Being undocumented is part of my identity, like being queer. A few years back I began to notice that every time I talked about my own immigration status publicly there would be youth who approach me silently and tell me that they were in the same situation. Sometimes they were interested in how I had managed to go to school since we have little access to scholarships and no right to federal money. Also, they were scared about getting deported, and were often frustrated about loving a country and a community that seem not to want them and call them criminals. So I started to "come out" as an undocumented person because, even though I sometimes also felt scared, I knew that it was important for others to hear it. And this is when those of us who were tired of hiding started to find each other.
The group that I work with, the Immigrant Youth Justice League ( IYJL ) , was founded because as we were organizing to stop the deportation of one of our co-founders, we realized that many of us sitting at the table had been living in the United States without an immigration status for most of our lives. I, for example, have been here since I was 10 and have lived undocumented for 17 years. It felt liberating to sit in a room where we could say to each other that we were undocumented, talk about how we got to the United States, while understanding each other's traumatic frustrations and celebrating our survival thus far. It was at these meetings that we began to feel free.
You should know that several of the members of IYJL are also a part of the LGBTQ community, and are undocumented. At our meetings we often had casual conversations about how the experience of being "in the closet," as queer felt like having to hide immigration status. Similarly, we talked about how being able to say the words "I'm undocumented" out loud felt good. It was when we were having one of these conversations that one of our undocumented straight allies asked if there was such a thing as a national "Coming Out Day" for the LGBTQ community. As the queers in the room said "yes!" we began planning our own undocumented "coming out" day, attempting to spread how empowered we were feeling. A few weeks after that, we began to have conversations with our national allies and concluded that undocumented youth nationally would be using "coming out" as the new strategy to fight for our rights.
In Chicago we declared March 10 of last year the first "National Coming Out of the Shadows" day. Eight of us got up to a microphone set on a small stage at Federal Plaza, said our names and declared "I'm undocumented." Since that day, undocumented youth all over the country have taken up this strategy and done "coming out actions" in front of Immigration buildings, at senatorial offices, and as civil disobedience leading to arrests of undocumented immigrants. The purpose of these actions over the last year has been to show the United States who undocumented people are, and challenge immigration enforcement authorities to attempt to deport us, publicly, and despite the support that we have gathered.
This strategy of using our identities and stories as a tool for political change was inspired by the gay liberation movement that also called for the queer community to "come out of the closets and into the streets" to fight for LGBTQ rights. At the March 10, 2010, demonstration we quoted LGBTQ-rights leader Harvey Milk in saying "Brothers and sisters you must come out. ... Once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions"—a speech that many of us in the LGBTQ community are familiar with, but a concept that is new within immigrant rights. We, like Milk, believe that if those who vilify us are challenged to see that we are, in fact, the people who they love, admire and care about, they will begin to understand that we, too, are human beings and deserve equal rights.
There are a few distinctions with the experience coming out as undocumented versus being LGBTQ. For example, undocumented youth tend to have undocumented families, so we don't have to come out to our parents, and often don't get kicked out of our homes for being undocumented—although we do for being queer, and being queer and undocumented in the streets is a topic for another time. Additionally, we don't want to remain undocumented, like queer people tend to want to remain being queer. We want you to understand that being undocumented affects all aspect of our lives, but that in the end we are not looking for empathy—we are looking for action that creates change.
Please consider this our personal invitation to the LGBTQ community to join undocumented youth in a declaration of solidarity and freedom at our second National Coming Out of the Shadows day.
Tania A. Unzueta is co-founder of the IYJL ( www.iyjl.org ) and the new coordinator of the Association of Latino Men for Action's LGBTQ Immigrant Rights Project.
