Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant

6: The Day I Got Counted

The Day I Got Counted Some Other “How about Samoan? Can I be Samoan?”My girlfriend is filling out the 2010 census. She is trying to answer the race question for me. The questionnaire came in the mail today. Ten years ago, when the previous census arrived, I glanced at it and tossed it in the garbage immediately. I was suspicious of it.This afternoon, however, I decided to leave it resting on the kitchen counter for a while. As the evening went on, I couldn’t help looking at the envelope from the corner of my right eye as I boiled the water, heated the oil, chopped the onions and peppers for dinner. It sat there, an innocuous piece of mail. I could have fed it to the paper shredder as soon as I got home, dismissed it like another piece of junk mail. And maybe I should have. But I couldn’t muster the courage. Plus, my girlfriend would have eventually wondered why we never received it, as I’m sure she would want to fulfill her civic duty, to be included and counted. I, having neither civic duty to fulfill nor moral obligation to live up to, had the luxury of ignoring it if I chose to do so.After all, what difference would it make if I didn’t fill out the census? I, one single shadow unaccounted for amid millions more? six N----_Illegal_Txt.indd 89 11/18/13 8:07 AM 90 c h a p t e r s i x I glanced at the envelope again, first with resentment, then with amusement. What if I lied when answering it? However, in my midthirties now, I have bid good-bye to the irreverent youth who once disdained all things having to do with authority. The one who tore the previous census to pieces. A more mature man now, I want to come to terms with my situation. The United States is well aware of my illegality. Yet it wants to count me in its numbers. Why? The United States has strict moral standards to live up to, and my inclusion in the census is an act of self-righteousness. An act perfectly consistent with the double morality of its discourse. The United States wants its house clean and orderly. A house where everyone is accounted for, even those living off the crumbs falling from its table. While I still wasn’t visible, when the clandestine nature of my status did not disturb it, the United States’ social tension consisted mainly of an oscillating swing between racial opposites. Now it looks back on those days and wonders how on earth it grew so large, this middle shade I fall into. How should it solve this problem? My continued inclusion in the census is a stroke of genius in political correctness: it solves nothing, but it does give me the illusion of dignity while allowing the United States to pat itself on the back. For more than a century now, the United States has been trying to sort out the Mexican question. Starting after the American invasion of Mexico, the definition of Mexican on the census forms has varied . Are Mexicans white or Indians? Another race altogether? Shall we relabel them as Latinos or Hispanic? It is as though, joining the effort of Mexico’s brightest minds, the United States somehow has been dragged into the mess of trying to define Mexican identity. Ten years ago, when I received the first census, I ducked and hid. The notion that the system that insisted on keeping me in the dark wanted me to acknowledge my presence in writing overnight was perplexing. That was then. Now I know better, and I have come to regard the census as one of those sweet ironies that make my life in this country more enjoyable. I imagine General Winfield Scott conquering Mexico, his triumphal entrance in the halls of Moctezuma. N----_Illegal_Txt.indd 90 11/18/13 8:07 AM 91 T h e D ay I G o t C o u n t e d Did he imagine this reversed and unarmed invasion I am a part of? Or what about Congress, during deliberations to annex“All Mexico,” concluding that America could not absorb the whole of the Mexican population, some six or seven million at the time, because of our mongrel origin? What would they...