All They Will Call You Will Be Deportee

I got a friend, a few years older than me, his name is John. He was born in Long Beach, California. He looks pretty much like a Mexican. He can speak Spanish very well and also English, like many people of Mexican descent. He is not a Mexican. His family never came from a Hispanic country, unless you want to count California.

His family descended from the Gabrielano band of Mission Indians, which is no longer extant. They were more or less feudal peasants, forcibly tied to the land in the California Mission system by the Grey Friars and enforced by the Spanish Army. This went on for about 100 years until California was annexed by the American government. During this time the Indians interbred with the Spanish soldiers garrisoned around the missions and truth be told, many of the Grey Friars, as well. In the end, they didn't look much like Indians or have much Indian culture left. They looked and acted pretty much like rural Mexican Peasants.

So, anyway when John was little his father was a book keeper and his mother was a store clerk. They lived in a Mexican neighborhood. About 1950, John's family was kidnapped by Border Patrol agents and deported to Tijuana, Mexico, where they became Mexicans. There wasn't much for them to do in Tijuana, so they moved to Mexicali, about 80 miles East. Directly across the border from Mexicali is the California town of Calexico. There were jobs in Calexico. Then, as now, almost everyone living in Calexico is Mexican. John's father figured they couldn't deport the whole town, so he moved the family to Calexico and he and John's mother easily obtained good jobs, better than in Long Beach. They weren't sure if they were illegal immigrants or not but since they had birth certificates, high school diplomas, Social Security cards, drivers licenses and verifiable work histories, it was pretty easy.

John went to school in Calexico and got straight As. When it was time to go to college it was no problem. They let him into Long Beach State. He had lots of family in the area to stay with. He got lots of grants and loans that nobody ever made him pay back. He stayed in college for more than a decade. He ended up with a bachelors in biology, a masters in sociology and another in English. Did I mention he was a good student? Somewhere along the way he had picked up a Psych Tech certificate, which is what he was working off of when I met him. It's a nice job, easy, secure, good benefits and full retirement, which he can take any time he wants now.

John or Juan as his Latino friends insist on calling him, has had a pretty good life. Even if it has had a Twilight Zone aspect to it. He still is officially an illegal alien. He has papers to prove he was deported as such, even though he has copies of mission documents that trace his lineage in California back more than 200 years and is related to some of the oldest families in the State, though also the least luminous. The Immigration and Naturalization authorities still insist on his status as a nefarious interloper. The beauty of it is that he has a Mexican and American passport and both are perfectly legal. Cool.