Gay DREAMer Jorge Gutierrez’s mother fought for him to thrive, and now he’s fighting for her to remain in the U.S.
My mother is a lioness, a woman with a second-grade education but with plenty of compassion, intelligence and wisdom. She inspired me to have the courage to say proudly and unashamedly: I am queer and undocumented.
I am UndocuQueer.
Like me, my mother is also undocumented. But while I have access to a pathway to citizenship under proposed immigration legislation because I am college-educated, she does not. That is not OK.
I vividly remember my family’s days in Nayarit, Mexico, when there were times we had no food to eat, but my amazing mother would knock on doors trying to find jobs to provide a meal for my siblings and me. Eighteen years later she is still as hardworking as ever and still willing to do anything and everything for her children.
My mom has been a domestic worker for more than 15 years, enduring backbreaking work as a babysitter and housekeeper as well as humiliation, discrimination, too often getting paid way below minimum wage. For her, the most painful part has been the many times she missed our school events, parent meetings, and family dinners with me and my siblings because she would leave early in the morning and return late at night. She would apologize to us with tears in her eyes; I never questioned her love and her commitment to my well-being and happiness.
This is the same woman who fully embraced and accepted me when I came out to her as gay. I remember that moment vividly. I was 15. It was a Saturday evening at the intersection of 17th Street and Main in Santa Ana, Calif. She had just picked me up from my part-time job, we came to a red light, and she suddenly asked me “
Originally posted 2013-06-05 16:25:34.
