You know, I've probably been asked more than 1,000 times if I'm a U.S. Citizen, and that's not even an exaggeration.

Growing up in a town along the U.S. Mexico border, I constantly had to verify my documentation status and citizenship to U.s. Customs and Border Patrol agents.

And to be clear, we weren't even crossing the border, just going outside city limits, still within the state.

It'd go a little something like this.

My family and I would drive to an inspection point where an armed uniformed officer would approach the car window.

Upon lowering it, they'd promptly ask, U.S. Citizen?

To which we'd each respond, yes, U. S. Citizen.

And that was it.

Unless my late Theo was traveling with us.

Because he was a permanent resident and not a U.s. Citizen, he'd quietly hand over his green card and await further questions, which never really happened.

But then again, I'm talking more than 10 years ago.

Because this whole process felt so normalized to us, I never thought to ask him how he felt during these interactions.

Because for me, as a third-generation Texan born into citizenship, I never felt worried during these exchanges, which I know is a huge privilege.

But I did learn early on that asking for someone's documentation is a high-stakes question.

The gun at the officer's hip and the giant fence just minutes away from my house was proof Somehow, even though I was born legit less than two miles away from the Rio Grande, I'm on one side of a line.

A line that the United States government has used to decide that my existence in this country is permitted while others are criminalized.

Now, as you may have heard, the undocumented community has been placed at the center of some very aggressive immigration policies right now.

There are promises to deport millions of undocumented people end-to-end birthright citizenship.

And on top of that, the current administration is threatening deportation against U.S. Citizens.

So at this moment, the line of criminality is being drawn deeper and is changing very quickly.

I'm Xorje Olivares, and I wanna ask this question.

What does the idea of citizenship This is Hyphenación, where conversation and cultura meet.

So joining me today to have this conversation are two people who have written extensively about the issue of documentation and citizenship.

And speaking of writing, I wanna ask each of them if there is a written work, a piece of written work that they feel is very important for us to be reading right now.

So first excited to welcome to the program Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

She's the author of the book, The Undocumented Americans, which chronicles the experiences of many undocumented people in this country.

And showing us that they're not political pawns, they're just everyday people trying to live their life and trying to go about the ways that they just feel is right for them.

And also talks a little bit about her experiences.

So Karla, thank you so much for joining us today.

And I wanna ask if you have a recommendation for our listeners.

Hello, thanks for having me.

I would recommend Pedro Le Mebel's, my tender matador, or in Spanish, it's Tengo Miedo Torero.

It's a Chilean novel set during the Pinochet years, and it's about like an aging drag queen and trans woman who just survives those years with incredible imagination and.

Glamor and melodrama and I found it very inspiring and it's it's pretty slim too.

Thank you for sharing that.

Also, I love a queer story.

I will always add queer stories to my repertoire of books.

Also excited to welcome to the program Javier Zamora, who is best known for his 2022 memoir, Solito, which chronicled his own experience as an unaccompanied minor going from El Salvador to the United States.

Javier, thank you so much for joining us today and asking if you also have a recommendation for a piece of written work that we should be reading.

Do.

I think the unexpected perk of publishing a book is getting books in advance.

And there's this forthcoming one by Daisy Hernandez, called Citizenship, a story.

And the subtitle is Notes on Origin, Familias and Who We Are, and it's gonna come out in early 2026.

And I genuinely think everybody should read it, because she talks directly.

This idea, which is an idea about citizenship and countries and race and sexual aid, like all these things that are affecting us today.

Well, thank you each for those suggestions.

And for again, joining me today, I, I like that you're getting at exactly what we're hoping to talk about during this episode, which is the idea of citizenship.

Yes, there is the, by the books understanding of what citizenship means, especially here in the United States, but it also is an idea in the sense of being documented is also an idea.

But I want to ask, starting with you have yet, uh, this notion of documentation and when you became fully aware while here in the United States, or maybe even when you're still in El Salvador, that you were undocumented, or that the United State's government viewed you as such.

I had no idea, you know, I was just a kid.

But I don't think I truly understood or began to hit that I was different, completely different until 9-11 happened.

Around that time, my parents were hoping that because they had fled a war-torn area that they had applied.

To this thing called Nakata and political asylum.

My dad was one of these immigrants, and I think it was the man that he was very sure that the green card was gonna arrive at the mailbox, and he didn't hire a lawyer.

And it's by sheer bad luck that our appointment happened the first week of October of 2001.

And so then my first instances.

Of understanding that, oh shit, like we have to be afraid, is that we had a huge break.

Cause we, when you interview, you're always down to just one person.

And it's usually for us, it has always been a white man who has to like validate whether your story and your testimony is true.

And he thought that our story wasn't true, but he did instead of directly sending us to deportation.

He did allow us to go seek a lawyer immediately.

And so I'm 11 years old and I remember running through downtown to that financial district of San Francisco looking for an immigration lawyer that would help us stay.

We were under deportation proceedings, but somehow we stayed.

And again, I was 11 and it wasn't until I got to college.

That I completely began to read and understand what my family's legal story.

Um, thank you for sharing that experience.

I want to ask you, Karla, if, if you remember growing up, just how you had to navigate this status that had been placed upon you by the government and by people who didn't know your, where you were coming from, where your family was coming from.

It felt to me like one other level where adults had disappointed me.

And I was now put in a place of non-safeness and no lack of safeness.

I would equate being undocumented with feeling perpetually unsafe.

It's not necessarily the same thing as feeling always afraid, but you're certainly always unsafe.

You're always precarious.

And I knew that just as I knew that as a girl.

Like I could be abused by a man at any time.

As an undocumented girl, I felt like the state could do anything to me at any times as well.

So it was, it was scary growing up.

I think this, this issue of safety is what most people forget when we have this much larger conversation about immigration is that there is an element of feeling unsafe that folks are trying, whether in their country of origin, even here in the States that they're trying to relieve themselves off of this feeling of my God, why can't I just not be so tense all the time, but it's because outside forces are making you.

Part of the thing that I guess you learn early on, even when you are not undocumented, I'll say is I understood this issue or this notion of papeles and that documentation needed to exist.

And so I'm curious, Javier, if this, just the language of papel is resonates with you or means something with you and if it did at a very early age.

You know, that word citizenship, I think I learned in school.

You know the, the first instance was my parents, you know, when I mentioned, oh, the green card is going to come, he didn't even say the word green card, los papeles van a llegar, nos van a mandar los papel, this idea of a piece of paper, it's not like, to me, I, think as a nine year old, you know, learning English, um, and then 10 year old they still didn't understand, I knew I was.

Different and I knew that I couldn't tell my friends because my parents told me not to tell anybody how I had gotten to this country.

By 10, 5th, 6th grade, I also learned a story to tell people that I had been born at the local hospital.

But all these things, I still didn't understand this idea of citizenship.

What I did understand was that I didn't have a piece of paper.

And usually as a, as a nine, 10 year old, that piece of paper with a birth certificate that they didn't say that I had been born in this country.

Um, but I had a birth certificate that said that I had been bored in Isabella.

I'm curious, Karla, kind of similar to what Javier just mentioned.

Did you create certain stories or narratives, you also mentioned the issue of safety, like to protect yourself, to protect, uh, your mental health, just so that way you knew that nobody would be able to figure something out that could then be used against you.

Sure.

I mean, that's when I started like my campaign of personal misinformation.

I don't really give people like access to myself.

And that is obviously something that I learned.

I'm not, I don' deceive, but I also do not feel like the world is entitled to my interiority.

And it's the one thing that I've had that has belonged to me has just been my mind.

And so I'm very protective of it.

And I think growing up, I learned how to have conversations where I learned to navigate social situations while staying safe, right?

And some of that involves knowing when to be invisible and knowing when to stand out a little bit more.

Learning how to like a pretty intuitive understanding of that.

And I mean, I guess that's part of the story was that I was just Um, like an elusive Chantus.

And if I can hear, I think, you know, Karlaos's book was published before I published any thing in prose.

And I did those were the parts of your book, Karlaa, that really spoke to me because I had never really read anybody like address this almost like superpower that we don't want, but we learn in order to remain safe.

And that is like...

Exactly what it feels like.

And I think that term that you just mentioned, I think it's brilliant.

And it helped me, even as a 30-year-old man, begin to learn something of how I had lived my life for 20 years up to that point.

That's really sweet of you, thank you.

I want to pull this, what Karaj just said about the invisibility and the visibility dynamics.

I'm curious, Javier, about your own navigation of invisibility, invisibility.

And when you realized you preferred one over another.

For me, my personal answer is it precedes any form of citizenship or what we're talking about today.

For me I think like most stories begins in the relationship that you have with your parents.

For me my dad was absent for my first nine years of my life, but my mom was there, but then she left.

But before she left, she was a young teenage mom And I think she really pressed upon this.

At times toxic relationship of you have to be the best, you have to be, uh, the valedictorian in order to get a free uniform and free books, and you are going to be my ticket out and our ticket out of poverty.

And so for me, before anything that we're talking about any, any government, well, I guess you can involve the Salvadoran government here because it doesn't do anything for the poor.

And that's the same across the board and any government in Latin America.

But I think my story of being hyper visible begins there.

It's a survival tactic.

And then when you get to this country, another government that doesn't do anything for the poor and particularly detest immigrants, I had to navigate this hyper visibility.

I knew that I had to had to be you know, an honor roll student in order to get ahead and also get out of poverty, but also to hide and be invisible at different times in order to stay in this country and not go back.

I mean, one of the most, uh, kind of explicit moments of visibility is the fact that each of you have written something about your experiences.

And I love that Javier, you mentioned how Karla's book was kind of one of the, the first that you were able to see where this experience had been shared.

And I do want to ask, I'm going to ask both of you, but I want to start with you, Karla, about the decision to write the book and to place yourself in such a vulnerable position by talking about a subject that most people would be quite scared to share.

The story that I tell is that I kind of fell into it because Trump won the first time and I felt like there was nothing really that felt representative to me of what being a documenter felt like.

I think that I desperately needed to witness what was happening in the first Trump administration.

I think one of the things I learned and just intuitively.

Growing up is what it's like to be a sort of a powerless being and the The sort of the little safeties that you build up over the years, you know, like Javier said, a lot of that happens academically, happens through standing out academically, it happens through a standing out.

In the world, like melting into the background is something that, speaking for myself, was dangerous, would have condemned me to a sameness of sort of the world around me, and that was unconceivable.

You know, similarly to what Karla just said, you know, I think, again, there aren't, there weren't many complete or dignified representations of immigrants during the first Trump administration.

It was like all these white liberals were like, oh my God, we'd never heard of undocumented people before when we'd been here all along.

Let me write some You know, not thought out book about it.

This happened all the time during the first administration.

And somehow there were some glimmers, some diamonds there, like Karlas's book, you know, San Antonio, but then there was nothing.

And so for me, I think I was also, you know, I was writing poetry and I didn't like what I had produced.

My first book of poems came out in 2017, uh, write on as he took power the first time.

And I felt that poetry couldn't tell my whole story, but then there were a lot of these non-immigrants writing about immigrants.

And it made me think, you know, talking about hypervisibility and like this valedictorian mentality, which I wasn't a valed Victorian, but I always wanted to be.

But I was like, I could do it better.

I can tell this story.

Better than all of these non-immigrants.

And so I think that's how I entered it.

By that point, I also had the comfort of having a green card with my book of poems.

I did not have a greencard.

I'm not a citizen yet.

Would I publish the book now?

Yes.

But I think our stories are necessary at the end of the day if I had ever written something that jeopardizes my own.

Uh legal status in this country and if I get to be sent out because of anything that I said for any shirt that I'm wearing for saying free Palestine then I don't need this country.

You know why are we trying to be such good quote-unquote citizens in order for what?

You know the the U.S. Is showing its colors and it always has.

So we were talking about dignified representation and the fact that each of you saw a moment to be able to share your story and got it.

I want to introduce you.

I mentioned again that your book was called the undocumented Americans.

And I love the juxtaposition of those words, especially because I feel like in this national narrative, in the political discourse, most people will say on one particular side of the aisle that those two words don't necessarily go together, so I'm curious for you about the choice to title your book.

Undocumented Americans where they can be, they can coexist as a hyphenation.

Yes, well, people can't really take the term, the hemispheric term America.

That's one thing.

The publishers recommended undocumented America, which felt to me like very national geographic.

And I was like, no.

And then I wanted to be a little bit of a bitch.

And I wanted it to be an homage to Henry James.

So I want to call it the undocumented Americans.

And yeah, I mean, I don't really feel too intimately with the name, but I do know that my Connecticut state senator, Chris Murphy, got in trouble for saying something very nice, very, but very mild, you know, he was just something like, I feel sorry for our neighbors, the undocumented Americans.

And I think maybe he thought that that was the term we're now using.

Um, but he got into so much trouble for it.

He got so much hate.

I know that because I have a Google alert on the undocumented Americans.

And for months.

I would get right-wing blogs being all sorts of things.

Poor Chris Murphy.

So I think my book did have an impact in that it got Chris Murphy into a lot of trouble for embracing the term.

So people seem.

Have an issue with it.

But I like that it's now part of the everyday vernacular that folks can easily say undocumented Americans and it feel like an appropriate way to describe a group of people that should have dignity assigned to them.

I'm curious for you Javier about even just if there was any criticism of those two words considering the political climate the discourse that's happening everything that I mentioned in the intro that's taking place immigration policy wise.

About why folks should not have issue with undocumented Americans being people who exist.

For me, like the whole construct of one, the United States is an idea and it's a settler colony and two, you know, even the Americas, you know, it's all of them.

And from when you don't grow up in the United States, that's what you get taught in school.

This is everything is Las Américas.

Mm-hmm.

And then you come here and I was so confused when people born in the country refer to themselves as American.

I'm like, you're not.

We all are.

So I don't have a problem with that.

But you know, the idea of citizenship, I think that's how somebody becomes undocumented.

And then the idea, of the United States in a country, in my opinion, you know both are ideas that don't.

And we need to come up with different ones.

It's interesting.

I talk about the story of how, you know, I'm always having to say I'm a U S citizen when I'm back home, because it's a border point, it's an entry point.

And we were always told to say you as citizen, not American citizen, because of this notion of you can be for many part of the Americas, what does that mean?

So I think even just that specification of us citizen was just ingrained in me at such an early age.

I want to focus on language because there is that notion of American and And so I want to start with you Javier about if either of those words, American or citizen, resonate more with you.

I've never considered myself even, you know, I've been, especially since the second administration Trump presidency began, I'd been really looking at my own trajectory into obtaining a belly.

You know, I finally get a green card went during the first Trump administration.

And I've had a green card for six years now.

And I, for different reasons that I don't.

I get into, I haven't applied to become a citizen.

And so for me, it's like now that I don't have to look over my shoulder as much, or so I thought, now we're learning in this presidency that, oh, a green card is also not as safe as you once thought.

And now I'm even facing this.

Very real and almost urgent question for myself because I have to either apply to renew my green card or apply for citizenship next year, 2026.

And so I'm like, why would I want to become?

And what does that mean?

What am I gaining?

I am gaining a vote.

I've never voted in my life, Mariana Salvador, not here.

But is it political citizenship?

What am I gaining socially?

I don't think I will be gaining anything else that I don' already have.

So I don't know.

I am with you, I'm still actively thinking about it every single day.

Karla, are you in a similar situation where you think about it every day about whether you you choose one of those words over another American or citizen?

My life is not filled with a lot of choices, and that's also not a choice I'm given, so I'm fine with whatever people want to call me, so long as it's not a slur.

I guess I do identify as an immigrant.

I am naturalized as a citizen, but my brain developed under a certain set of circumstances and I have a certain sort of skills, like I said.

So you don't stop being an immigrant at any point in the legalization process.

I think it's a process of migration.

There is a process of like acculturation.

There's a process for assimilation or not.

There's like so many like things, there's like code switching.

There's, there's a certain set of experiences, I think that do unite immigrants that are newly arrived immigrants who've been here for decades, sort of like 1.5 generation, you know, there's, there's some something that does unite us.

And then I think people can choose whatever terms to claim for themselves, but I don't think that you really stop being an immigrant because it is sort of about being someone who doesn't have a place that necessarily wants to claim them, and they are kind of looking out for themselves and looking for a place of safety and freedom and dignity, and then you're willing to move for it.

So because of the fact that a lot of this has been chosen for you, what are the words and because of just the language that we've been using today that again, the United States government has placed immigrant migrant documentation, undocumented citizen, non permanent resident.

What are the ones that you are happy to choose for yourself?

I would like to self-identify as a genius, but it means more if it's men who call me that.

So I would to invite men to call me that.

I identify as a Latina.

I identify, you know, it's pretty easy, like identify as the New Yorker, identify as shy.

I'm shy.

I'm a cancer.

Um, so am I.

Yes, our hearts on our sleeves.

Oh my goodness, quite a thing to be.

To be emotional.

And I'm a cancer moon.

Look at us.

Oh my god.

Let's have a cancer party.

We'll do tarot and teenies, which I actually think would be fun for all three of us to do.

Javier, do you have any words that you you love to use to self-identify?

You know, a word, and I think for me, I'm on this quest alongside therapy.

Um, you know, first was writing, then was therapy and through therapy.

I think I've been really.

You know.

Thinking about these ideas of, you, that I don't agree with, like country and citizenship.

And then I'm left with, okay, what was taken away from me and what was taken away, from a lot of people that look like me and.

And the words that I would like to use or people to use, and how I refer to myself now, and I'm beginning to, without any shame, is saying that ni nawat pipil kuzkatanchanesh.

And that in nawat means I am nawatipil from Kuzkatan.

From Kuzkatan is the actual name of what we know now as El Salvador.

And so for me, you know, the answer Um, because I, I do think that artists and writers should look at what is wrong with the world, but also dream of something to provide or gift for the future.

And for me, I think the answer is easy.

You know, the answer was here before white people showed up.

Um, and we should, um, begin to unlearn all of these things that we have and shoved down our throats for.

500 years by white, predominantly white men.

And so it has taken me a long time.

It took me 30 plus years for me to even begin to identify as Native, as Indigenous, which I also am.

And I think a lot of us in the Latina community are still carrying that shame of being part black part indigenous.

And we want to be proud of the small percentage of Spanish or European blood that we have.

But that's not the answer.

That is the poison that we carry within us and we do.

I do want to focus and pivot us a little bit to the future.

And I want to ask in this moment, what do you think we have started to understand, if anything at all, or what is exposed now about the idea of American citizenship?

Is it everything that people are making it out to be?

I think the empire is crumbling.

We can see it.

I think that settler colonial colony that the United States is is showing it's.

Framework.

We are seeing what a settler and colonial mindset does to those who are indigenous to the land.

And so what is left for the future?

Again, for me, the future is looking back and imagining a Turtle Island or the Americas before any white man came here.

That is where the answers lie.

Gadal, are you optimistic about what we can anticipate?

Not necessarily in this current administration, but for the years to come, the next 20, 30 years.

Will the conversation surrounding citizenship and people who are undocumented, do you think it'll change or will it be kind of what we've experienced for generations?

I mean, I'm optimistic every day because that's what keeps me going and that's, what keeps my alive and committing to the human social experiment.

But I definitely don't believe in a utopia ever materializing.

I think human beings are bad and selfish and desirous of power in ways that cannot really be trusted.

And so what do I think?

I think that one thing, like one small thing is, getting young progressive Latinas in this case, cause the boys have got a problem, you know?

But the, you pursue politics, go into politics.

Don't think of politics as dirty and not worthy of your pristine spiritual, like moral spirituality.

This is something that happened slowly and it happened over time.

And it involved the participation and non-participation of a lot of people.

And so I would say we need to have people who believe in democracy, even though it might be an illusion and it might a myth and it may be a pyramid scheme.

Like so many things are, like love or religion, like faith.

These are things that become real because you all participate in a collective delusion about it.

And so I think that people who care to participate in the delusion of democracy, when you could participate in delusion of many other things, they should run for office.

They should become judges.

They should be lawyers.

They should becomes doctors who work at free clinics.

How do you use yourself and your safety if you are a person who is safe to contribute to the safety of people who have literally no rights.

I want to thank both of you for sharing a lot of yourselves, a lot of your experiences and providing your insight on this very difficult topic, especially because of what's happening politically in the world.

If you want to follow them and get any of their works, all you have to do is go to our show notes.

We will show you how to follow.

Buy their books, support everything that they've got going on.

So please do that.

And also if you want, to send us any information about your own story or anything you want see represented on hyphenation.

Just email us at HYP at KQED.org.

But thank you both so much for your time, for your energy, for your activism, for you works.

And I appreciate you and I appreciate your time.

And thank you all for listening.

Hasta luego.