Javier Zamora Discusses Migration and Citizenship at the New York Times

In the New York Time's opinion section, Javier Zamora details his journey as an unaccompanied minor traveling from El Salvador to the US in 1999 and reflects on the current state of immigration. Zamora is now a permanent resident, after living undocumented and subsequently obtaining temporary protected status. In his Op-Ed, "I Have a Green Card Now. But Am I Welcome?," Zamora describes his early life in El Salvador and his family's decision to emigrate:

I was born in El Salvador, a small Central American nation of 6.5 million people, in a town near the coast, 30 minutes from the airport. A civil war that the United States invested in plagued the country for more than a decade before the war finally “ended” in 1992, two years after I was born. El Salvador’s homicide rate is one of the highest in the world. My family over there calls it “the situation.” As in: We lock our doors at 8 p.m. because of the situation; or, the situation doesn’t let us go to that part of town. The situation has driven, is driving and will continue to drive hundreds out of the country. A Salvadoran caravan left the capital last Wednesday.

My father left because of the war in 1991. Mom followed three years later. I followed, unaccompanied, in 1999. I did not understand what a border was, or what legality meant. What I did understand was that I wanted to be reunited with my parents, to be held by them.

I faced corrupt cops in Guatemala, had M-16s pointed at me in Mexico, had a shotgun pointed at me by an Arizona rancher. The group I was traveling with was surveilled, followed by helicopters. The border has always been highly militarized. The caravan is a caravan because it is safer to flee in numbers.

Before July 11, I had been under Temporary Protected Status, which the Trump administration says it wants to end, even after a judge ruled it must stay in place. The status is finite, meaning it does not provide a pathway to citizenship. But I worked hard, did well in school, went to college, became a writer, published widely, wrote a book, earned some acclaim. I have known the whole time that every grade, every poem, every student evaluation, every paper has been a piece of evidence that might prove my “worth” to someone judging it. This was enough to clear the way for an Employment-Based Extraordinary Ability visa (EB-1), and then a green card.

Continue on at the New York Times. To hear more about Zamora's migration story, listen here and here.