‘Keep Your Head Down’

Gaby Cabalza was nine years old when she realized she had to worry about her parents in a way that other kids didn’t. One day after school, she walked into the dining room where the air was thick and dense with fear and sadness. She found her parents sobbing at the table because of a traffic ticket.

“Dad might have to go for a while, okay?” Cabalza’s mother said to her when tears had already laid in small puddles on the dining table.

“I didn’t understand that where he was going or why? And why the ticket meant that? I didn’t understand any of that at all, it was just so over my head,” said Cabalza. “I just remember being really scared.”

For Cabalza, whose family immigrated to the U.S. without authorization in 2000, a ticket meant her dad could be deported back to the Philippines.

Cabalza’s father didn’t end up having to leave the country, but the experience was a wake-up call to her. It was one of the moments that contributed to Cabalza’s understanding of her identity, when she started to realize her experience was not like everyone else’s.

The 21-year-old is one of the nearly 800,000 young immigrants who are now living with uncertainty after Trump’s administration announced to end the Deferred Action for Childhood (DACA), a program that protects immigrants who came to the United States illegally before 16-year-old from deportation.

Cabalza’s family came from the Philippines when she was four. Growing up in an Asian family, she doesn’t remember there ever to be a conversation with her parents about her identity and what it means.

“I think it was always an assumption, it was never explained,” she said. “At least from my experience, Asian American communication from the elderly is not always the most efficient or straightforward way of getting information. It’s always something that they’re trying to hide or help you with and support you in, and sometimes it buries the truth also.”

According to statistics from the Migrant Policy Institute, Immigrants from Asian countries have some of the lowest application rates. Compared to the Mexicans, which 84 percent of DACA eligible applicants applied for the amnesty program, only 16 percent of South Korean eligible applicants applied. Among the nearly 136,000 eligible applicants from Asian countries, only 15,000 of them applied for DACA, contributing to the 11 percent of application rate.

“At least from my experience with some of the communities I work with, there’s really a reluctance to, so-called ‘get out of the shadows’ and be known as being undocumented,” said Cynthia Buiza, the executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center.

“The cultural value of conformity added to the stigma and the sense of shame, that makes sense,” Ruth Chung, professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education believed the model minority image has been internalized within members of the Asian communities and has silenced people with illegal status.

“They look around and they think, ‘oh! you know, Asian American communities are supposed to be successful and well-achieving,’” Chung explained. “They feel ashamed and this stigma of being deviant or unusual or different from what they perceive to be the norm within the Asian American community.”

But illegal immigration isn’t rare in the Asian American community. According to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, “Asian unauthorized immigrants made up about 13 percent of the 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants who live in the U.S.” And a report from AAPI shows “about one out of every seven Asian immigrants is undocumented.”

“They largely operate in a subterranean level where they’re there but they try to remain somewhat aloof and unobtrusive for fear that even within their communities, they might be exposed and put at risk,” said Chung.

Like many other children growing up in an Asian American family, Cabalza was taught to keep her head down and go with the flow, “and don’t even think about why it’s wrong or if it’s wrong, or things shouldn’t be this way, just internalize and go.”

When she finally met the first other person who doesn’t have legal status and shared the same fear with her in college, Cabalza’s whole narrative changed.

“Having that share experience and finally being understood by someone was really like relieving to me,” she said with a slight smile on her face. “Finding out he was also undocumented was a catalyst for me coming to turns of it. That was definitely the first step in recognizing it was okay, and that my story was important.”

Studying in a white Christian high school, Cabalza was always surrounded by conservative peers who don’t welcome immigrants. She remembered hearing one of her best friends, who is not an Asian, in high school saying: “We should keep immigrants out. They’re taking our jobs.”

During those times, she would always be quiet and not really engaged. Especially, when others think of Asian Americans as the model minority and don’t assume her having the issue other minority crews have.

“It’s really hard for us to feel like we’re like a part of the community sometimes, being undocumented, because people don’t think of us as such,” said Cabalza. “It’s hard because people don’t think that it’s something that affects us as well.”

After knowing better and getting closer with her best friend in high school, Cabalza decided to communicate with her.

Recalling the conversation, she remembered saying: “Hey, I’m undocumented, and this is a really shitty thing for me.”

“And she was like: ‘oh,’ she stopped and listened to me and reassess.”

Cabalza gained support from her close friends, but not everyone shares the same experience when they decided to reveal their status. Ian, who declined to give his last name, lost some of his closest friends due to his immigration status.

“I told a couple people I thought I could trust, but they stop talking to me afterwards. It made me very aware in who I tell,” said Ian, who fell out of status in 2012 when he was in his sophomore year in college.

For Ian, whose family is from the Philippines, shame isn’t the primary reason that stops him from revealing his status. It is the fear of losing his high school friends. “I still have a lot of friends, who were high school buddy with me who are Trump supporters. I Had to be very careful about that,” he explained, adding that he knows what his friends are capable of.

Ian’s American story began in 2004, when his father received a work visa and decided to bring his family to the U.S. Both his parents were born in the Philippines and was working in Singapore before coming here. To take a shot at the American dream, Ian’s family rejected the Singaporean citizenship, which they were offered by that time, and moved to the states.

In 2012, when his family was finally eligible for applying for green card and were about to become legal permanent residents, the lawyer mishandled the case and “screwed everything up.”

The lawyer kept the green card application and never submitted it. By the time Ian’s family found out, their visas were expiring. They were about to fall out of legal status.

“I was numb. I felt robbed. I felt robbed of something that shouldn't have happened. I felt disgusted. I felt like my value as a person was diminished...,” Ian told his story with several pauses between his words.

Ian was immediately disqualified from many things that he was part of. He felt ostracized from his friends in college when they were planning to study abroad or plan a ticket trip over the Spring break. “I couldn’t do that, because I couldn’t leave the country without getting deported. I felt isolated from them.”

His performance in school suffered. He turned to escapism such as drinking and drugs to try to push it out of his mind. At his lowest point, the thought of ending his life crossed his mind several times.

“I think I felt during that time was a lot of shame and a lot of pain because I was thinking why it happened to me and now I’m considered this undocumented, illegal person,” said Ian.

In 2013, when he finally decided to pull himself together, Ian found out about the DACA program. “I told myself, if I get this DACA thing, maybe things might be a little bit easier,” he said.

But things never became easier for him. Ian later found out he qualified for every single criteria except one: Had no lawful status on June 15, 2012. “I had become undocumented on June 30, 2012. I missed DACA by two weeks,” he pursed his lips and said: “I was considered, undocumented too late to qualify for DACA by two weeks.”

Now 24, Ian is working as an immigration advocate. Everyday, he struggles between the fine balance of being vocal and putting himself and his family at risk.“I want to do it, I do. I really want to go out there and tell my story, but at the same time, I need to protect myself.” Ian said he often feels guilty about not contributing to the DACA conversation, especially when the anti-DACA voices are the loudest.

“I don’t think that the deportation is such a negative thing that the media portray. I think it can be an amazing opportunity for these kids to reconnect the rich heritage of their homelands,” said Lisa Shin, New Mexico delegate at the 2016 Republican National Convention and the founder of Korean Americans for Trump.

Shin said it was difficult for her parents when they first came to the U.S. from South Korea. “If there are so many people who have come here legally, millions who have become citizens under the legal process of citizenships, what gives anyone the rights to bypass that process?”

As someone who came with a visa and played everything by the rules, Ian used to consider himself as the “good immigrant” and believed that all immigrants should have followed the law. But when he fell out of status, he finally realized that the system itself is inherently broken.

“Just because you made it, just because you were able to become a citizen, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be looking out for your fellow Asians who are trying to have the same opportunity that you did,” he said.

Now, while awaiting Congress to reform the immigration law and find a long-term solution for DACA, Ian urged the movement to come together.

“There are not enough voices for the Asian communities,” he said. “We have to put ourselves out there, because if not, who’s going to do it? No one is going to do it for us.”