DREAMers are the embodiment of our Soul Matters theme of resiliency. As we close our sixth academic year of DREAM Scholarships and consider applicants for our seventh, we welcome Carolina to share with us the impact the scholarship has had on her life. She will also reflect on the national turmoil about DACA and the DREAMers,

Carolina Siliceo Perez is a prior DREAM Scholarship recipient who received her BA from Brevard College in 2014. She is currently the Deputy Register of Deeds for Buncombe County.

The Outreach Collection for Dream Scholarships will remain open for contributions through Friday, March 16. If you missed donating on the 25th, just drop your check into the collection bowl before the 16th or deliver it to the UUFH Office. Your donation should be marked as Dreamers Collection (envelope or memo line) so it can be correctly allocated.

 

Carolina shared a copy of her message with us. You can download the PDF or read the text here:

“Good morning, I really appreciate you being here, to take into consideration my experiences.

Typically I have no trouble finding words to express, joy, gratitude, and hope. It’s been a long journey for me, and an even longer one for others,

As we think about this 7th season of giving to the students in our community there is so much to ponder, to grieve over, and so much justice to be served.

I’m not entirely sure anyone including myself

is ready to hear me attempt to convey despair, frustration and remorse.

On June 15th 2012, 2 days after my 20th birthday, President Obama granted an executive order we all have come to know as DACA, and as clearly delineated by it’s title, that’s all it was,

an action deferred.

This deferment meant that 5 short years later, we would suffer a crude awakening, to the lack of action that was and still is necessary today. On that day in June almost 6 years ago, we were given a false sense of hope and promise, but it’s a feeling we should all have recognized, as one we know too well.

I immigrated to his country when I was two years old,

And yet I’ll never be from here, although I’m no longer from there.

I sit here empty handed, with a degree on the wall,

STILL, Bereft of the possibility of belonging.

I reside in the threshold, a web of tangled lies and promises and I wait,

Just another assimilated Mexican, with a funny slur to my words in Spanish, forever condemned to never belong, not theirs and not yours.

The unmarked graves on our border tell a story like mine, but I get to complain,

Because unlike them, I survived.

I know how their story ended, but mine?

Mine has no end and no beginning.

When you look into the darkness of all the places our tired and migrating souls have wandered, do you finally understand?

The anguish, the fear, and the resilience?

I linger here and there long enough to contemplate the possibility of this American Dream,

Only to be quickly reprimanded by the microagressions you’ll never endure, and haunted by the rage those who stood before you, have permanently etched into my existence.

I search for the words to convey these inconvenient truths,

But the words flow lazy and thick like molasses begrudgingly spilled into audiences who have heard my plight only to walk away not having listened.

Listen Hendersonville, Listen Asheville, Listen UUC, Listen WNC, Listen NC,

Listen.

We are here, and we are here to stay.

I wish I could find the stories that make for happy thoughts and discussion, but the air in my brain is arid, my voice unwilling to hold the words that would serve you complacency,

Because please you I will not,

I have already served you, I’ve waited on you, I’ve taken your order at your favorite restaurants in town, only to have you look past my existence and our realities. The food is delicious the service is great, but do you know what we go home to?

If the women from church heard these thoughts, surely they’d be quick to their knees, praying for my ability to escape a damnation that came as a courtesy with the flight we booked to immigrate to the most fraudulent of freedoms, the land of the free “if we welcome you” but no one has time to read the disclaimers right?

The hellfire and brimstone is all too real for us, reminding us on a daily basis that this is not our home, and though surely we are in a better place than back home, we are still separate and not equal.

My voice is hoarse, exhausted from this never ending silence,

Beat from turning the other cheek to so much indifference and from some,

just plain hate.

My existence in this country cringes,

My dreams forced into a screeching and agonizing halt.

Perhaps, I’m prettier when I cake on respectability politics,

When I hold my place and you get to meet your quotas.

Is my worth only there for to you tokenize and profit on my reality?

Bless my heart?

Until I beg to differ.

My Soul has been ripped and branded through the standardization of my tongue merely another trait on a list that would deem me worthy of belonging here,

Take back the privilege and the weight it puts on my shoulders to seek out the pretty words, soft words, eloquent and politically correct words, only to find they’re never enough.

How will I put out such a ravaging rage and fire out?

My life has been permanently altered simply because I live in the state I live in. Undocumented and Daca-mented students are graduating every year, have graduated every year from our schools, and yet we sit here comfortably in our seats, knowing this, but patting ourselves on the shoulder because we have found an innovative and charitable way around it, I don’t want innovation,

I want comprehensive immigration reform, I want in-state tuition in my home state and the ability to pursue state professional licensure, I want my 29-year-old cousin to become a doctor if he so choses to, because he deserves it, and because after all the resilience we have demonstrated, it is time that these systems place value where merit calls.

I want justice

and you can help me achieve it.

If it means flipping seats in Congress, then we do it, if it means calling until our fingers burn and our faces ache from pestering legislators, than we do it, but we don’t deliver empty promises, and half-ass, segregated, almost solutions to an issue that has been begging to be heard and properly addressed. You don’t have to go oversees to find your tired, your poor and huddled masses yearning to be free, we are already here.

So please help me push for a comprehensive solution, the blatant institutionalized racism, we want to sugar coat as bureaucracy and help me push for in-state tuition in NC and immigration reform that goes beyond deferred actions.

I hope that when you give to our scholarship fund, you are giving with your heart, and full recognition of the power you hold in your votes and in your voices.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

I hope that you find in my testimony enough resilience to carry on, to act in such a way allows us to co-exist in a world that is a little more community focused and more love bound.”