{"id":509742,"date":"2018-01-28T00:02:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T07:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=509742"},"modified":"2018-01-29T14:11:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T21:11:55","slug":"then-and-now-years-after-childhood-immigration-she-dreams-of-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/01\/then-and-now-years-after-childhood-immigration-she-dreams-of-stability\/","title":{"rendered":"Then and Now: Years after childhood immigration, she dreams of stability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t<div id=\"slides-509742-1a469c9627609a7a0b35ebbc17c48815\" class=\"navis-slideshow\"><div id=\"509742-1a469c9627609a7a0b35ebbc17c48815-slide1\"><img data-lazy=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Searchlight_thenAndNow_Cinthia_001.jpg\" \/><h6 class=\"credit\">\u00a9 Don Usner<\/h6><h6 class=\"permalink\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/01\/then-and-now-years-after-childhood-immigration-she-dreams-of-stability\/#509742-1a469c9627609a7a0b35ebbc17c48815\/1\" class=\"slide-permalink\"><i class=\"icon-link\"><\/i> permalink<\/a><\/h6><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cinthia Fierro at 3 years old.<\/p><\/div><div id=\"509742-1a469c9627609a7a0b35ebbc17c48815-slide2\"><img data-lazy=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Then-Now-Cinthia-Fierro.jpg\" \/><h6 class=\"credit\">\u00a9 Don Usner<\/h6><h6 class=\"permalink\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/01\/then-and-now-years-after-childhood-immigration-she-dreams-of-stability\/#509742-1a469c9627609a7a0b35ebbc17c48815\/2\" class=\"slide-permalink\"><i class=\"icon-link\"><\/i> permalink<\/a><\/h6><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cinthia Fierro, now 23.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p><em>Editor&#8217;s note: As part of Searchlight\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/series\/raising-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Raising New Mexico<\/a>\u00a0project, photographer Don Usner catches up with people he photographed decades ago, when they were children.\u00a0<\/em><em>Here&#8217;s the story of one of them.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy name is Cinthia Yaneli Mu\u00f1oz Fierro,\u201d the young woman announces, introducing herself in the Mexican custom with all her given and family names.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was supposed to be born, as far as my parents\u2019 plan, in El Paso,\u201d she says. \u201cThat would have given me dual citizenship. But because my mom didn\u2019t make it across in time, I was born in Ju\u00e1rez, Chihuahua. And right now, I am technically just an illegal immigrant; I don\u2019t have U.S. citizenship whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cinthia doesn\u2019t remember crossing <i>la frontera <\/i>at age 3<i>,<\/i> but that twist of fate thrust her into a legal bind from which she hasn\u2019t yet managed to extricate herself. And it wasn\u2019t the only twist of fate to shape her life.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article is part of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/searchlightnm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Searchlight New Mexico\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0year-long journalistic investigation into child well-being in New Mexico. Read the series, Raising New Mexico,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/series\/raising-new-mexico\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was born, something happened, and I was born different,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n<p>That something was cerebral palsy.<\/p>\n<p>While it inflicted an awkward limp, bringing ridicule from classmates, \u00a0the citizenship issue affected her adult choices as she got older.<\/p>\n<p>I met Cinthia when her mother, Meli, was hired to help care for my grandmother, who was then 101 years old. We didn\u2019t ask about their citizenship; we were just happy to find someone who was loving and able to help us.<\/p>\n<p>The scrappy 3-year-old I met in 1999 &#8212; soon after her arrival in the U.S. &#8212; is part of a special class of undocumented immigrants, those who came to this country as children. Federal policy for a time offered these arrivals a path to citizenship. Today, however, their status is caught up in a political football game &#8212; the fight over DACA &#8212; played out by powerful people thousands of miles away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember how happy my mother was when she told me that I could live with her in Chimay\u00f3 when she worked taking care of Grandma Benigna,\u201d Cinthia recalls, referring to my grandmother as if she were her own.<\/p>\n<p>Those happy days didn\u2019t last long. My grandmother passed. Meli moved to take care of an elderly man &#8212; then another, and another. Cinthia enrolled for a year at the preschool where my wife worked, but we eventually we lost track of her.<\/p>\n<p>She and I recently reconnected on Facebook. She told me she and Meli had led a peripatetic existence since I last saw them.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t even know how I ended up here,\u201d Cinthia muses. \u201cI just remember living with a bunch of different people &#8212; for a time with my brother and his entire family in this one little trailer. We all had to crowd with each other &#8212; all the kids had to sleep in one designated area and the adults in another &#8212; my brother, his wife, his kids, their cousin\u2019s kids, or their cousin\u2019s cousin\u2019s kids \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Her education paralleled her shifting home life. Each year, she attended a different elementary school, trying to make new friends and stay away from the bullies who browbeat her about her limp.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a lot of struggles, and not just getting along with people, but explaining about my leg, because I would always get pointed out: \u2018Why do you walk different?\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>When her mother found a job in Pojoaque Valley, they moved yet again. It was Cinthia\u2019s senior year of high school, and she began to excel and make friends; more importantly, she met a social worker who reviewed her educational history and determined she hadn\u2019t been receiving required services. One of those was physical therapy.<\/p>\n<p>She began visiting the University of New Mexico\u2019s Carrie Tingley Hospital, where she was treated and her leg re-evaluated. Surgery eventually helped improve her mobility.<\/p>\n<p>But once again, their peripatetic existence undermined her chances.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey did help me out a lot in Pojoaque,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t graduate there because things happened with my mom\u2019s job again and we moved back to Santa Fe, and she didn\u2019t have enough money to drive me to Pojoaque.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Instead, she quit school and married Alex, her high school sweetheart. Two years later, they enrolled in an online learning program from which they graduated last summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe actually managed to pull it off!\u201d she declares triumphantly. \u201cAnd I am the only one in the family who legitimately has a high school diploma.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the issue of her citizenship continues to loom large. Though she landed a good job with a cell phone company, she had to leave it once the manager made clear he would no longer tolerate undocumented people on his payroll.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt has been kind of hard to find work, and I\u2019ve been just babysitting. When I was little, I didn\u2019t really think that not having citizenship would be a struggle, but now I\u2019ve seen that if you don\u2019t have a Social Security number, many places, even some hospitals and some doctors don\u2019t want to see you. And most places won\u2019t hire you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She and Alex were evicted from their home on Christmas Eve, but while neither one has solid work prospects, she remains optimistic \u2013 dreaming, she says, about eventual citizenship, steady work and stability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cinthia doesn\u2019t remember crossing la frontera at age 3, but that twist of fate thrust her into a legal bind from which she hasn\u2019t yet managed to extricate herself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":509926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[140,234],"class_list":["post-509742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children","series-raising-new-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}