4.6 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2019
⏱️ 22 minutes
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0:00.0 | Some people call them illegal immigrants. |
0:03.3 | Others use the words undocumented. |
0:06.0 | Aliens. |
0:07.2 | Americans have all sorts of names, nice and not, |
0:10.4 | for the 11 million or so people in the United States who are not legal residents. |
0:15.1 | I have a different name for them. |
0:17.7 | Friends, family, people I grew up with, the people I interview for stories that I write for the Los Angeles Times, and my dad. |
0:32.5 | That's him, Lorenzo Arellano. |
0:36.9 | He's telling me about the first time he crossed the border in 1968 to come to the U.S., jammed in the trunk of a Chevy. |
0:43.0 | And how much did you pay? |
0:46.4 | $125. |
0:48.5 | He was then 18 from a poor rural village in Mexico. |
0:52.0 | Dad settled first at East Los Angeles, then ended up in Orange County. |
0:56.0 | So being a so-called illegal immigrant was never a big deal to me. In fact, I didn't even know |
1:01.4 | people hated them until I was a sophomore in high school, when something happened that I'll |
1:05.8 | never forget. It's October, one of those damn Southern California autums where the weather is hot and windy. |
1:14.9 | I'm 15 years old, outside Anaheim High School, go colonists, and the school day's done. |
1:20.2 | So I'm walking home when out of nowhere, some white boys yell at me from a truck. |
1:25.7 | At first, I don't know what they're saying. |
1:28.2 | Then I make it out. |
1:29.7 | They're shouting, 187, 187. |
1:33.9 | And I looked at them and I'm like, huh? |
... |
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