be anxious all the time, an anxiety I can’t describe? It affects you in so many ways and your mental health and your mental well-being. But I think, and I’m sure a lot of people feel that same way coming back here, just for the sake of at least mental health and overall well-being, taking a second look at a lot of people’s stories or how it affects them leaving the only place that they’ve known for their whole life consciously. And how it affects families splitting apart because I know my family has been in the downfall since we both left years ago.

Brenda: I can’t imagine going back to that family, that’s not a family I recognize quite anymore. It affects a lot of people that you might not assume get affected. People that are there illegally and siblings … But just that, how much it can affect in so many ways.

Interviewer: Thank you so much.

Brenda: No, thank you.

We spoke to Brenda again in 2022

Interviewer: Okay. So, what’s been going on in the past three years since we’ve seen you?

Brenda: So, I started college or university. I had to do a whole course to learn basic high school information from here so I could take the exam for the UNAM, and I got in. So in the pandemic, I started university. Right now, I’m in my third semester. I switched jobs, so I’m about to have my three-year anniversary in my current job. And it’s like my first corporate official job and it’s been really great and I love it there.

Interviewer: Congrats!

Brenda: Thank you. I live with my partner now. We have our two dogs. So, I moved out of my grandparents’ house, and that was a big move because I lived with them since I got here to Mexico. Well, the whole pandemic and everything that we all went through, but I think those were the big changes.

Interviewer: How did the pandemic affect you personally?

Brenda: I don’t know. It was very weird because I like talking to people and I like going to work and I like socializing, but it really takes a lot more of me now to socialize and to want to go outside. I get very anxious very easily. If I don’t go outside in a few days, I can easily go the rest of the week without going outside. So, I don’t like that, but I’m working on that slowly, little by little. And it pushed me to go see a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and that’s something I’ve never done before. I didn’t have any stigma for other people, but of course for myself, it was like, oh, I don’t need it.

I know I’ve had anxiety since I was a little girl, I think, because of a lot of this immigration stuff, so having someone confirm that was a relief. That, and then I have ADHD, so I didn’t know that either. So, that was good to know. On the sad part, my grandpa passed away from COVID, so that was a big, big, big, big thing. I think it was nice to see my family come together to support each other. From whether they were in the US or they were here, we were all trying to take care of one another as best as we could far away.

Interviewer: And this was the grandpa that you were living with previously?

Brenda: Yeah.

Interviewer: Could you share how that was- personally and with everything you were also going through that we’ll get into later, like your education, your studies? How was it dealing with his passing away?

Brenda: It was hard because… I mean, no one was expecting to pass away from COVID and he had just retired, so that was hard. He’s someone that worked his whole life and then he brought us into his home. He was 60, and you’re not expecting to take care of teenagers at 60 years old. It was just really hard to see. He was the strongest person I knew and he was my father figure as much as I love my dad. I’m very distanced from him and it’s not his fault or it’s just how it worked out, and so he definitely took that place for me and for my brother. And for my brother, it was hard because he has autism. It’s hard for him to comprehend it, and I see that he misses him every day, and for my grandma, they’ve been together 50 years. That’s hard, but I’m glad he saw me come together with this really good man that I know and that he really liked as well. And he knew that we were doing well and I was always taking care of my brother as much as I could.

I know he knew that I got accepted into school, so he knew that was a thing I was very frustrated about, so I’m glad that happened before he passed away. But yeah, it was hard just because we all had to support each other but be far away at the same time. And I hadn’t seen him. I was trying to refrain from seeing him and my grandma no more than once a month to not get them sick, whatever, and it still happened, so I hadn’t seen him in a month when he passed away or when he went to the hospital. And then, he was there for about a month and I guess, a coma or the respirator, and then he passed away. So, that was really difficult because I didn’t feel like I got to say a proper, even have a proper visit with him before that happened, but it was just a lot to handle because I think that was my big, first loss of a family member. Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. And you were explaining obviously a lot of difficult situations that are hard to cope with separately and you were facing them all together. I also want to dig into the process of your education throughout these past three years or even a little before that and how you had to learn Mexican education even though you graduated from America. How did that impact you?

Brenda: Yeah. Well, it was a lot. I, when I started this job that I’m at right now, it’s HR, and I guess I thought it was going to be much simpler than it was, but I started learning about my coworkers and they had all gone to college. All the girls, I think most of them were younger than me, had finished college, were trying to work towards a master’s. And I remember feeling very, oh no, they’re going to find out I’m fraud and they’re going to fire me. And as time went on, I was just really inspired by them. And I was like, well, what’s the worse that can happen? I’ll try to get my education validated and take the UNAM exam because I didn’t want to spend money on a private school. And if I didn’t get in, then I would spend the money and it would still be a lot. I wouldn’t go into that or anything from it.

And I signed up for a course. It was almost a year long. It was math and history. History, I loved, but it was just annoying because, for instance, in history, I knew all the US side of everything, but we were learning all the Mexico side. And so, that was really, really interesting to see it from a different perspective, and that helped me a lot, but it was very weird to be in the class. And I was, at that point, 27-year-old with a bunch of high schoolers. And on Saturdays, I would walk over and just be surrounded by young children, and I would feel very out of place and very silly, but it helped a lot. I took the exam. I didn’t think I was going to pass, and I did. And then, the real battle I think was getting everything validated. I asked for my stuff from my high school.

My parents sent me everything. They got everything apostilled over in Oklahoma and they sent it over to me, which I really appreciated. But here, since I got into the UNAM, the UNAM is the one that has to validate it, not the SEP. And they took forever because it was the pandemic, so it got even worse. And they would send things back, and I wouldn’t understand that the communication was just terrible over email. So, it just impacted me how difficult it was for me and how long it took me to want to do it. And even wanting to do it, it was so hard, so I can’t even imagine going through all of that when I first got here. It’s crazy to me how hard it is when it’s something that’s a right for everybody to have. It shouldn’t be that hard. Yeah.

Interviewer: And are you glad you didn’t do it (go to university) right as you were coming back?

Brenda: Yeah, I think so. If I had done it when I came back, I think I would’ve liked to do in-person, like at the campus. Even before the pandemic, I chose remote learning because I was like, I don’t want to quit working. I like working a lot. I like my job. I like earning my own money. So, this is the only way. I don’t think I would’ve been as serious or have understood the impact of it if I hadn’t done it early on when I first got here. Yeah.

Interviewer: So at the moment when you first got here, was it hard going on, continuing your education?

Brenda: Yeah, definitely because it’s always something I wanted to do. And going through all the steps of the American education system, you get pushed to college, of course, a lot. And even though I knew it probably wasn’t a possibility, it was still something that in my head, that was the next step. So coming here waiting to go back because I was in an immigration process, it not happening, me thinking about signing up for things or a course or something and being told, no, you’re about to leave was just tiring because it was just an endless cycle of that. So, that was frustrating for sure because I like learning and it was difficult to just see my friends go on to college, and it just made me feel very stuck and away from them.

Interviewer: That makes sense. In this course that you took, did you have to relearn a lot of the things that you already learned from your education in the United States?

Brenda: Yeah, history, I mean, again, I knew it from the US side, but the Mexico stuff, I didn’t know at all. So, it’s a very rich, very detailed history that we have. And then, when I was going through world history, just learning a lot more about the other countries. Then I remember doing, in Oklahoma at least, the equivalent of English, like Español. That was hard for me because I have trouble with things like the accent marks and when to use certain words. What is it, a homonym, the ones that sound similar but aren’t the same words? So, those are always, like the allá and aya are hard. I love reading, but in Spanish, it’s always slower for me to process. It was frustrating, but it was really interesting and it was nice to learn from another perspective.

Interviewer: But did you have to relearn math or something that you already knew or-

Brenda: Math, I still have to take it in the course that I was in. I didn’t really learn it that well the first time and I didn’t learn it that well the second time either, but I did have to take it, and it was just as confusing. That was just on me. I don’t …math and I don’t mix, but the other stuff, chemistry, I had to retake as well. And it’s the same thing, but different terms. So, that was also a very weird because there’s scientific elements. I don’t know the name in Spanish, but I knew it in English. So, that was weird. But yeah, most everything I had to redo.

Interviewer: And how was your study experience in terms of rewiring your brain because you know this information, but you know it in another language? So, how is that process as a student?

Brenda: Yeah. I told the course director right away about that and he also taught history. So, he would always be really nice to be like, oh, it’s this thing. And I’d be like, okay, perfect. Got it. And sometimes, if one of the teachers knew English, like the one that taught grammar and language, I’d be like, is it like this thing in English? Does that make sense? And he’s like, yeah, exactly. So, I would just try to compare what I knew to try to learn it in Spanish because sometimes, there are things that wouldn’t click for me, but it was hard at times.

Interviewer: What are your professors like?

Brenda: My professors currently, they’re okay. It’s long distance, so I don’t really know them other than emails and messages and what they post in forums. But most of the time, I try to pick pretty accessible people that are lenient with deadlines since I work and I have a hard time meeting all of those deadlines.

Interviewer: And how were your professors when you took that prep course?

Brenda: Oh, in the prep course. They were nice. It wasn’t a very fancy prep course school, but I had friends that had gone to it and had a good experience. So, they were very understanding most of the time and they would be very helpful at adapting towards me or towards other students. Yeah.

Interviewer: In terms of family, during the past three years, have your relationships improved, or gotten worse with your family in the United States?

Brenda: Yeah. With my parents, I think a little bit better. We talk on the phone more regularly, but I also put a lot of limits as to what information they have and what I want to share. And then with starting a mental health process, it’s helped me be more direct with them in certain questions that I’ve had or to be like, hey, why are you doing this, or don’t do this. So, that’s been good. With my siblings, they’re 18 and 15 now. No, 17 and 14 now. And I’m starting to interact with them a little bit more because they’re teenagers and they’re on Instagram and stuff. And they send me really weird memes and I don’t understand them, but I’m like, okay. And they seem curious sometimes about my life or what they know. So, that’s nice. Everyone else, I don’t really talk to, except to say hi on the phone if they’re nearby, and that’s it for my family, at least, in the US.

Interviewer: Why do you put limits on them?

Brenda: I think there was a while, the first few years here that my parents would be like, you need to go visit this relative, or why haven’t you gone to see this person, or you should do this with your money, or my mom’s very about mentioning grandchildren, which is something I’m not interested in having. But I try to make sure I put limits of like, no, that’s none of your business or we’re not talking about that. She also has a habit, my mom more than anyone else, of calling me for advice or like “talk to your siblings about this or tell them they need to do this”. I love them, but I haven’t lived with them in 12 years. I left when they were six and three. So, that’s not going to have a big impact if I tell them to do something. And also, I’m not their mom, and I grew up being the mom for all of my siblings. So, I try to put that more as a limit for myself.

Interviewer: And do you think that you’ve gotten better at that through the therapy and through just growing up and becoming-

Brenda: Yeah, definitely. Therapy has helped a lot. Medication has helped a lot. It’s things that I would get very nervous about even mentioning or I would start crying and just get off the phone. And now, it’s like, no, I can’t… I can tell them that I think this about something, but they’re teenagers and they’re your kids. Yep, you talk to them. So, that’s helped a lot. Definitely.

Interviewer: How has seeing yourself set those limits impacted you as a person?

Brenda: Yeah. Well, I’ve felt more sure of myself. I am proud of it because it’s something I’ve always struggled with. I don’t know if it’s because of my parents. I don’t think it’s my parents, specifically. I think as being the oldest daughter in a Latino household, a lot of stuff gets put onto you as a third parent a lot of the time. And just being able to say no is something that I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do to my parents. When they were still thinking that I was going to go back home, it was always like, oh, you’re going to come here and you’re going to go to college and you’re going to help with your siblings and you’re going to help us at our business. And I remember thinking, oh, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to come home for that. And even my grandpa would be like, no, you’re not going to go back to be a nanny. That’s crazy. So, just being able to do all that and stand up for myself, it’s stuff I never thought I’d be able to do, and I’m glad that I can.

Interviewer: What are your… Because your mom seems like a very traditional, like the asking for grandchildren, how were your grandparents? Like with your grandma, was she similar to that or-

Brenda: No. I mean, they’re my dad’s parents, so they’re not necessarily the same attitudes. And I think it helped that I didn’t grow up with them. So, they were just trying to coddle me most of the time and spoil me. And then, they, I guess, realized that I was responsible and pretty calm, so they just let me go a lot. They would talk to me a lot about everything, but I never felt pressured to do anything, in particular, with them or that I was becoming a third parent other than supporting them with my brother because they didn’t always know what to do with him. And I don’t know. With them, it just felt like a different level of relationship just because it was parenting but not really, so we had that space between us.

Interviewer: You said you moved out, was that before the pandemic?

Brenda: Yeah, that was about two years before the pandemic. We’re about to have lived together four years now. Yeah, that was about a year before the pandemic hit when I moved out of my grandparents’ house.

Interviewer: And how did that change your life, your experience, your relationship with them?

Brenda: Yeah. It was hard. It was hard at first and it was hard for them to accept it because they wanted it to be a very traditional process. They wanted my boyfriend to go and ask the, like la pedida. And I was like, “we’re not getting married. And even if we were, we wouldn’t do that.” And my grandpa was very mad, I remember. It’s one of the few times he’s gotten mad. And I remember telling him like, “Who would I have seen do this, to come ask for someone’s hand? None of your children did that. So who do you think I watch to do that?” And my boyfriend is from Tijuana, and he’s very Americanized as well because he crossed over to San Diego all the time. So, he’s not traditional in any Mexican things either, so we were both lost like, what do you want from us? But once we got through that little hump, it was nice. With my boyfriend, from the moment we started going out, it felt like that was the person I was going to be with.

And so, it felt weird to not be with him all the time, so living with him was just natural.But it was hard because again, my grandma spoiled me a lot. I would come home from work, my clothes were ironed, they were washed. My room was clean. A conversation I have with my boyfriend is that he’s like, “Oh, I thought you were very organized, and I realized now it’s your grandma cleaning your room.” Because we have a guest room and that’s my office while I work, and it’s a mess all the time. So, I miss those comforts of being in a home where someone else is taking care of you. But I’m also glad that hopefully, she has an easier time now without me there. But yeah, I miss them a lot. I miss my brother a ton because it’s always been him and me together, but I know he’s okay. He keeps my grandma company and my grandma keeps him company. And I think it’s been hard with my grandpa gone, but they’re both just always together. It was a nice way to grow and to learn about myself in a different environment. It was just hard, of course, to leave, like the family part of it.

Interviewer: Does Mexico feel like home?

Brenda: Yeah. Yes.

Interviewer: Why?

Brenda: I don’t know. I think because all of the things I have and have done now are my choices and my achievements and accomplishments. I mean, I grew really close to my grandparents these last 12 years, so they feel like other parents. My brother who I’ve always been close to is here. My partner, our dogs, like I have a home. All these things that I pictured for my life eventually in the US, I never got them and they never seemed attainable. So being here and having all of that, it always makes me feel safe and that I’ve gotten all these things that I thought I’d never have.

Interviewer: Having your experience from the US that you have all these aspirations to go to college and then that being taken away from you because you weren’t a citizen or you didn’t have the proper documents and obtaining them [the documents] here in Mexico, even though we talked about how hard that process was, how did that make you feel when you passed the test and you had everything verified to be like, I can actually see myself going to college, there are no barriers?

Brenda: Yeah. It felt weird because I kept making barriers or imagining barriers. I turned in the stuff to be verified. I did the exam. I didn’t think I was going to pass the first time and I just barely passed, but my boyfriend was like, “It doesn’t matter. You passed. You’re in. Stop saying you barely made it.” So, I got in and I was like, all right, that’s weird. Okay. So, submitted the papers, got a translator for the papers. And every time I was like, oh, he’s not going to be able to translate it, it won’t make sense, he translated the papers. Then, I went to the UNAM to get them verified. It was a lot of back and forth through email. They’re very bad at communicating. I remember there’d be times where like, do I not understand Spanish at all? Maybe I thought I did and maybe I don’t.

And my boyfriend, one of my best friends that’s really good with paperwork and all that stuff, she’s like, “No, I don’t understand any of this. It’s not you. It’s them. They’re very bad at telling you what you need to turn in, what you need to upload.” So, that was a big barrier. And I remember thinking, oh, it’s not going to pass. They’re not going to verify my education. And even though I got the test, it’ll be for nothing. I’m going to have to redo something. Eventually, that got through. And then, there was a mini course that you have to do if you’re doing online learning for the UNAM to make sure that you know how to use the computer and stuff. And it was a course I could have finished in the day, but I remember being like, I’m not going to do it. I’m probably going to fail. And then, I’m not going to be able to get into school.

So, I think every part of this process, I thought, no, this is going to be where they tell me, oh no, you can’t do it. So, just being able to get into a school that’s extremely hard to get into that I’ve heard people… I only have one aunt that went to college from my immediate family, and she’s the one that got to school. She’s the one that went to college and cared about her education. So to know that I’m in this school that was so important in my family, even though none of them went to that school, it’s a big… I don’t know. It’s very weird. And I didn’t think that that would happen either, but I feel very proud of it. It was just a lot.

Interviewer: Do you have contact with your aunt?

Brenda: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. She’s here with us.

Interviewer: Do you consider her a role model?

Brenda: For sure, yeah. She’s very scrappy and she tells me stories about when she did go to school, she got sent to a campus very far away. So, she’d had to leave the house at 5:00 AM to get to the campus on time. She’s always one of the aunts, on my dad’s side, I’m compared to because they’re like, oh, you’re just as nerdy as Julia is because I’m all about the rules and about following the rules and about being a good kid and stuff. And she was that person in my dad’s family, so definitely someone I look up to.

Interviewer: And you said that you were facing a lot of anxiety just throughout your life because of your immigration process and the struggles you faced with that that led to other points of anxiety. Would you say that you had a pretty strong support system that helped you throughout or someone you could lean on and how did they assist you?

Brenda: I think so. I don’t know that necessarily for the anxiety. Well, I guess I didn’t know it was anxiety or didn’t know for sure, but I think overall, my family, I had support and had people listen to me and understand how hard it was to not see my parents or growing up, how hard it was going to be to not be able to go to school and such. So yeah, I think I had support for that.

Interviewer: What gave you… Because we started off this interview, you were saying that you have a lot of empathy for and no stigma related to other people who struggle, but you have a lot of high standards for yourself. So, what motivated you or what was that certain thing that made you overcome that fear and seek help and therapy?

Brenda: Yeah, I think the fear, I used it because it was last year, probably beginning of the year to May, I realized I couldn’t tell my boyfriend anything without crying. I just couldn’t say anything. And he’d be like, what did I do? Why are you crying? Or he couldn’t tell me anything like, oh, hey, you left the fridge open a little bit. And he’s never a mean person. He’s so nice. He’s very relaxed about everything, but he couldn’t tell me, oh, hey, you forgot this without me crying. And it just got to the point where I was like, I haven’t felt like that in a very long time. What is wrong with me? I don’t like it.

I don’t like not being able to speak in my personal life. This is the person that I love and then I’m going to be with, why can’t I just talk or even with my family? And I figured it was probably a mix of my grandpa and being stuck indoors for so long and just the state of the world but I decided. I made an appointment, I think, the day after my birthday last year to go see a psychiatrist first. I don’t know why I went to her first instead of psychologist, but I felt that need. And yeah, I think it was just a fear of like, this is scary. I don’t like not being able to communicate or to just be without feeling like I’m constantly scared. So, I used that.

Interviewer: Do you think that going to therapy would’ve helped you when you were younger?

Brenda: Yeah, for sure. I started therapy here, like regular psychologist a few months ago. And it’s helped even more just to get out of my head and to… I’m very lucky to have people that are so supportive, but sometimes, you need someone more objective like, hey, that’s really weird that you’re doing that. Why are you doing that? How can you fix it? And I’m sure it would’ve helped me a ton as a kid or as a teenager to just know that I wasn’t crazy for feeling so scared all the time or just lost because I felt very lost as high school was going on, and it would’ve been nice to talk to someone about it that wasn’t my family.

Interviewer: Reflecting on your life in the US and now that you have therapy and this new confidence, how has that experience been reflecting on your past experiences that were very traumatic or very influential in your life now that you have this new background?

Brenda: Yeah, I think it’s… I mean, I always knew that it wasn’t the greatest thing in the world that I had to be a third parent for my brother, especially. And it was a hard situation and I have a lot of empathy for my parents because they were very young in a new country and learning about autism. I mean, in the 90s, it was still hard and a new thing to talk about. But I realized, that was a lot to put on me along with a lot to put on me for… Like another thing that was a lot to put on me was, oh, someone who came to the US, let me lend you out so you can go with them to enroll their children into school, so you can go to doctor’s visits, so that you can go to whatever they needed to do.

That’s a lot for a kid to be translating, especially when there are words in English I didn’t know because I was a child and there was a lot of paperwork stuff and there was Spanish that I was losing. So, who knows who I probably led to the wrong doctor for something. But it’s helped me just to realize that I wasn’t wrong, like there was a lot put on me. And while it’s done and I understand my parents’ process on that because it must have been scary, I wish they had been aware of that a little bit more and let me just be a kid most of the time.

Interviewer: Being here in Mexico, what’s become easier that we haven’t talked about?

Brenda: I want to say overall, quality of life. With my grandparents, they… Everything. I still like public transport more because it’ll get you faster most everywhere. But if I ever took an Uber from my grandparents’ house, I might as well just not go somewhere because it would take me so long. And a very, very privileged point of view that I can say have changed are, oh, I live next to a really nice park and I can go walk my dogs and I can walk around outside and I feel safe. And at my grandparents’, I don’t necessarily do that. So, those kinds of things have given me that perspective of like, oh, now I’m used to being able to go outside at any time I want. I feel safe. I’m okay. And sometimes with my grandparents, I couldn’t do that. So, I think that’s changed, that perspective. I feel like overall, that part of life has gotten a lot easier and… I don’t know. I don’t know what else.

Interviewer: What struggles that you were facing back then are you still continuing to face now?

Brenda: I don’t think so. I mean, there’s stuff I’m still working on, like the whole anxiety and stuff, but I have a lot more tools to manage it than before, so like all the things that are sometimes harder there. Right now, it’s hard sometimes to see my brother or to try to figure out, oh, I have to go pick him up. How do I go pick him up and come back with him in an Uber? And it’s more of a logistical issue. Those are the things that have become more difficult, trying to make sure I have time to see my family, and that sucks. I try to call my grandma at least once a week, and I try to have my brother over at our apartment twice a month just to hang out and have a different place to be for a while. But that has been hard just not being with him all the time.

Interviewer: You talked about in the survey that you haven’t really faced much violence that you feel safe in Mexico, but being a woman is different…. Could you elaborate on that?

Brenda: Of course. So as, I guess, a returning migrant or a returning person from the US, I’ve never felt unsafe or discriminated against. I’ve always felt safe in that turn. As a woman though, there’s times where I’ve had to go to work at 6:00 in the morning and taking a bus, and then taking another bus, and taking a taxi, and hoped that I was going to be okay the whole way, and then walked downtown while it’s still dark and ran all the way to the call center that I worked at, and just hoping that everything was going to be fine.

And whenever… I’m just aware of how many times something could have happened because of the femicide rates here in Mexico, and what an issue that is. And I think it gets overlooked that it’s just regular violence, but it’s not. It’s a very different type of violence. Again, I feel very, very privileged and very, very fortunate that I’ve been saved this entire time and everything, but there’s always that in the back of my mind if I go out with my girlfriends, if I go out to walk the dog. Even in the safe neighborhood, you never know, so that’s always an unease that I feel.

Interviewer: And through the pandemic, do you feel like the stigma and that kind of burden you have on yourself of not giving yourself a break has improved?

Brenda: I think so. I hope so. And I said, I never had that stigma for anyone else. It’s like, if you need meds, if you need to talk to someone, if you need to go yell at something, go and do it as long as you’re not hurting anyone. But for me, it was always, I don’t know, it was just really hard to be like, oh, like no, I’ve got everything. My parents never hit me or anything, so why would I need therapy? And I think that stigma is not there. And I like to think it’s helped in a very weird way. Everyone else accept that a lot more. I talked to my grandma about that she should go to therapy because she’s going through a huge loss in her life. And I’m always very casual about it like, no, I go to therapy now and it’s fine. It’s good to talk to someone. She’s like, “Okay. Yeah, maybe.” So I just see that adapting very slowly, but it’s going.

Interviewer: And do you think that is something about Mexican society and how they view mental health mental health? And how has Mexican society’s perception on mental health impacted your journey?

Brenda: I do feel that as a society, it’s still very slow. However, I do know that the people that I surround myself with, like someone I became best friends with this new job, she was always very like, guess what my therapist said last week. She was always very open, and I always thought that was cool like, oh, that’s nice that she shares. And I would ask her a lot of questions. So, that pushed me to be more comfortable with looking for someone. I think as a society, we still have a long way to go on it because the perception is still like, oh, you’re crazy or you’re weak or you’re whatever, but I think as the younger people come into the society and there’s more numbers of younger people, everyone’s more open about it, about their meds, about I have this, I’m bipolar, I’m depressed, I’m anxious, whatever it might be, we’re starting to try to be more open about it.

Interviewer: And when did you meet your boyfriend?

Brenda: I met my boyfriend, it was about seven years ago at our job. Yeah.

Interviewer: And has he helped you with your confidence?

Brenda: Yeah, for sure. He’s my biggest cheerleader in everything. Yeah, he’s helped a lot. He’s always the person that pushes me to believe in myself.

Brenda: I just feel very fortunate. He’s great and he’s always so supportive. We grew up very differently and we have very different traditions and ways about being with our family, but whatever I need and whatever I want to do, whether it’s a new hobby or the school thing or a new job, he’s always the one that’s pushing me and saying, no, you can do it, you got this or I’ll help you, what do you need? And that’s just great.

Interviewer: What do you want to do after college?

Brenda: I’m really enjoying HR. I thought it’d be more of a temporary job or I’d be gone in a few because I wasn’t going to measure up once I realized it was a little bit more intense, but the department that I’m in, it’s a global HR, so we deal with not just the US but with people in Europe and Asia and Latin America and the Middle East with any kind of thing. And I like learning about all the benefits they have, who has healthcare, who doesn’t. It’s always the US that doesn’t have healthcare. And that has very high cost. And all the other countries have it included basically. I like learning all those differences, so I would like to be able to use that international relations degree and just keep applying it towards HR and towards helping people not worry about the bureaucratic parts of their job so they can focus on what’s actually important.

Interviewer: What do you miss from the United States?

Brenda: What do I miss, I think I miss air conditioning because we’ve been having heat waves here and it’s usually so rainy in the summer. It hasn’t rained that much. And it’s unbearable because AC here is very uncommon, unless it’s a shopping mall or Walmart or something. So, I miss that. I miss more of like material comforts, I guess. I miss some snacks, some food. I do miss my family and stuff. I want to think it’s a given, but the things that are more superficial are like, oh, I miss having hot Cheetos at a not ridiculous price because there’s resellers here and they sell them for so expensive. I miss being able to go see my friends. I miss a lot of my friends, those friendships I’m still connected with, and so I do miss them, but it’s most of those more material things.

Interviewer: What’s one thing that you would tell your 18-year-old self after going through everything that you went through in the United States and coming here, what’s one piece of advice you would tell her?

Brenda: I’ll just tell her everything was going to be okay, that she’s way stronger than she gives herself credit for. And even now, I never think about this whole process as something that I went through. I don’t ignore it or I don’t hide it, but people are always like, no, but that’s amazing. I’m like, no, it’s just whatever. I don’t think it’s a big deal, but I know if I met an 18-year-old that was telling me, oh, I don’t live with my parents, and I don’t know if I’ll see them again, and I can’t go to school, and I don’t have my friends or siblings, or I don’t know this new city, and I don’t know this new country, and I barely speak the language, I would be like, oh my gosh, are you okay? How can I help you? So, I just want to tell her that it is a hard thing and it’s okay to be sad about it, but she’s going to get through it.

Interviewer: Have you done anything or any contact with the returning migrants here in Mexico city?

Brenda: No, I haven’t other than, I guess, people that I’ve met through the Zoom calls and such. These last few years, I haven’t really had any contact.

Interviewer: Why is that?

Brenda: I don’t know. I don’t really know where to find people, I guess. I used to be in the call centers. People come in all the time and you connect with them and help them at least know where they can buy certain snacks or a Dr. Pepper. But I don’t really know what the process is now or how are people coming back. And there’s so many more call centers now than there were 10 years ago, so I just feel like people are spread all over and I don’t have contact to anyone new anymore.

Interviewer: What’s one that you would change seeing the news and stuff from your experience of just the immigration system in general?

Brenda: Well, it’s a mess. I would just say that I know there’s no blanket solution, whether it’s allowing everyone to stay and be a legal citizen or kicking everybody out, neither of one of those is going to happen, but it’d be nice to have action go towards something because I think a lot of people use it as a topic, whether it’s in elections or in reelections or mid-semester changes, whatever it may be. Midterm, I’m sorry, not mid-semester. Midterm changes and they never do anything about it. They don’t do anything to prevent people coming in and they also don’t do anything to help the people that are already in there. So, it’s a very broken immigration system. It’s very understaffed. And I think just truly, I guess, bipartisan work towards it is the most important because I know the Republicans get blamed a lot and there’s a lot of blame there, but on the other side of the aisle, it’s like, all right, well, I guess we can’t do anything, and that’s just really washing your hands out of doing anything. You just say you want to. So, just any sort of action I think would be appreciated because it’s one day going to boil over and it’ll just be because it was left alone for too long.

Interviewer: Thank you so much.

Brenda: Thank you.

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