- This program is made possible through support from Misericordia University.

(soft music) - I just want to, I do improv a lot, so if you don't mind, I just want to do something that my good friend Thea Langoson came up with.

I don't know what I'm gonna do, but we're gonna just try it for like 30 seconds to a minute.

I don't know what's gonna happen, but just, just roll with it.

I just wanna see if this inspires my story that I've already written.

Okay, so we're gonna close our eyes.

Take a deep breath.

(breathing deeply) And I want you to think of your happiest memory, your happiest memory.

Don't judge or try to pick the best one.

Just pick one and really go there right now.

Just think of that happiest memory.

Try to live there.

(soft music starting) Notice what colors or sounds are happening and who's there.

And from this moment, if you feel inspired, just shout out words from that happy memory.

- [Audience Member 1] Rustling trees.

- [John] Rustling trees.

Thank you.

What else?

- [Audience Member 2] Smile.

- [John] Smile.

Yeah.

What else?

- [Audience Member 3] Laughter.

- [John] Laughter.

- [Audience Member 4] Free.

- [John] Free.

- [Audience Member 5] Family.

- [John] Family, yes.

- [Audience Member 6] Honor.

- [John] Honor.

- [Audience Member 7] Love.

- Love!

Okay, thank you.

I think that's everything.

I'll use that hopefully in the story.

Maybe, maybe not.

I don't know what's gonna happen.

But it does feel a lot better.

(soft guitar music) - If we don't tell our own stories, if we don't have our own voices, then other people are gonna tell us stories for us.

Other people are gonna put labels on us.

- What's your story?

Just, just ask, "What's your story?"

'Cause everyone's got one.

And probably there's more in common with you than even if, you know, I do hear a lot of like, apologies.

Oh, I'm just a, a mutt from like, my family's been here for generations.

But you, there's still a story behind that.

- But I consider myself an immigrant.

I also consider that word to be a little bit redundant in the United States.

It's a hot take, but all over the world, the human experience is very transient.

Humans are traveling all over this globe.

So to be an immigrant, it's redundant.

- If it's about immigration, I'm comfortable and I'm happy to talk about it all day long.

When I hear that topic, it's just, I feel like my heart speaks first for me.

You know, I don't have to, I don't have to talk.

It'll just come out because I'm so comfortable with it, with talking about things that are bad about it, you know, the things that scare me, things that I, I'm upset about, but also the progress and what I really wish for other people.

- If this was the story of immigration and this being what most people think they know, what they really know is this.

- I'm first generation Filipino.

I was born here with the group that came over with my parents of nurses and engineers.

I was one of the first that was born in the United States.

And Lalaine is, I was the only one in my group named Lalaine.

But since I've become an adult, I've found other Lalaines, which is really interesting to see how we were all born around the same era, after the 1963 Miss Philippines.

My legal name is Lalaine, but no one ever calls me that except my mother, which is the lie I tell, all the time.

My mother does not call me Lalaine and she never has.

And in my experience, Filipinos rarely ever go by their given name.

My family has always called me Ging-Ging, which means little sister and it's a title as well as a name.

So my mother called me Ging-Ging until the adulthood and then I became Ging after that, so my nieces and nephews call me Tiya Gang.

So who is Lalaine?

I love to ask people if they were named after anyone.

I, my dad named me after Lalaine Bennett, who represented the Philippines in the 1963 Miss Universe pageant and was revered as the ideal of Philippine beauty, the pride of the Philippines for rising to third runner up, you guys, third runner up.

So growing up, the Miss Universe pageant, watching that on TV was a serious family ritual.

We had complex scoring systems and all this other, all the factors trying to predict high finish for Miss Philippines.

And thanks to the internet, I've since then discovered that there are many women around the same age as me who are also named Lalaine.

So Lalaine is a Philippina name of potential and promise.

No one calls me Lalaine because I don't have the patience to explain it and to walk them through how to pronounce it, how to spell it, explain its origin.

In the sixth grade, I didn't want to embarrass my science teacher for his pronunciation.

So I went the whole year that class as Laura Branigan, look her up.

80s pop star stunned the world with her iconic anthem "Gloria."

And you will thank me for that ear worm.

Lalaine was not only difficult to pronounce, but it had too many letters.

Back in the day of standardized registration forms, Lalaine Rajita Bangilan didn't fit on American documents.

Thus this unfortunate illustration of an actual experience in which I ran out of spaces on my attendance form in my junior year.

And these were all handwritten, you understand?

So teachers just directed us to do our best with the forms that were given, which was fine until the day a substitute, who was taking role, read off the attendance card as written and I had to be Le Lang or Bang for the rest of the semester.

For a child of immigrants, these forms are a crisis, a trauma, every time.

American forms require a first, middle, and last name because Americans have a middle name that goes with their first name.

Filipinos sometimes have a middle name that goes with their first name, but everyone has a middle name that goes with their mother's maiden name.

So when you see a form that has only three blanks, you have to choose which name gets left off.

You have to choose which letters get cut off.

So mainstreaming my name to Lane simplifies that problem, erases that problem.

It erases that problematic part of my identity.

So in my senior year of high school, I mainstreamed my own name to the more easily pronounceable Lane, never Laney.

You may think that I married a man named Mike Little, Little having only six letters, as opposed to eight letters in Bangilan, to get out of the name conundrum, and it would be a lie to say that wasn't a factor.

I have been Elaine or Lane Little for 26 years.

Lane Little is a modern name, a superhero name, a competent name, a pronounceable name, which is fine.

Until I meet someone who is only ever corresponded with me over a phone or email.

Then I need that someone in person and they're visibly startled to see me.

"You're Lane Little, you're Lane Little, you're-" and then they try to cut, recover, but it's too late.

I saw you, man.

I saw you get startled.

Naming is an act of love.

(soft music) Nicknaming is an act of affection.

Mainstreaming is an act of convenience, but should never be assumed.

Pronouncing and spelling someone's name correctly isn't an act of nobility.

It's an act of acknowledgement and respect.

It takes time and practice to say a name and spell a name correctly.

But when someone you love says your name correctly, it's not "Gloria," the quintessential 80s hit by Laura Branigan.

It's "Glorious' and it's the sweetest sound in the whole whole world.

And that's no lie.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) Now I insist the upon it.

I insist that people pronounce it correctly.

When I meet students, I insist that I be able to pronounce their names correctly.

And it's, we wanna get past that discomfort.

And I want to share with students that you don't have to go through a lifetime of someone calling you Laura Branigan or whatever the name is.

If you are attached to your name, if your name means something, if it's from someone who loved you and you want to honor them by using the name that they gave you, that these things are all important and shouldn't be dismissed.

I hope they're not stumbling as much as, as what they would be, I think otherwise, if they didn't realize that it is a struggle on both sides.

For things like names or things like foreignness and other and to crossover that divide is, is rewarding and not, well despite the awkwardness.

- I came to the United States undocumented in the mid 1980s when I was around 15 years old.

So I been in Chicago for almost, wow, 35 years now.

So been in Chicago, in the United States longer than I was in Guatemala.

My family made worry dolls to sell at the airport to the tourists.

So because the Civil War, a lot of tourists stopped coming to Guatemala.

So we couldn't really sell that many dolls.

So, it was both a financial and a civil war situation.

The plan was for our parents to come to the United States, make some money, go back to Guatemala, but things continued to get worse in Guatemala.

So, they decided to change their plans and bring us to the United States instead.

And they decided to bring us undocumented.

So we really didn't have a saying on it.

It is not like I could tell my mom and my dad, "No, we're gonna stay here.

Good luck.

I'll see you in 20 years."

You know, we didn't have a saying on it and my parents didn't see as a good thing for us to stay in Guatemala because of the civil war, because of the financial problems.

So we just, we came to the United States that way.

I became a storyteller because when I was a kid, I used to stutter.

And when I came to the United States, I used to stutter.

I didn't know the language, I wasn't documented so I didn't have a voice.

But I used to write a lot.

I used to write my feelings down on pieces of paper for, in poetry.

I used to write a lot of poetry for years.

But I gave all that to myself.

So my wife and I have two pit bulls, and my wife is usually the one that walks the pit bulls because, she loves walking.

But in this day she got stuck at work.

So she told me to please walk the pit bulls before I went to work.

Now the thing that you need to know about this day is the one of our pit bulls, the one that is mine, the little one was a little bit sick, because she's like a little vacuum, like anything that's on the floor that you can eat, she will eat it.

Apples, oranges, cookies, whatever.

She will eat it.

So, she probably ate something that made her sick.

So she was feeling a little bit stomach sick.

So my wife told me, "Make sure that when you walk her, she doesn't eat anything on the street, because she's already sick.

I don't want her to be worse."

So I'm walking our two pit bulls down the street and I see as slice of pizza on the floor.

It has ants all over.

And my dog immediately, like she wants to grab it, and I pull at her lease, and I'm like, "No!

(speaking Spanish)."

See, I speak Spanish.

My dogs are going to speak Spanish.

(audience laughing) So I'm telling my dog, "No, you cannot eat that because you already sick.

You're gonna get more sick."

While I'm talking to my dog, the other dog, my wife's dog goes around me and (eating sound), eats the pizza in one bite.

And I go like, (speaking Spanish).

What are you doing?

You ate the pizza?

And I'm talking to them when I notice there's an old lady looking at me like, and my first thought is, she's a afraid of dogs.

She sees the two dogs, pit bulls, because most people are afraid of pit bulls.

She probably wants to walk on the sidewalk.

So I pulled the two dogs, I told them to sit and I told the lady, "It's okay, you can walk."

And she looks at me and looks at my dogs, and I say, "It's okay, they are friendly."

And she said, "Well, they'll be a lot more friendly, if you wouldn't be screaming at them."

I mean I wasn't screaming at them, I was being a little bit loud.

But that's, you know, when we are Latinos, that's the way we talk.

You know, we get excited about this.

Hey!

(speaking Spanish), like I love you.

And we like screaming but I'm not really screaming.

I'm just talking.

This is the way we talk.

And I'm trying to, I tell the lady, "I wasn't screaming to them.

I was telling them not to eat the pizza because she's sick."

And she's like, "Whatever.

And by that way, this is America.

You should speak English."

These are my dogs.

If I wanna speak Spanish to them, I can speak Spanish to them.

So I look at the lady, I say, "Yes, this is America, (speaking Spanish).

This is America.

And I have the freedom to speak any language that I want."

She looks at me and she barks.

We and my dogs, we bark louder.

(growling) She looks at us and she walks away.

The next day when I see my wife, she's on the computer and I'm walking into the room and she's like, "You are famous."

I go like, "What?"

"You are trending on Facebook."

I go like, "Is it because of my storytelling?"

She's like, "No.

There's a post on Facebook about some crazy guy that was walking some dogs and abusing dogs."

And I'm like, "That cannot be me."

She said, "Listen."

She starts reading, "There's a short guy."

I'm like, okay, maybe me.

"With long hair."

I'm like boy, it's beautiful long hair, but yeah, probably me.

"Good looking."

I'm like, "It's definitely me."

"That is walking two dogs and is abusing them.

Somebody should call the police."

And then I start to, then I start to see the comments.

"Oh, somebody should call ICE."

"Oh, those people use the dogs for fighting."

"Oh, those people should not be allowed to have dogs."

And I get mad.

Now I really want to scream, now I'm really upset.

I want to get on the computer.

I'm like, "Listen you, (beeping sound)."

And I'm about to do that when my wife takes my arm, and I know immediately what she's trying to tell me.

Be cool, be calm, be smart.

So I go on the computer, but I make my own Facebook post.

I post a, I post a picture of me and my wife and our two dogs.

I post a picture of the doctor where we took the dog.

I took a post, a picture of the place where we adopted the dogs.

And I put a little explanation.

We just adopted this dog.

My dog is being a little bit sick.

The doctor say to be careful.

I was walking down the street, I explained the situation, and little by little I can start to see comments, "Oh, maybe other people over-reacted."

Yes, things happen.

And on the other post the comments are starting to get deleted.

And then a day later the post is deleted.

It's gone.

I still have my post on Facebook.

I still have it there, because I'm afraid that someday I'm gonna be walking my dogs and somebody else is going to be accuse me or trying to call ICE or trying to call the police or trying to get, take my dogs away from me.

Because you see, (soft music) people like me, people of color, we are always guilty until proven innocent.

Thank you.

I spent years undocumented.

In my first 15 years, I say, tell people I didn't have papers 'cause I didn't have documents.

And the next 15 years I didn't have papers, 'cause I was broke.

So for the first 15 years of of my life, I was undocumented.

And it's a taboo, you know, in the Latino community that I can speak for, is a taboo.

Even, a month or so who are undocumented, we don't discuss that, like we don't have papers.

'Cause you never know who's gonna be calling ICE, calling the police.

When I first started telling stories, I, the first story that I ever told was about my first day in Chicago.

And I didn't mention the fact that I was undocumented.

I just mentioned the fact that I just, I just arrived to Chicago.

It's my first day.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was basically an immigration story.

So as I started to share more immigration stories, I started to realize most of my stories had to do with immigration, with being undocumented, with being in this country and there's a lot of kids.

When DACA first started, which is like the movement to provide undocumented kids that came to this country very young with documents so they could study, so they could have a job.

When DACA first started, there were a lot of brave kids who were undocumented at the time and spoke about being undocumented.

And I was like, wow, these kids are so freaking brave.

They are talking about being undocumented.

Wow, they are undocumented, and I don't want to talk about being undocumented now that I have papers.

So I told the need, that I needed to tell these stories, because there's a lot of people out there who need to hear this, that need to be educated and informed about what's going on.

- I'm John Gubertatios and I'm from Minnesota.

Wait, wait, no, wait, what?

Which, where you from do we want?

What are we doing?

This is the where you from, like where your people from?

Or like where you live in the United States, where are you from?

My parents are from Eritrea.

Do you all know where Eritrea is?

Anybody know where Eritrea is?

Yeah?

Wonderful.

If you don't know, it's on the northeast corner, the Horn of Africa, right next to Ethiopia.

Eritrea is known for rejecting the most amount of aid, foreign aid.

So if you, you know, you could pretty much just call it Wakanda, because Wakanda did the same thing.

And that's where I'm from.

Yeah, I love, I love that.

Look, my last name isn't spelled correctly.

So that's why I have a lot of empathy.

My parents didn't spell it the way typical people with that last name would spell it.

My parents spelled it how they wanted to.

So if I google myself, it's just me with that spelling.

That's incredibly lonely.

My family came to the United States, because they were leaving the Civil War.

Well, they first, they fell in love, they fell in love and then they, they promised each other to rendezvous in Sudan.

And it was like a 30-day camel ride, over the desert, through the desert.

It was very dangerous.

My mom like just barely survived.

She got there, well, my dad sent a letter.

He was like, you can come if you want to come.

I love you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No, but you know, he sent the letter and she came, she committed to that 30-day trek.

And it's dangerous 'cause it's like, you know, dead bodies and just, you can get, you can get robbed.

It's very dangerous.

And then they had me in Sudan, and then they won the lottery to take the citizenship test.

And then they, my dad, he passed the test and then we got sponsored and came on over to Minnesota.

When I was three years old, my mom tells me that we flew into JFK and I threw my baby bottle away, right away, just got rid of it.

And I was like, "Why?"

She still doesn't know why I did that.

I believe that I did that because this is America and it's time to grow up.

Everybody's got a job to do, unfortunately.

My parents had two or three jobs, sometimes four.

I had a job, it was babysitting myself.

Wow, the hours of midnight to 5:00 AM, you really gotta use your imagination.

Is that a coat hanger, coat rack, or a murderer?

Every night, you gotta really go ahead and stretch yourself.

If there's jingling keys, you play the game of hope.

We hope it's mom, we hope it's mom coming.

It's a lot of fun.

And, honestly, I really loved Latchkey, because that was where I got to be a kid.

It's an afterschool program.

I didn't have to have any responsibilities except for be a kid.

One day, at five years old, Latchkey was like, "Anybody wanna go camping?"

And I was like, "What is camping?"

And they told me what camping is and I was sold.

To be outside in the woods with your friends, playing, nothing sounds better.

Honestly, if like, you know, if we could all go outside right now and play, I would be down to do that.

That's how serious I am about it.

The only problem was I didn't know how to tell that to my parents.

My mom's a prisoner of war.

My dad was in, you know, the military.

I'm not gonna be able to explain to them, that trust me, all of our friends at school are gonna go sleep outside from Saturday to Sunday.

There's no way they would buy that.

There's absolutely no way.

But I tried my best.

So I had a council meeting with me, my mom, my dad, and I objectively tried to sell them on this idea.

My father was like, "What?

You think I'm an idiot?

You're gonna sleep outside?

You think I brought you to this country?

Do you think I struggled outside, so my child can go outside?"

I was like, "You got a good point."

(audience laughing) "But Dad, you really can't say much.

We moved to Minnesota.

It's like literally the opposite of everything we are.

It is lily-white snow and cold.

It's really white too.

It's Norwegian white.

That's a different kind of white, entire state of Minnesota.

It's like a Norwegian village everywhere I go.

And I, my dad was like, "Okay, you got a good point, fair."

And so they let me go.

They, they definitely, well and, I mean it wasn't that easy.

I had to keep selling them.

It was like a two or three day thing.

And now, upon reflecting upon it, my dad is a G because he knew he can't just send his black son into the woods in Minnesota.

That doesn't even sound right as a sentence.

So they finally let me, they let me go camping.

And when I tell you I was, I was so excited because the whole, the whole concept is freedom to me at five years old.

That is freedom.

I got to play.

I got to be a kid.

I didn't have responsibilities.

My last name was just somebody else's problem and my first name is actually Yohanas, but my dad named me John so that I could fit in more.

So all of these things were thrown onto me that I didn't have a choice in all of these labels and things that I had to carry as a five year old that just wanted to play.

So, the woods was a big deal.

And I couldn't fail my parents and let them know that I was right about sending their five year old black son to the woods.

I had to prove that to them.

So, that day came and we loaded up and we trucked out to northern Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota.

And I got there right away.

Problem ensued.

I started to catch a fever.

I got the chills and I told Vicky, she was one of the leads.

I said, "Vicky, whatever you do, don't call my father yet.

Just let me see if I can figure this out."

Vicky had no sense of responsibility.

And she was like, "Okay."

She was taking directions from a five year old.

Okay, so fine.

I just kept buying time and I just thought I'd wait it out.

Vicky had an idea, "You know what'll help?

I'll cool you down, we'll put you in a tub.

I got frozen milk, half gallon of milk, and I'm just put that on your body."

Wow.

The 80s, they would cool you down with frozen milk.

That's ridiculous.

But that didn't help.

I was frozen, I was shivering.

You really can't do anything at a certain point.

I said, "Fine Vicky, ring my father."

She called him.

It was a big rotary phone and I could hear my dad on the other side.

He was like, "What?"

I'm like, "Yeah, sorry.

It seems like your son's really sick.

He's breaking out with horrible rashes."

There was just a whole bunch of back and forth and I could hear him on the other side, and I was like, "Yes, Vicky, just tell him the truth.

I'm sick.

All right?

I failed?"

That was the first time that I feel like I failed.

Like I let down everybody.

And that was a big, big let down, was a big L for me.

I didn't even really have the tools to properly process that.

So I passed out on the ride home, just as a kid would.

And when I woke up, I do believe them being normal, they were grounded, and they just let me know, like we were just scared that you were sick.

That's all.

I thought, "What?

I thought you were going to whoop me.

I thought you was going to whoop me.

I thought it was gonna gimme a whooping."

No, not at all.

(soft music) They were just scared for their life because they sent their little black boy out into the woods in Minnesota.

That's scary enough.

So I think, I think through it all, what I learned was so many things.

I mean later when I was 13, I went camping again and got to experience the freedom of camping.

Although I did get caught making out with a girl and was sent home immediately.

Funny how life just keeps repeating itself.

I don't know how that happened, but the gift that I did have was them letting me know that you really didn't have to prove anything.

You could just go.

And that was okay.

And now as an adult, I do improv for a living and what I do is play and I connect with people and that requires a lot of courage 'cause I have to tell myself that I don't have to prove anything and I am enough.

Thank you.

I'm John Gebretatose.

(audience applauding) This topic has a lot of, immigration can be a struggle.

It can be very hard and it can be scary.

But one thing is for sure is that, in my experience while having so many different families take care of me from all walks of life, which feels like a version of immigration within immigration, it feels like it's only been blessings when I look back.

I've only been able to receive blessings and give.

It's only been wonderful.

I never, at the moment, there's just tons of burdens.

How do you, you know, find a school or find a job, learn a language to survive.

There's a lot of obstacles, but around the corner they all tend to work out great.

And then I think the, I think the US government immigration system has a lot of areas and hypocrisies that need to be carefully and strongly examined.

Not just for people here right now, obviously, but for the interests of the United States and its future to compete and to stay relevant.

I think that's important.

But that's a separate, that's a separate thing.

I just, I just feel like it's, it seems sometimes a little bit too convenient that some groups get to come to United States without, you know, problems, and others are denied.

So if that's, if that's still happening in a free nation, then it's, that's a tricky word how they're using free.

That's how I feel about it.

- And I'm from El Salvador, but I was born here, but I just, so many trips over there that it's just like, I remember that, you know, I remember those trips there, because it was just like I felt at home.

Like I would get there and I'd be like, I'm home and I don't know why I live my life here.

I go to school here.

But when I went over there, it was like I felt like I was my dad at his age, you know?

And that's what felt true because when I was at home in the United States, like it would be, it would be always referencing the home that we have in El Salvador.

You know, always referencing that home and always referencing stuff from there.

So it's all I talked about when I was away and when I got there, it felt like I was home because we had a home.

You know, it was a home for us.

It was ours in our neighborhood and I had two homes and I just, I guess my heart just chose that one every time.

I'm a freshman at Misericordia University and I'm extremely proud to just say that one line right there.

Because, (audience applauding) I'm so happy to say that right there, because my family comes from a long, long, long line of poverty and I didn't live that poverty.

I've only heard from it, from what my parents have experienced, what they've gone through, what they sacrificed all for me, for my brothers and for my sister.

My family immigrated from El Salvador; they went through a civil war.

They went through so much, so I wasn't going to ask for much.

At a young age I knew that they put their happiness on the line and they put their future on the line for mine.

And as I grew up older and older, I had a passion for soccer and I couldn't play all the way up until high school.

Travel teams were too much money.

I only had one pair of shoes and the cleats were really, really a stretch.

But it made me happy.

So, one day I find myself at a soccer game and I played for West Scranton.

Scranton is such a, such a beautiful place when it comes to diversity.

Ever since I started in the school district, everyone I went with knew a different language.

Everyone had a story.

Everyone went through something and there was no better feeling than to help someone in need.

When one day I find myself in an away game with my team, really, really far away, about an hour away.

We have none of our fans on the stand, only the opposition.

And I find myself playing on the side where the crowd is, and I make contact with the player and it was rough.

It's a competitive game.

The clock is winding down and only, it's a one goal difference.

Tensions are very, very high.

A lot of animosity comes after that foul.

Parents are yelling, players are yelling, and I overhear the word "immigrant" come out of the stands and I don't believe it.

I don't believe it at all.

The game is stopped and I'm penalized for my actions.

I go to finish my game.

And as that final whistle is blown and every player is walking off that field, I'm the only one left.

Those stands have erupted with hate.

Go back to your country, you're a dog, you're a monkey.

The ooh oohs and the ahh ahhs, they got to me.

They got what they wanted that day.

I looked up into those stands and I thought the energy of hate that they poured right into me.

Just because I was from El Salvadorian descent, I couldn't fight back as much as I tried.

They overpowered me.

I turned around to be confronted by my coach and the referee that I was in the wrong.

I have to walk away.

So I turn around and I don't know what goes over me, but I can't stop crying from that point on until my way home.

I'm in pain and I don't know why.

I'm confused.

Why am I in pain?

I'm proud.

I'm very, very, very proud.

I have nothing to be ashamed of.

But I don't know what is wrong.

The problem is that I have brothers and sisters; they could be discriminated because they are such talented players.

They could change the game in an instant.

And I saw that with no academy, with no money from Rwanda, from all of Central America.

They could change the game.

They could make us win games by many goals, and because of that, they're gonna get hated because of their skin color or because they're talking to their literal brothers in their language.

I could see that happening, easily.

And that's what hurt me to my core, that we went to play high school soccer and that my brothers and sisters could have been in my shoes (soft music) and that was unacceptable.

I couldn't believe it.

The next game, we play Lakeland, they show up with shirts to show their support.

On the front of the shirt it says that "The racism has must be showed the red card."

On the back, it said, "United we stand and divided we fall."

That made me feel supported, that made me know that there was good people out in the world.

They stood up for me at that time.

Obviously as you can hear, racism is a huge, huge problem.

And the only way to get rid of this problem is for everyone to stand up and not be ashamed and not to be scared of or be judged of what other people will say.

No matter if it's a fight between two people versus an entire crowd, you must stand up because at times you pull all your strength together and it's still not enough.

That's one thing that I want everyone here to know.

And the second thing is just to realize that there's so, so many kids out there and immigrants just like me.

I will be motivated for the rest of my life for these people right here.

Nothing will stop me.

I'll never ask why I have to go to work, why I have to go to school.

I'll never complain about anything.

They did the work for me, they gave it all up for me.

It's in my hands now and if you can just gimme a chance.

I just want to thank my parents in Spanish and they're right here.

(speaking Spanish) Thank you all.

My cousin, he lives in El Salvador still.

He goes to school there.

He chose to be there.

You know, we gave him the opportunity to come here maybe with a visa, see if he likes it, but he chose to stay over there.

And the reason we offered him that was because we got a letter.

And that's the most common thing it it for, in those countries, the most common thing is for you to receive a letter from certain people asking, well, demanding for you to go to work for them and do what they say and end of that.

And then if not, then you know, they go for the closest ones to you.

So, that's how they operate down there.

So it's really different.

It's not, you know, oriented around drugs, which is, you know, what happens around the world.

Sometimes it's like oriented around drugs, but this time it's just violence.

In El Salvador, it's, they just wanna recruit the youngest people or just recruit people in general and threaten you with the people that are close to you.

So my cousin received that letter and we just decided to think nothing of it, you know, it just let it off and thankfully nothing happened 'cause it's not always is it, you know, being gonna become true.

Sometimes they just send out a lot of them hoping that they scare a couple.

But we just threw it off and thankfully nothing happened of it.

But he got the, we did get threatened if he wasn't to join them.

And thankfully nothing happened.

But that is how the majority, you know, of things, you know, start evolving down there.

You know, someone gets scared up over that letter and thinks that they have to do it and there you are and you turn into that lifestyle and that's really common.

Not just in El Salvador, I know in Honduras as well, but in El Salvador it's really, really heavy.

And you know, that's the lifestyle I could have been living now if it wasn't for my parents for sure.

I feel like a huge chance that I could have been living that life.

If I wasn't here in a university, you know, like I would've, I'm not gonna say that I would, but there's a high chance that something could have happened and I would've have to, you know, live a entirely different lifestyle, you know.

- To me immigration is, people are in majority of cases going somewhere to do something better, something better for themselves, something better for their family.

Having immigrated, it's not easy to just pack up and leave everything that you know.

And in my situation, being that our countries are perceived to be so similar, I can't imagine coming from a country where everything is different.

The culture shock for me was, and still is 20 years later, a lot more than what I thought it was gonna be.

But when I hear immigration, I always think of people trying to get ahead, make it better.

And yet it's almost become one of the seven words you should never say.

When you're in this country like I was, without papers and illegal, it doesn't matter what color your skin is, it doesn't matter what country that you are from.

What matters is that you share that same fear that every other undocumented person in this country has is that at any moment, somebody could walk up and just take everything away.

But before I get ahead of myself and too preachy, let's go back to how all of my story first started.

'Cause you see it was a love story or so I thought.

Back before Tinder and then Bumble or what all the sites are, we used to have chat rooms.

Yes, 30sLoveRoom26 was where I used to visit every day, virtually.

And I had met this man and we talked for 6, 7, 8 months, I don't really remember.

And we became friends.

That's all it was for me.

I mean, I wasn't one of these people that I was gonna fall in love on the internet.

I didn't; I waited till we met and then I fell in love.

He completely swept me off my feet.

Fast forward a couple months later, decided that was that, I was gonna marry this man.

I was gonna cross the border into the United States with my two children.

We were gonna run off to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

We were going to get married and live happily ever after.

Boy, was I wrong.

Now I talked to him about, you know, what are we gonna do about my immigration papers?

I mean, I wanted to work, I wanted to get a job, I wanted to make new friends, I wanted to start this whole new life.

He said, "Don't worry, I've already contacted our local state representatives.

The papers will be here when we get back from the wedding.

We'll get them all done, filled out.

Everything will be great in the interim.

I can afford to take care of the family.

We'll want for nothing, we'll be fine."

So we ran off, come back, I fill out the paperwork for me and the two kids, get everything done.

First red flag, Krista, give me all of your identification and I will take it to the lawyer and I will have that certified.

I will put the tax forms that need to be attached, get it notarized.

The lawyer will ship this off for us.

Then, it started really slow.

First, back in those days, you could either have long distance on your phone, remember those days?

Or you could have long distance blocked.

Ours all of a sudden became blocked.

The only places I was able to go was to drive my daughter to and from school twice a day, 40 minutes each way.

Once in a while I got the thrill of going to the grocery store.

My son, when he would get off the bus, he would make too much noise.

I would make too much noise.

We all would make too much noise.

You know, doing those normal family fun things that you would do.

So, he either played outside or he had to play in his bedroom, which on several occasions was also the place that he had to eat dinner.

The bedroom door was locked every morning after my husband left for work so that I could not gain access to the computer, so I couldn't communicate to anybody there either.

I knew no one.

I had been introduced to nobody, if somebody knocked on that door, when the kids were home, I was told to keep them quiet, to keep myself quiet and out of sight.

If somebody knocked on the door when he wasn't home, I was not to answer the door.

It was complete and total isolation.

And then that wasn't enough.

He would, he would come home from work and sit in front of his computer for hours and make me sit there on the floor while he watched child pornography with my arm twisted up behind my back so hard that I felt like if I moved one inch, either way, that my arm was going to just snap in two.

It got to the point that if I wasn't so worried about it, whether my arm would break, but whether my mind was gonna break.

I will never forget those images that I had to look at.

I was afraid if I tried to say anything to anybody, I was going to be in a worst position than I was already in.

I was what everybody refers to as illegal.

That fear was solidified the one night when my husband took 22 guns out of his gun case and wiped them down with this white cloth while he was discussing which gun would be better to shoot each one of me and the kids with.

I rushed the kids out the back door.

I begged them, "Run to the neighbors, stay there until I come and get you.

Do not leave until that moment."

Because you see the neighbor was a police officer.

For the first time I was going to reach out and hopefully get some help.

Once he was done terrorizing me and decided to leave and go have fun somewhere else with whomever else, I don't care, I went next door to get my kids.

And the police officer looked at me and said, "You are an illegal, you keep your over there."

So, there was attempt number one.

At that point I knew, just keep your mouth shut.

He said that I owed him my daughter's virginity, that I was to bring her to him.

I refused.

She stayed in town that night at a girlfriend's house even though it was a school night.

And my God was he, that's all right then I'll just take what I want from you.

And he did.

He be brutally raped and beat me that evening.

And what I didn't know until the next day was that my son saw some or all, or I don't know, part of what had happened that night, my 10 year old son.

When he had gotten on the bus that morning, I decided that was it, I was done.

I was calling the police no matter what the consequences were.

I was not gonna let this go any further.

So, while I was calling the police and waiting for them, they then called me back and said, "We have another call from the school that my son had gone into the guidance counselor.

and said how afraid he was for his mom and he was afraid if he said anything, that we would be in trouble because we were illegal.

(soft music) So the cops get there and they want into his bedroom because I had told them about the child pornography and you know, a couple stories that we can't fill in this 10 minutes that I could probably go on for another three hours.

And I said, "We can't go in that room.

It's locked.

I'm not allowed in there."

That's how afraid I was.

There's a locked room in the house that I live, that I share with my husband, and I ain't opening that damn door.

I did that day.

I kicked that down and we found a locked drawer.

And in that locked drawer was all of my identification and all of the immigration papers that had never been filed, that had never been filled out, the tax forms were never attached.

A notary had never signed, never looked at, they probably never left that house.

I don't tell this story this weekend because I want anybody to feel sorry for me or to express sympathy or to say how awful.

What I want it to do is to evoke something in people to look at me.

The story that you did not expect to hear from the white girl on the panel.

You know, this is the, that happens to the brown people, and they deserve it because they haven't followed the laws when they came over.

I look like your mother.

I look like your sister.

I look like your aunts.

I look like your daughter.

I'm from Canada.

And this is the power that can be exerted when you're afraid.

Not everybody's here illegally to do wrong.

Sometimes it's with the best of intentions.

So please don't judge, don't base somebody's good intentions or their need to want to make things better for their family based on a piece of paper that may or may not be in their wallet.

Forget that, let the politicians, I'm sorry, I know I'm on a soapbox, but this is my last chance to make it worth, why I allowed myself after 20 years to share this story.

Let the politicians worry about who's legal, who's illegal.

Let them fix the laws, but let us not lose our humanity in understanding that pieces of paper do not make who we are or are not.

Thank you.

(audience applauding) - This is what makes me who I am.

I'm proud of what I've done and that's what I have is something nobody, that history and where I'm from and how I'm orientated and everything like that, nobody could ever take that away from me.

So if somebody asks, I'm happy to share 'cause it's mine.

So I'm proud of it.

- There's so many of me out there, you know, and you just don't know about it, you know?

And that can just make this world so much a greater place.

You know, like a person that has that much motivation could change the world.

Immigration is, that's what immigration is.

Like it, some people just want to accomplish greatness, you know, because they feel like they already came here.

They're already so far that I want to, you know, I just wanna go big.

Just want to go huge.

And I feel like there's so many others like me out there and it would just be great to just like, you know, just shine light on them and show their stories, you know, and support them and just, it'll make the world a greater place.

- We don't even know the facts.

We're making our minds up about people and about people's lives and about people's futures without knowing anything of their struggle.

Or maybe it's not a struggle.

Maybe it's one big, happy, beautiful story, but because they look different, they talk different, we assume and we have to stop doing that.

One big difference with Canada is I could be sitting in a room and there will be someone over here that's Sikh, there'll be somebody over here that's Korean, there'll be somebody over here that's Portuguese, there'll be somebody over here that's from Britain, somebody here from Germany, you know, couple native born Canadians mixed in there.

And we're all talking.

It's not that we're in our own little groups with our own kind, and I don't see that as much here.

Whatever you think, you know, just put it outta your head.

Just listen to a couple immigrants.

Ask them how much have you assimilated.

What is it that that you had to give up in order to be accepted?

What was your struggle in getting to this country?

What is your struggle every day?

Why did you want to come to this country, outta all the countries in the world?

Why did you want to come to America?

To learn of somebody else doesn't take away from you.

It doesn't take away from your heritage, it doesn't take away from your pride.

It only makes you more knowledgeable, more compassionate, more empathetic, more, full, round, whole.

Stop saying it as a threat.

It's not, it's only an enhancement.

It's that simple.

(laughing) (upbeat music) (music ending) - This program was made possible through support from Misericordia University.