Speakers at Sonoma State University, Roseland library tell of immigration difficulties

Faced with the prospect of never going to college or getting a license or job, Maggie Loredo returned after high school graduation to her birthplace of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, an area she had not visited since her parents brought her into the U.S. illegally as a toddler.

Claudia Amaro was 12 when she left Mexico after her father was killed. No longer feeling safe there, her mother decided to start a new life for her family in America, eventually settling in Kansas, where Amaro lived until her husband was deported in 2005. She and her son, then 6, left their home in Wichita and moved to Mexico to join her husband.

Loredo and Amaro both tried to forge new lives in their birthland, but they weren’t prepared for the discrimination and challenges they’d endure as “outsiders.”

The duo, featured in “Los Otros Dreamers,” a book produced last year through a crowd-funding campaign to shed light on the struggles undocumented immigrants face after they’re deported or have otherwise left the U.S., shared their stories on Monday with two dozen students at Sonoma State University.

The book focuses on “los otros,” or “the others,” who wouldn’t have necessarily benefited from recent immigration reforms and were deported or returned on their own to Mexico because of their immigration status.

The SSU DREAMers Club teamed up with the Sonoma County Library to sponsor the panel discussion at the student center. Another discussion will be held from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. today at the Roseland Community Library.

“It’s really important that undocumented students here learn about the issues happening in Mexico,” said Griselda Madrigal, president of the SSU club.

Although they’re on opposite sides of the border, she said the two classes of immigrants still share similar struggles and dreams.

“We need to be in solidarity with those students. We need to work together for the best for all of us,” said Madrigal, who is undocumented but received temporary relief from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA - a program Loredo said she would have qualified for had she not left for Mexico.

Loredo and Amaro described their struggles finding work and obtaining identification cards.

Loredo found a teaching job in Mexico. However, she said she then was overworked and underpaid. She wanted to enroll in college - her primary reason for leaving Georgia and heading to Mexico -but the university refused to accept her American high school diploma and demanded documents she didn’t have.

She pushed back and after five years was accepted into college, where she’s studying tourism.

Amaro, too, wanted a university degree. She said she was accepted into an engineering program but later told she could not graduate because her American high school education was not valid in Mexico. Meanwhile, she said her son was bullied in school because he did not speak Spanish well and people treated her as a “traitor.”

“I was an alien in Mexico,” said Amaro, who finally returned to the U.S. in 2013 as part of a protest dubbed “Dream 9.”

Loredo said she felt she was alone in her struggles until she met people like Amaro and Jill Anderson, an American researcher living in Mexico City who collected testimonials for the book from young adults who were forced to return to Mexico.

An estimated half-million people there share Loredo and Amaro’s stories, Anderson said during a video appearance Monday.