Could you talk to our audience about your home, the circumstances of your upbringing. Guest yes, thank you so much for having me. I grew up in mexico and my family, theyre all entrepreneurs and they worked really, really word to be able to provide my siblings and i a better life and even when i was in mexico i was really surrounded by a really large support system because my family is really close not just emotionally experience. So i grew up in mexico from middleincome family. I use today take piano lessons and karat lessons in my small hometown and that also same with sacrificed and the biggest sacrifice that had my parents were making in order for me to have that kind of life was that we werent together. My parents lived in the u. S. And i lived in mexico and we would only see hech other every few months or i would come to the u. S. And visit them in the summers. Host tell us more about that, your participants deciding to come to the u. S. And live apart from their children, what what how did you experience that as a child . What was that were you aware that that was somewhat unusual, how did it feel . Yeah, i was definitely aware that it was unusual because i, one, missed my parents and two, i could see parents coming to children to school and my parents werent there all of the time and they like i said, they wanted us to have a better life so when i was three 3 years old they used to import sterling silver in the u. S. And sell it at trade shows all across the country and they would go back and forth as part of their business but as a little girl as a child not having your parents with you and only seeing them every few months, first of all, you feel like theyre strangers to you, when i would see my parents they would come bearing lots of presents and when i came to visit them in the u. S. It was Summer Vacation and so it was a very different experience than having parents who are with you every every single day. It was difficult being so aloin at that early age and ultimately thats when my parents decide today bring me to life with them. They had hit hard Financial Times and were unable to go mexico as much and be with me as much and because i was so young they realized that thats not the best way to raise a child and so thats when they decide today bring me to live with them permanently in the u. S. And thats where my life completely, completely changed. Well, thats a very important and very moving part of the book because it is also accompanied by the fact that you were the youngest child of the family and you were a family favorite. I love the place where you say you were a bit of a brat as a youngster because you had so much you were gregrarious and your mother has another child and then suddenly you have a younger brother and its a different dynamic . Guest yeah, my little brother and i have a great relationship. When i found out that my mom was pregnant with my little brother n mexico we have a saying when youre the favorite child you sit on the donkey and that comes from the bible of mary sitting as the donkey as they were walking through to desert of bethleham and in my mind as a 10yearold girl this baby was not only going to take my parents love from me, he or she, i didnt know it was going to be a boy, but they would get to live with my parents in america and i found out that hes a boy and things keep getting worse. Its a big deal to have a male in the mexican culture and a lot to take in and that with the fact with my sisters because they were older they were going to college and high school in a different city. Before i had my sister with me in taxco and my sisters were going to live in a different city. I felt not just abandoned by my parents but now by my sisters too. That was a lot to handle at an early age. Host in the middle of a turmoil, its very difficult to understand these things. Your parents decide that, in fact, you should come to the United States and you do you should which circumstances if one were writing a fairy tale, okay, and they lived happily ever after but we all know that reality is different and you describe a reality that is certainly different. Tell us about that reality of coming to the United States and then being here rather than in taxco with your larger family . Guest yeah, i didnt really didnt know that i was coming to live here. When i came to visit that summer i thought it was just like any other summer when i came to visit my parents and would go back to mexico once the school year started but that summer i never went back and it was it was a really difficult transition for me because i think a lot of people can relate to the fact that when youre a kid one of the most scary things to do is to go to a new school and have to make new friends and i had to do that and learn a new language and all of a sudden learn how to have parents who were with me all of the time, and i also had in my mind america was this sort of fairy tale in a way with a magical place that i experienced through my Summer Vacation of going to six flags and sea world and what i saw on television. There were a couple of show that is were dubbed in spanish that i watched in mexico, denise the menace and Beverly Hills 90210. I never realized that once i lived in san antonio there were people that looked like me that were american. But living here my experience was so different because also my parents financial situation had changed so much and drastically. And even things that i had access to before, such as lessons, we couldnt afford that anymore. It was very difficult to experience and to see my parents working so hard but at the same time it was, it was really eyeopening to me because before that i never realized just how hard and how much my parents were sacrificing in order for me to have the life that i had. Being here i could see firsthand and they were working all of the time, all of the time, they were working so hard. Host thats one of the things about being immigrants in the United States and they were in a situation where they had visas, you had a visa to come to the United States, which is a bit different than most other mexicans coming to the United States. So and they had had a successful business. What happened that made their financial circumstances change so . Guest yeah, it was interesting, this whenever i think we think of undocumented people we always think people crossing the border but the reality is that 40 of undocumenteddism grants in this country never cross the border illegally, their visas expire. My case the tourist visa that expired. What happened with my parents business is that they used to import sterling silver as i mentioned. They had a pretty good routine of getting the silver in laredo, texas and then going through customs and then bringing it to san antonio and in one of those trips the silver that was in the van was stolen and it was probably a hundred thousand dollars worth of sterling silver stolen on the u. S. Side of the border and they were never able to recover from that. Im always amazed at how much my parents accomplished with the resources that they had. My mom never graduated from high school, my dad finished high school by going tonight school and so they accomplished so much and did the best they could but there were some things that they probably didnt think about and so that the silver that was stolen wasnt insured and they were just unable to recover after that robbery and it wasnt for lack of trying, it was just a really difficult circumstances that they that they found themselves in. Host what did they do then in order to make a living . Guest so they they took out, they took out a mortgage and they tried to rebuild the silver business but it wasnt it wasnt the same and so my mom being the relentless entrepreneurial woman that she is saw an opportunity to start selling funnel cakes and start selling snow cones and all sorts of different food items in festivals in san antonio. We used to go festivals when we were little kids and she saw an opportunity to start that business and and thats what we started doing. We started selling funnel cakes in san antonio. Host and you were much part of that enterprise. In the meantime, youre in school, youre smart and youre a very studious discipline student, but school is by in large a really hard experience for you, six grade you mentioned being one of the most terrible years of your life and you become aware of being mexican. Talk about that, talk about that awareness and what it meant to be striving in school, how others treated you, tell us how that felt. Guest yeah, so i think going back to what my idea what america was and only seeing one group of people portrayed on television and feeling that i wasnt part of that and that experience came back when i was learning about the Civil Rights Movement and the history that we tell in the textbooks is a very, its from a perspective of a black and white narrative, i never learned about latinos during the civil war movement and my parents never talk today me about racism and race in america and i dont know if that was because they didnt experience it or they thought since i was growing up in america and i was learning english and i was, quote, assimilating, that i wouldnt have that experience and learning about the Civil Rights Movement impacted me deeply and i used to cry to my dad and tell him about the atrocities that i was learning about in school but i didnt see myself in that and so i didnt think that applied to me but, of course, in sixth grade as you mentioned, there was a kid who when i was placed in honorees math class asked a question and he said why is she in the honorees math class, shes a mexican and she cant even speak english and took everything i had not to cry and in my broken english i said, i dont need to learn how to speak english to do math. Math is a language a universal language and thats why i was always so drawn to it because two plus two is four in any language but that experience really each at that early age i understood the issues that are that are in our culture and i realized that i may not be i may not have been talked about in the textbooks but that it was something that i was going to experience in my life. Host yes, so thats an awareness that youre not growing into and having to deal with so youre contending with a lot of emotional pressures as well as just the social pressures of trying to make friends and and do school work and help your families and parents with their work but youre not at this point very aware of immigration status or what is to come in terms of being illegally in the country. Talk take a forward to how that came about, how did you learn that, what what were the circumstances and how did you understand that at the time . Guest so i youre right that i was not aware of immigration issues because i had really for a long time been able to go back and forth between mexico and the u. S. So that was what was normal to me and i thought that that was what would be available to me always and when my visa expired at the age of 14, my mother was reluctant to talk to me about that. She was reluctant to tell me about my visa having expired and once my visa was expired us being unable to renew it because of our financial circumstances had changed and also because it was a tourist visa and i was studying in the u. S. And granted im a 14yearold girl and i was never asked to come here and here i am now having to understand what it means that my visa is expired. My mother tells me that its because i was pushing her and pushing her about planning my quincaneara, my 15th byrd and grows up in taxco, i dreamed of this monumental thing in my life since i was like 3 years old and im pushing my mom and asking when we are going to go to mexico to have the quincaneara. I knew the financial situation has changed. I just really want to have this experience in my life and finally one day she just blurred it out that my visa had expired and on that day that she told me this, i didnt believe comprehend enormous relevation she had made to me. I couldnt have understood the way in which that one conversation was going shape and impact the rest of my life. I couldnt have known. Host no, you couldnt have known and it plays itself out then over the subsequent years and fascinating way in which you write about it in the book and its tied up with the quincaneara and you said how important its in your culture but its so hugely important in your culture that that disappointment is one cant overstate what a disappointment that would have been, but now you have this knowledge that youre not supposed to be in this country and so youre illegally in the country and thats the beginning of the big secret, the big secret being such a critical part then of your experience and of your story, try help people understand just as a High School Student now why that became, why that is such a complication . Guest theres a lot that goes into you realizing that youre undocumented and how much that changes your how much that changes your life. All of a sudden every decision that you make you have to think about your immigration status and that become it is center of every decision that yaw make and you also start to feel very ashamed, i think, thats the right word. I felt ashamed of being undocumented. I felt like that somehow made me less than and a lot of that had to do with the way of issue immigration is talked about in the media and the way that the news covered the issue. I never heard stories of undocumented people who were graduating in the top 5 of their class or entrepreneurs and employed u. S. Citizens. Those arent the stories that i was hearing. It was about illegal aliens being criminals and when i looked at my parents and i looked at myself, that narrative didnt fit me, but thats how you start to think about yourself. It does something to your psyche when somebody is calling you illegal. How can you as a person be illegal . But you start to internalize all of those things and just there were so many things that to most people are just everyday things that they dont have to think about twice. A lot of my class classmates were going to take drivers ed and you start having to tell this little lie so that nobody finds out your truth, your secret and so even things like that like not being able to get a drivers license or when all of my classmates were starting to think about college, for me thinking about college as much as it was instilled from me in an early age that education is my salvation and education is going to open doors of opportunity and my parents did Everything Possible to make sure that i had the best education that i could have, but even though i was qualified to go to any number of colleges when the time came to apply, i was rejected from all of them because of my lack of a 9digit Social Security number. Host yes, the way you describe the issue of applying and the blank that you had to leave for Social Security does capture in such a specific way the things that we assume that you and people like you could not assume, just a simple thing like being able to fill out a Social Security, but you did excel in high school and you worked extraordinarily hard and it was against some pretty difficult personal circumstances in your home and with your parents at that point. So how did you get into college . Guest well, one of the biggest things that and i keep going back to my parents because i cant thank them enough for everything and for how they how they raised me, but one of the things that my mom told me was that there are a million things that you cannot control and why focus on those things. You have to focus on the things that you can control and do your best and the rest will fall into place and so thats what i did in college. I thought, if i dont if i dont study hard and if im not disciplined about my school work, then then for sure im not going to be able to get into college or be able to go to a great school and so i graduated in the top 5 of my class and i didnt know where i was going to go to college as i walked across the stage in my cap and gown in any graduation and that was also difficult because every student that graduates and walks across the stage, theyll say over over the loud mic where theyre going to school. So and so is graduating and theyre attending such and such university in the fall and when i walked across the stage it was just julissa arce because i had no plans for college and explaining that to my classmates or teachers, why i wasnt going to college when i had the grades i had, when i had the resume that i had was i almost didnt want to there were days that i didnt wanting to to school because i didnt want to have to answer the questions again and again and again. I was really fortunate because the state of texas in 2001 became the first state in all of the u. S. To allow undocumented students to go to college, paid state tuition and 2001 was the year that i graduated from high school and that summer after graduation i learned of this new law and i got in touch with the state senator that was the sponsor for the bill. I told him i told him and his staff about my circumstances and whether or not i would be able to go to school that fall because i had gotten rejected. But luckily, they were able to send a letter to the university of texas at austin simply asking to reconsider my application given this new law and because my grades and test scores and Everything Else qualified me to be accepted, i received a letter two weeks before the semester started that i was accepted to the university of texas at austin and it was one of the one of the happiest days just knowing that finally there was some reward for the hard work that i had put in and for the hard work that my parents had put in long before i was even born. Host well, it is an incredible story and the timing and a couple of angels that were sitting on your shoulders, one being the woman in the Senators Office that took a liking to her and made it a personal project to make sure that this law that had just passed could, in fact, apply right that next school year and the other seems to me was it was your physics teacher. Just tell a little bit about because hes the one that got you to make that call and so just tell us a little bit about mr. G. It is amazing the people that are around that make all the difference. Guest yeah. I still keep in touch with him. Hes been a great mentor throughout my life and in high school he was this really corky teacher that would that would read us stories even though it was physics, every class he would begin by telling us a motivation story and we would go to physics class. He encouraginged me to apply, i never really told him out loud im undocumented, i dont have papers, i would just say, i dont think i can apply to school. I might have to stay home around the house to help my mom and encouraged me, you really have to apply. Theyre going to have to let you in and i dont know if he knew and if he did know he never made me feel embarrassed about it. He never pushed me to tell him more than i was comfortable telling him about and he, you know, he really encouraged me to apply to all different kinds of schools. He would tell me that his letters of recommendations would have to get me in and if they didnt, he didnt know what was wrong with the world. You have to supply there and i didnt want to let him down and so i applied to all of the schools because of him. And its incredible to me sorry, go ahead. Host i was going to say thank goodness for people like that because that guest yeah. Host he made the difference in your future. Guest yeah. Absolutely. Host so youre now at the university of texas, youre one of the top stories in the country and youve chosen to major in business and in youre in one of the top Business Schools in the country. So, you know, theres a whole story of college and the people you make or your possie, your friends and we wont go into that because we want people to read the book and read more about all of that, but i think whats so striking about your time in college to me was sort of deeper issues here of some themes that really run through the book and one of them is family, how driven you are, were of concerns about your family and closeness to your family and the other is your incredible desire and drive to eastern money, to have money. And i wonder whether you could talk a bit about that drive and about those two parts of your life as they became really forces during this time that youre in college. Guest my experience as a child, i saw when i was very young living in mexico, i had a very nice comfortable life. I moved to the u. S. And i see how much my parents are struggling, struggling to make ends meet and that really was instructive in my life and realizing that i didnt want to struggle financially when i was older and i wanted to provide for my family, my dad and my little brother and that really drove me and i think when you when you grow up and you dont have a really they really drive you and motivate you to work hard to get those things and for me Financial Success was more than than just the money. To me having Financial Success was a way to earn my way into america. I thought that if i could earn enough money maybe somehow i would be able to fix my immigration status and maybe somehow i would be accepted into america because maybe i could earn my way into it. Of course, i was naive in the thinking because thats not how it works but that was my drive and and thats what i worked towards. I worked really hard because i thought i want to get a greatpaying job. I didnt know whether i could or not because i was still undocumented but kept my mothers word in the back of my mind, do the things you can and let the other things you cant control, let themselves play out. So i focused a lot on school and, yeah, youre right that Financial Success was what drove me but there was so much behind that. It wasnt just that i want to get rich. It was all the things that i could do once i had that Financial Success. Host well, thats so clear in the way that the that you write the book and in what it is that you do with your, you know, with your ultimate, you know, later Financial Success. Im going to read this one paragraph that i think captures it so well and really describes how what youre up against, what you were facing. Its on page 83. I was ready to escape and by then it was about much more than just the escape from my unhappy home life. Going to college was the next step in the American Dream. I had been taught to chase, i thought constantly about what it would feel like to be someone important, successful and powerful. I wanted to make all kinds of money so i could solve all of our problems. I would finish the dream home my parents had stopped building, pay for my father to go to rehab and pay for julios education. I would resolve my immigration status so it wouldnt be issue anymore and rise above all challenges my family and i face today live the great promise that america gives to so many if i were successful enriched, why would anyone want to turn me away . Its such a powerful set of ideas and circumstances that you were dealing with in trying to tackle, so you were in college and you turned to be an exceptional student. Youre not only an exceptional student in terms of grades, you have friendships but youre also working your way through, youre warning hard. For a while youre computing back and forth to san antonio doing funnel cakes on the weekend in order to be able to pay for school and then you recognize through the student hispanic Business Organization that you should be getting an internship and so youre very savvy in getting internship and you manage to land in the summer of your junior year, i believe, at Goldman Sachs in new york. So you have this extraordinary internship, tremendous important but youre also still dealing with the issue that you dont have documents, youre going to have to go through background checks, et cetera, and you get a job offer from them. You have the opportunity to be in a really extraordinary Mentorship Program. I want you to talk to people in this audience about what that was like, being in new york, being at a topflight firm like Goldman Sachs and and for me it was in many ways captured by this story that has to do with never eating the shrimp. Dont ever eat the shrimp has a way of illustrating what that culture was like and what that work was like. Tell that story and use it as and i lust ration of helping people to understand what that life coming into Goldman Sachs was like. Guest yeah. Working at gold man and having that opportunity as you mentioned of interning at goldman for the summer was just such an Incredible Opportunity and also such a stark difference between the world that i grew up in and now the world of finance and wall street and you were here to work and dont eat shrimp, we had a lot of opportunity to go to Networking Events and through this Mentorship Program the sponsor for educational opportunities, they taught us a lot of technical things just from financial modeling and how you handle yourself in a business context and so the big thing was even though there was so many food and as someone who didnt grow up like that to seeing all of this massive and shrimp cocktails and fancy things that i wasnt used to, of course, you wanting to and take part in that but you were told no, you with you are there to network and get a job, you dont eat the shrimp, you need to have your hands free to take peoples business cards and write note in the business cards so you can later thank them and send them handwritten thank you notes, you were there to network. Every networking opportunity in new york city is an opportunity to land a job, to land your next deal, to land your next promotion even. So that was the culture that you lived in and you could never turn off. It was never just having a drank. So learning social skills and network, you were really doing intense work and you were obviously very good at it. Why were you whats your were you surprised at how successful you were, what is it you think that allowed you to be so very successful at Goldman Sachs as a young financial analyst . Guest the first thing is that ive always been taught to work hard. Thats like the very first baselayer thing that i must do. I must do the work. So i was the first one to come in and the last one to leave and i worked really, really hard. I asked smart questions. I did research that maybe someone else might not do. And so i wasnt i wasnt surprised at the success that i had because i very much felt like i was earning that success and i was working really hard towards that success, but, you know, i was also incredibly fortunate to have amazing mentors that taught me things that i may have not known or told me things they needed to look out for and they helped me understand and navigate the Political Part of the Business World because you can do the work and you can be the best person at your job but you still also have to worry and think about navigating like i said the political aspects of it. Who is going to speak up for you when there are meetings about who is getting promoted and when there are meetings about what the raises are going to be, what the bonuses are going to be, you want to make sure that theres someone in that room thats advocating for you and so all of those things i wouldnt have known if it wasnt for the incredible mentors that i had. Host well, you were in a situation where there were several people that really took care of you, that really helped you learn as you said. But you also were a latina, you were obviously female, not that many females in that Business World were but not nearly as no way and you were continuing to deal with the incredible secret and always concerned about whether it might catch up with you at some point so perhaps talk a little bit about when you actually got the job offer after the internship, came to new york, moved to new york, had an apartment and were facing the first day of going to work and knowing that you yet again were going to have to deal with documents, background checks and so forth. What happened to you . Yeah, that day was really scary because i had already i had already passed the background check and on that first day of analyst training as you do in any new job, you have to fill out your tax form and you have to give two copies of id and so i didnt know whether my documents were going to stand out, if they were going to look different than everybody elses real documents. It was a really scary day. I mean, i was so nervous and so scared. This fear that you live in when youre undocumented always having to hide, always having to live your life in the shadows, always worried and scared that someone might find out and you might get deported and everything you worked hard for is going poof and disappear. It was really it was so much that if i wasnt dealing with it emotionally because i still had to present myself in a professional manner, it definitely came out in a physical way with me. I mean, i had awful headaches and back pains and all sort of ailments because of the incredible stress of having to keep secret while at the same time trying to stand out with my work. There was always the push and pull. I want to go really fast and i want to get promoted and i want to stand out and at the same time having to take a step back because you dont want to get noticed or found out. It was a lot to deal with. On that issue of documents, tell us because people its hard to fathom how somebody that doesnt have documents can fill out the forms and level of scrutiny that is given or werent given to it. What documents did you have . Guest i had a Social Security card and those documents were fake. It was a really difficult decision to make and i hope that we can all relate in having to make difficult choices and decisions in our life. I think all of us have been faced with hard decisions where there isnt the right answer and you move forward and i was 19 years old when i made the decision to purchase this fake document. The funnel cake stand that i had had to be shut down because the city of san antonio built a museum and then i had to make a decision, do i drop out of school, do i get a job and continue to find ways to pay for school and thats a decision that i had made and those are the documents that i used to a few years later apply for this job at Goldman Sachs and i dont know how the documents were. They were fake to the truest sense of the word that they didnt belong to anyone, i wasnt stealing any ones identity, they were completely made up numbers and somehow they worked. When you go through a background check, theyre checking for a criminal background which, of course, i didnt have and i think the other the other aspect of this is that because we have this idea in our mind of who undocumented people are, the jobs that we do, no one was really going to question my documents, right. I had graduated from a top 5 Business School in the country, i was professional, i was polished because of all the mentoring that i had gone through. So when i presented my papers, no one was going really look at them and say, are these papers real. It was more of a check the box as they did with everybody else at analyst training. Host and what youre describing, of course, from all external characteristics, you werent the stereotype and you werent in the settings where any kind of preconceived notion would have come into play and it is a very theres a lot to think about in in that reality. So you managed to get through these things and you managed and youre obviously now doing very well at goldman, youre promoted, youre getting at a certain point very substantial salary increases, from all external indications really on the path to success. And youre doing extremely well and as much as thats the case on the outside, its very different on the inside, very much on the inside youre having different emotions, different reactions to all of this. Describe to us those contradictions. Guest on the one hand, my story and journey was the definition of the American Dream, right, coming from the background that i came in and working really hard and moving up the economic ladder and on the other hand, i couldnt have been farther away from the definition of the American Dream because i wasnt legally part of what defines american and i always had to to balance those two ideas in my mind, you know, on one hand i had Financial Resources that i understand arent available to a lot of people in our country and on the other hand even though i had the Financial Resources, i was so limited in the things that i could do. I still couldnt drive with a valid drivers license. I couldnt have a credit card. I couldnt even invest my own money even though i was working in the financial industry and i was working with investments and i couldnt apply those things to my own personal life because of my immigration status. So there was always this as you said contradictions in my life and and in some ways it kept me grounded and in other ways they were just constant reminders, constant reminders that i wasnt a part of the fabric and makeup of our country and i couldnt contribute as i wanted to. Host then you had the circumstances of your father dying and your grandmother dying, you couldnt go home to go to funerals. The fact of not having status made it impossible to come back and you would have to abandon what was at this point a successful possible future. So, you know, you then ultimately meet somebody, you get married, that person is an american citizen, that makes it possible for you to adjust your status, youre only able to do so because you came here on a visa and that gets into a technicality which we wont be able to really pursue, but you were among the lucky that was that have been able to adjust status and you have now become a citizen and in the process a lot of personal journal was taken place, a lot of changes in your own thinking that led you to leave the financial industry. So youve left the financial industry and youre now really developing an entire new chapter in your life. Talk to us about writing this book and this personal story which is in many ways a story of cry yum, its also a story of deep pain. Why are you telling it . Guest i realized that i had a powerful story to tell. The kind of story that could really have an impact on the dialogue that we have around really important issues of immigration and immigrants, that my story could give hope to the millions of people who are still living in the reality that i lived in for so long and i felt a really deep sense of responsibility to share that story and to keep the ladder so that other people can climb up in and reach down and bring people up with me. I wrote an outline nine years ago about the book that i would one day write and it was about a month after my dad passed away and i remember the journal entry talking about how i will use pain and suffering and its all going to mean something and all going to be for something and writing this book is the result of that wild aspiration that i had nine years ago and telling my story has been incredibly at a personal level, it has been incredibly free to finally be able to say, this is my truth and this is my story. And on a bigger broader level, i hope that it validates the experience and the feelings and the fear that millions of people are facing because it can be very lonely feeling that way without having anyone else that you can relate to and you feel like youre alone in this world and youre the only one experiencing these things and knowing that there are other people, helps tremendously. I hope people if someone is undocumented or dont consider themselves immigrant at all i still really think that this book is an american story even beyond being a story about an immigrant. Its interesting in coming to new grips with the future coming together, the issue of loneliness does come so clearly that even at the level of sophistication and success that you were operating you actually werent northeasterly as nearly as aware as you are now as how many other people share that story and all of the grassroots effort and activity that has developed in the recent years around people like you, not entirely like you because youve had an exceptional Success Story here but you are really finding a whole Different Community of people to connect with from what i can see, am i right in that . Yeah, you are and in some ways and a lot of ways i feel like im a little bit late to the game here because ive just in the last two or three years really emerged myself into the fight for immigrant fights and but there have been so if people for a long time before i came out with my story that have been working tirelessly, their entire lives to provide more rights to immigrants, and to fight for people to live with dignity and to be seen with dignity and you know, my experience is different because everybodys experiences are unique and different, of course, it was sometimes easy to forget. Being in my apartment on wall street, it was easy to forget that there were people that were struggling so much more than i was and now being a part of this world and hearing the stories every single day, hearing from people who are living, who are living those experiences is incredibly emotional and i feel so proud to be able to be a part of this community and to know that im not alone anymore. Im not alone in the experience that i had and im not alone in the things that im trying to achieve now. Host well, it is talking about changing the conversation, do i want to give you the opportunity to Say Something about this election season that we are in and the way in which immigration is being described, particularly the 11 Million People in the country that dont have legal status, what would you want them to be hearing given the public debate thats currently taking place . Guest yeah, this the narrative in this election and the rhetoric in this election has been and it is incredibly harmful and dangerous and its factually incorrect because the the story that we hear is that 11 Million Immigrants are the recent and the source of all of our countrys problems and that if we just get rid of them that there will be no more problems in america and, of course, that couldnt be further from the truth. And, in fact, when i think about immigrants and why we come here, i always i always have this thought in my mind that immigrants are willing to risk their very lives, they are willing to cross oceans and walkthrough deserts and leave everything behind because thats how much they believe in america, thats how much they believe that they can come to this country in search of a better life and if we we wanted to just get by and get on welfare as many people believe, we would have just stayed where we were. Thats not why we come here and getting rid of 11 Million People is not only dehumanizing rhetoric but when you think about from an economic standpoint, if from one day to the next your population shrinks by 11 Million People and 11 people dont go to work tomorrow and 11 Million People arent buying things and paying sales taxes, that is going to have a big impact in the economy of our country. Not only is deporting 11 Million People not a solution, it actually would create significant economic problems for americans. Well, julissa it has been an amazing time to spend with you, very best wishes and thank you so much for writing this book about your story. Guest thank you so much for having me. Cspans created by American Television company and brought to you by your satellite provide provider. The late neurosurgeon in when breath becomes air followed by life changing magic of tidying up. And National Book award gives thoughts on current state of black america in between the world and me. Next on the list of the most frequently borrowed books at the Madison Public Library jdvance remembers the region in hill billy and the list concludes with cnn host Anderson Cooper and his mother duo memoir, the rainbow comes and goes. Thats a look at some of this months most borrowed books at the Madison Public Library. Welcome to sat at the wisconsin festival. Thank you for coming. Im the director and i would like to welcome you. I would like to welcome everybody watching at home on cspan book tv. We are delighted to be broadcasting from Madison Public Library all day today. 12 hours of incredible culturalc events. I would like to begin byar thanking Madison Public Library and sponsors and partners this year. We have an incredible festival and im delighted. This is my year today, so kind of everjoyed. Im delighted to be introducing kelly, i was just saying i read it as part of panel and we are able to now use as a bigread book so people across the country are able to have conversations about the experience and one of the best people to take us there. Her new book the song poet is a nice companion piece, a memoir about her father and his role of keeping history alive through the tradition. I thought both books were moving and give me such an insight into the role of culture and family life and her family and made me think so much about how it works in my own family