“You would think that revealing to all your friends and family about an aspect of who you really are would be easier the second time around. Well, it’s not.”
There are nearly 700,00 DACA recipients as of September 2017. Most of them are of Mexican decent like Gachuz and most were brought over by family and friends in hopes of a better life. The beginning of DACA started in 2012 with President Obama. With this program Gachuz has been able to stay in the US and has been registering with the program for the past six years.
Mauricio Gachuz Govea. Mexican. American. Gay. Immigrant. College student.
President Trump has announced of end of DACA last year, which means no new applicants could be accepted. The individuals that are registered are left in a stage of limbo with the program still in affect, but on its way out, unsure of when or if it will be eliminated.
The Govea family was well off in Mexico. Gachuz’s father owned a grocery store and his mother didn’t have to work as a result. Gachuz and his younger brother Daniel attended a private middle school, Mau was 8 and Daniel was 7 when his parents began to entertain the idea of leaving Mexico. With all of the luxuries they had in Mexico their parents still felt there was something better for them in America. Members of their extended families had already gone to America and shared with them how much better and safer their new homes were. This was enough for the Govea family to make the move.
“It was the last week of July 2004,” said Gachuz. “ We flew out to the border by San Diego for our vacation where we met up with our uncle.”
Their uncle promised to teach Daniel and Mau how to paddle surf on the Pacific Ocean. “We later found out he wasn’t our uncle, or of any relation to us.”
Their uncle drove Mau and his brother the two hour drive across the border with someone else’s legal documents. They stayed with their “uncle” and his family for over a week and finally were taught how to paddle surf. Only the boys made it across the border.
“I cried every day for my mom,” said Mau in a trembling voice. “We flew to Milwaukee to meet with my godmother, we didn’t know that our parents didn’t make it.”
The Govea family was eventually reunited in Milwaukee, which is now what they all refer to as home. Because of the limited resources at the time, Gachuz was bumped down to third grade with his brother for English Second Language resources. He described this as a soul-crushing experience, already feeling different and now feeling dumb.
“I loved school in Mexico. It took me a while before I learned to love it in America.”
After enrolling in Carmen High School, on the south side of Milwaukee, Gachuz had his sights on college. His teachers pushed him to apply, even though none of his relatives had ever gone. Though everything looked good on paper, getting into school would prove to be a challenge.
The prerequisites for DACA were applicants had to have been brought to the US under the age of 15. They also had to be between the ages of 16 to 31 and lived continuously in the United States since 2007. The recipients also had to be a high-school graduate or still attending school. Gachuz fit all the requirements needed to register. With DACA Gachuz was awarded the work benefits of a Social Security Number, but any Financial Aid, Loans or Grants were off limits unless through a private lender.
“I was focusing on out of state colleges because I thought private colleges would offer more scholarship money for me to go in,” said Gachuz. “UW-Milwaukee wasn’t my first choice, it wasn’t even on my radar.”
Thanks to a clerical error, Gachuz was accepted to UWM and also given in-state tuition. That tuition is something that Gachuz has to petition for every year.
With DACA, Gachuz also gets a permit to work, which is to be renewed every two years. As of now, Gachuz has received this renewal three times.
“Citizenship for me isn’t an option unless I happen to marry someone,” said Gachuz.
As a gay man he faces an equally bleak path to get citizenship through marriage.
“Coming out to my parents was tough,” said Gachuz. “At some point you learn that it’s not something to be scarred about, but something that you have to own. Something that you have to own, that makes you stronger because you’re different, but unique.”
Being gay has proven to be easier to share than being undocumented, according to Gachuz. Depending on someone’s political affiliations it could go badly.
“Telling boys that I was dating was also really weird, how and when I have to tell them is such a personal thing,” said Gachuz.
The political climate today is more threatening than it has been in the past. DACA may be coming to an end, and many recipients are unsure of their future.
“With today’s political climate I’m afraid of being sent back “home””, Gachuz says. He puts home in quotations because Mexico now seems foreign to him.
“I’m from Milwaukee, I don’t know anything else outside of here, English is now my first language. I have a Midwestern accent, I say bubbler, cheese is my religion and I can’t get enough custard. I wouldn’t know what things are back ‘home’.”
Though Gachuz praises DACA, saying it is great for people like him, he does call it a “band-aid for citizenship,” and a “broken immigration reform”. Without a real path to citizenship, Gachuz like thousands of others are stuck in the middle, in this no-man’s land of conflicting identities.
“To me, being Mexican isn’t about wearing sombreros or the mariachi outfits, or the folklore dancing, it’s about being able to care for people and to love them unconditionally. My parents brought us here to live a better life, they brought us here so we could have better things than they could have offered us in Mexico. So being American to me, means that I am working hard to ensure that I live up to what my parents wanted for me.”
“That’s what America was founded upon, people who wanted something better, something new, somewhere they could start fresh.”