Please note that ms. Arce will be 20 minutes late to the signing. Author julissa arce is making her way over to join us and take your phone calls. Here are the numbers in the 202 7488000 in the east and central time zone, 202 7488201 if you are in the mountain and pacific time zones. We will be discussing immigration policy and also what you heard the altar panel discussing. But festival of books is held every year on the campus of the university of arizona. We are covering events at the gallagher theater but outside on the university quad, quite a few different events are going on. About 150,000 people attend this annual festival and we are pleased to be a part of it. After the program with julissa arce, you will be hearing a panel on the academics and then we will do a call in program. 202 7488200. For those in east and central time zone. 202 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. Julissa arce book is my underground American Dream, true story as an undocumented immigrant who became a wall street executive. Welcome. Thank you for being with us. What were the first 11 years of your life like . Three hours south of mexico city. Its a beautiful colonial town. What i remember as a child i think were different than what people normally think about. I didnt grow up being poor, i had an incredible life but what i didnt realize as a child is my parents werasmy parents wereg incredibly hard sacrificing so much for me to have that kind of life they had but thats where i grew up. Host who were your guardians . Guest i lived with my grandmother and my older sisters and my parents would go from mexico to the usa and travel back and forth. They imported over to the u. S. , so they would always go back and forth. Host and favor mexican citizens, they were not undocumented . Guest but they did have visas to go back and forth. Guest my older sisters and because we live in a small tow, the Educational Opportunities were limited so my sisters moved to a different town where they were going to high school and college so i was left alone with my grandmother and my parents recognized having an 11yearold kid on her own wasnt the best so that is deciding to bring me to live with them. Host what was tortured border like . Guest a lot of people might expect a story how i crossed over the rio grande and climbed over the wall that i actually came here on a plane. Its a boring story. I had a visa and that is how i came here and that is how 40 of undocumented immigrants in the country came here on some sort of a visa that expired and thats how we became undocumented. Host how did you manage as an undocumented immigrant how do you manage to get to school and Goldman Sachs . Guest it is very difficult to manage life as an undocumented immigrants because there are certain aspects of life that are pretty mundane for everyone else like when youre driving a car you dont think twice you are just driving. For me i didnt have a drivers license because texas doesnt provide to undocumented immigrants and therefore, driving a car was really scary. Going to college for example. I have done everything i was supposed to do. I went to, i took ap classes and graduated from high school but i still couldnt get into college and it was the changing the law in texas that allowed me to go to college and for many of us that grew up undocumented, it many times comes from local and state law. Host at what point in your life did you know that you were undocumented . Guest i was 14yearsold when i realized that may visa had expired and that meant i couldnt go to mexico. I tell that story my underground American Dream. The reason is because it was the big party that we have a wii or 15yearsold. I wanted to have one in mexico with all of my family and that is when my mom revealed to me i couldnt go to mexico because if i did i wouldnt be able to come back. Host you mentioned in your talk that there is a stigma attached to that. Guest there is. Much of that comes from the rhetoric. Im using the word undocumented but a lot of people use the word illegal alien. When you are a child you hear people refer to you as an illegal alien and people view you as a criminal and as an agent of disease. How can you not feel ashamed . It is only growing up and realizing that is no not who i m and for the majority who they are. I started to let go of that shame and to be proud of the fact i worked hard to achieve everything i have achieved and to be proud emigrant and american citizen. My mom is in mexico, she lives in mexico and my dad passed away. Host julissa arce is our guest. My underground American Dream is the book. Lets hear from me in hawaii. You are on booktv go ahead with your question or comment. Caller congratulations on the beautiful portrait on the cover of the book. Second, there was mentioning in the panel about how there is a system in america but isnt it true mexico have a system that seems like the european mexicans were always more successful than the native american mexicans. I hear so many good things about how mexico is really progressing nicely. Is that because corruption has been reduced or do you know what is going on about that . Guest your question has a lot of different aspects and i probably cannot answer thoughtfully every aspect of the question but what i will say is absolutely things are improving. It is a country that has incredible Natural Resources and Incredible Technology and Education Systems were part of it is as the years go by some of it has come to fruition. Its interesting you bring this up because many people believe nafta has been a success for mexico and mexican people but unfortunately, that isnt true. Many mexican farmers lost their farms because we are able to import and its much cheaper so what happens they have to shut down their farms and what do they do, they migrate north so this has not been a home run for mexico either so theres a ton of things that need to be picked but i will also say i havent lived there since i was 11yearsold and i should learn more about my country of origin and what is happening economically but i am more informed about what is happeni happening. Have you been back . I go back pretty much every chance i get because my mom lives there and i have a lot of family that still in mexico so i go back often. Host when you fly in and out do you have any fear . Guest i used to think as soon as i had a passport or a green card all the yea that yead would go away but unfortunately it hasnt. Its a deeprooted fear that i have and many people believe i shouldnt be a citizen and i should have been deported. Sometimes i get that feeling when im going through the airport showing my passport because this fear i had was there for many years and so it takes a lot of time to get over it but i remind myself when i go through airports that i am an american citizen and have an american passport and i belong here. Host go ahead in texas. Being born in mexico having to leave your country, what kind of resentment and you have towards the Mexican Government at the end of the day you are here and youwere here andyour family hadt because of the situation. What kind of blame to you put on the Mexican Government for doing that or how do you express . Guest i dont have any resentment. People might think i have resentment towards my parents because at the end of the day they are the ones that chose to bring me here without understanding the consequences of all the challenges i would have to face. I think my parents for the sacrificing of bringing me here because if it wasnt for them i wouldnt be where i am today and i wouldnt have the opportunities that i have now. Host the mexican Economic Situation isnt as strong as it is here. Wouldnt you have preferred to stay in your home . Guest wherever my parents were is where i wanted to be so whether it was mexico or somewhere else, i think a child belongs where their parents are. I was 11yearsold when all of this would happen and i didnt have the capacity to think through many of these issues. But i have ever stayed there ore here. I will say there are a lot of people that are incredibly successful and has incredible careers and lead amazing lives. I wasnt one of them because it brought me here when i was a child. I tend to be a pragmatic person and dont think of theoretical. I dont know what my life would have been like. Given the ambitious hardworking person that i am, i would have succeeded no matter where i was. Host lets take another call from buffalo new york. Go ahead. Caller thank you for taking my call. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more what it was like when you first found out you were undocumented, so that the transition and how that felt. Guest thank you for asking that. The day that i found out, i was 14. I was more worried i couldnt go to mexico to have this party that i had been dreaming about all my life. The first time i realized what being undocumented carried with it with consequences when i was applying to college because i thought that i had upheld by the end of the bargain. Ive gone to school, i got good grades and volunteered and played sports. I have done everything right. So when i was getting these letters from college it didnt seem fair that i didnt have the opportunity that i thought i would have and that is when it hit me that it meant to b may by challenging in this country and there are times when i still say we when i talk about undocumented people because i was undocumented for a long time. When you talk about that either it doesnt go away so quickly. Host the rejection letters did they say we cannot accept you because you dont have a legal status in the country . Guest they were very im sure similar to the rejection letters they sent out to other higtwo otherhigh school studente regret to inform you how they all began but it wasnt a specific reason why so i did quickly figure out why i wasnt getting accepted. Host at that point had you t you made american friends from 11 through high school and were you just part of social groups . Guest i very much began to feel i was american like my other classmates because we were talking about the same things and it wasnt difficult to realize not only was i not american but i does this thing people call an illegal alien, i was learning to speak english at the time and to be an alien with Something Green and out of spa space. It was very difficult at the time when i was beginning to feel american. What i realized was that american can we talk often about the american spirit and i think that i embodied the american spirit and the embodiment had been long before there was a passports that said i was. Caller congratulations to this young woman. My question revolves around the fact that people did in the wake of a grandfather that is native american, i wonder what logic brings us to the point that ancestors that invaded this country and took it by force somehow have the right to deny people trying to move around the continent their ancestors knew as home. Thank you for cspan. Its a miracle on television. Guest is the question host i think he was referring to how white people decide who can live in this country and native americans, etc. Guest people will say to me im not an immigrant, my family were settlers that came here from england and im like well there is a distinction between you and i come i didnt come here to commit genocide, i came to make a better life and ensure they did, also but im not going around doing that. I do think hes being mexican and latina, latino isnt a race, it is mixed. I give european, spanish blood and probably Everything Else inbetweeinbetween and hes rigy of what he called in the United States come from mexico and for many people on the panel especially those of us that live in california and texas and arizona the border crossed us. We never made the decision we were going to immigrate into america. America came to us. There were many that thought for texas to become a country of texas and many of the soldiers that fought and died became secondclass citizens so we see that but now we are viewed as the other except for the fact this is where we came from. Host when you were recruited by Goldman Sachs at any point did they say show us legal documentation . Guest yes and i did have to show them a security and greeagreen card, which i had a e green card and a Social Security card and many people wonder if it possible how they work and their Due Diligence and goldman treated me like every other employee which is to say that i went through a background check just like everyone else. I went through a background checks through other agencies to get my license and frankly i cant answer the question how did it work because i dont know how it worked. I didnt know that it was going to work that was a scary thing to present those documents and myself with those documents not knowing if somebody was going to ask questions about them or if they were going to somehow find out. And then everything would go away and i would be deported. But it was a risk that i felt like i hav had to take because e only other option was getting out of hand giving up on everything i worked so hard to achieve and everything my parents worked hard to achieve. Host is it easy to get a fake Social Security or green card, or the extensive . Guest i wish i kept the receipt, but i didnt get one. I know they couldnt have been that much money because i didnt have that much to spend. I dont remember how much i spent but i do know that it took me months to locate someone that would provide them for me. So i dont know that its that he and especially now of course we have Different Technology than we did 20 years ago. E. Verify didnt exist when i was going through the process of being hired and the companies that used it were companies where we normally think undocumented people work. I never have t had to worry abot Immigration Services coming to do a check. So in some ways i feel like i was protected by the stereotypes that we normally associate with undocumented immigrants. Host lets hear from richard in allentown pennsylvania. Go ahead. Caller yes, hello, julissa. Amazing story. Borders are very strange things, and im thinking, of course our borders that go south and west over time. Im thinking of what weve called native americans were American Indians or whatever where weve been where weve moved whole populations with long cultural history to particular areas that were undesirable and image wise and then created a cultural mindset of people who have been here all along that h they didnt belong and i have seen that all my lifetime have socalled native americans, American Indians, whatever, have been pushed into a mindset that makes it almost impossible to do what you did to figure out how to work at a company like Goldman Sachs so i would like to hear what you have to say about that, because i kind of feel like we have coopted the people who were here first and then excluded them by moving borders within borders. Guest absolutely. We have sort of put them in reservations and said you stay there and we kind of forgot about them and ignored them. We dont have to go very far to see whats happening and how we still treat them and ignore them and dont respect their treaties and land when we look what is happening in the Keystone Pipeline and its going through native lands that are supposed to be protected by treaties that we enacted many years ago. Native American Reservations have the highest suicide rate of anybody else that lived in this country and so much of that is because we dont there isnt a path of success for them to go to college and the education system. We feel like we are not responsible for that and like we dont have to deal with it because it is not part of our everyday culture and society. But the fact is it is, and we are responsible and we live on their land. That is the reality of it. We live on borrowed land and have to be more respectful of the planned and we have to be more respectful of their lives because if we dont, then its going to impact us at a larger level as well. Host stephanie in waco texas bar on the tv. Caller good afternoon and first let me say think god for cspan, and i will move on. Im in my 60s and when i was in the sixth grade, a young man came to our classroom and spoke absolutely no english and i watched as the miracle of his education unfolded. He worked really hard and as an adult, he went on to become one of the pastors of the largest hispanic congregations in the city of waco and it was a testament to how hard he and his entire family, not just him but his sisters and brothers and parents, and that was my first brush with undocumented folks. They later went on to become documented and they became citizens and it was just a wonderful thing to witness. And then in the 80s, in San Antonio Texas i would sell an entire busload of tickets for folks to go every morning at 10 00 and 9 45 come in came immigration, kicking them into thiin thefoot because they all r heads down. They wanted to be unnoticed and they thought if they were not noticed they would be able to make their trip. They were on their way home when immigration came and took them away. I will never know why he and i used to argue with the agents how do you know that i am not an undocumented worker and they would say we dont care about you. Which to me said we only care about the hispanic undocumented. Guest yes guest yes, i would agree with that statement. Just earlier today, there was a message by one of our representatives that we cant fix civilization with the children of other people, with the babies of other people. Well, i would argue that the babies of america for all other peoples babies. We all came here from other land, but there is a really big rhetoric in the country that america only belongs to white people and anyone who isnt white needs to get out of the country and go back to where they came from, go back to fix your country is what that i geo boston. Told all the time. I havent lived in mexico since i was 11 and i will always be proud of the fact i am mexican and i love my culture, i love the family aspect of my culture and ive always be proud of that but at the same time, i am an american citizen and this is my country, and whether people want to recognize it or not, the demographics of the country are changing and there is no stopping it because it is happening for a long time and we have to get comfortable with the fact that just because there are more brown people doesnt mean that things are going to be worse. That isnt the case. Shes absolutely right. Very often whenever we have laws in different states where they allow the police to ask people for their immigration status is very clear who is targeting because someone that is why it isnt going to get stopped and asked for their immigration papers. Its going to be people that look like the. So unfortunately that happens and is still happening and we have to be very clear that it is not okay to do those things. Host if you drive down 50 miles from where we are here on the way back up, there is an immigration stop 10 miles from the border or so. Guest in texas also whenever you drive from any border town, i grew up in san antonio so we would drive there and back and every time we drove back via get stopped at a checkpoint and we would be asked for our papers. It used to be if you were an american citizen you would just say american citizen and they wouldve let you through, except even when we had american citizen friends an in our car bt for hispanics we would still get asked, they would get asked for the papers. So shes right that it happens. Hopefully we can stop that. Are they entitled to the same voices citizens . Thank you, kathy. Ultimately it is ultimately american citizens will choose whether we give them documents force that is a station. What would their policies because mark asked an american citizen and i believe that people who have been in this country on average ten years, the average number of people that undocumented people have been here, theyve made this country their home are contributing to the country economically, socially, culturally and i believe that they should be given a citizenship. Ultimately, its not going to be them decide they dont get to vote. We, as americans can vote and can vote on those policies and who are represented as our and decide those policies. Yes, its going to be us american citizens ultimately decide back my true story as an undocumented immigrant became a wall street executive. She became a citizen in august of 14. Pickup the the book to find out what that process look like. Thank you for being on book tv with us. Where live at the tucson book festival on the campus of arizona outside the gallagher theatre where we been live all day. Lot of book selling going on another Beautiful Day down here in tucson. Another author panel is just about to begin. This is on epidemics, live coverage on book tv