The Cost of Being Undocumented

The Physical, Financial, and Psychological Toll of Navigating the U.S. Without Citizenship

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It’s difficult to articulate all the ways Alix Dick’s story, which you’ll read below, matters right now. But unless you’re personally intimate with what it means to navigate the United States without citizenship, you’ll come away from this interview with new understanding, new context, and new anger about the policies, longstanding and new, that force people to live with this sort of fear. I say “force” with intention here, because this entire scenario would be very different if there wasn’t a massive demand, a necessity, for the sort of labor that immigrants without citizenship provide.

The economy demands unprotected, vulnerable workers without labor protections, and the global political climate creates streams of people who face a horrible choice: stay and almost certainly die, or watch your family members die, or live in fear of death….or leave everything you’ve known and loved to live in a different sort of fear. It doesn’t have to be this way. I hope this interview helps all us move closer to an understanding of why the entire system that at once relies on the existence of undocumented Americans while also criminalizing their existence is not just cruel, but immoral.

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The book that houses Alix’s story — The Cost of Being Undocumented — is an unprecedented act of collaborative scholarship and storytelling between Alix, an artist and storyteller, and Antero Garcia, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford. You can buy The Cost of Being Undocumented here.

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Can you tell readers a bit about how you came to write this book? The note on your research process that begins the book is unlike any I’ve encountered — but also made me much more invested in the book.

We should probably begin by stating the obvious: this book shouldn’t have to exist. Neither of us wanted this to be the story we shared. And yet, here we are.

One thing we allude to in the note at the beginning of the book is that this project began, initially, as a research project proposed by Antero. We planned to adhere to traditional research strictures, including Stanford’s Institutional Review Board protocol (e.g. the thing that ensures academic research is conducted safely and ethically because of things like The Stanford Prison Experiment).

However, this approach was abandoned due to two events that occurred around the same time. First, Alix made it clear that she would not be an anonymous individual in someone else’s research. And, second, Stanford’s IRB rejected the proposed research, stating that work on a small sample size (one individual, in this case) was not generalizable. In some ways, both of these responses — one personal and one institutional — get to precisely the same quandary about the purpose of research and the lives of those the academy scrutinizes in the first place. Namely, what good is academic scholarship that merely distances, de-identifies, and dehumanizes those that are placed under its gaze?

Ultimately, we decided to move forward conducting research together, as co-designers of the questions, approaches, and analysis that we undertook.

But, here’s the problem: readers could read the prior paragraphs and assume that they’re in for a scholarly jaunt across the landscape of immigration research. That is not at all the end product that we produced. Hopefully that’s not how the book reads. In discussing the personal experiences around immigration — in reflecting on the real tears, traumas, and lasting impacts of xenophobic policies in this country — we felt that the only way to convey the costs of undocumented survival is by doing so as up close and personal as possible. The book we created is, in many ways, Alix’s memoir. Sure, it’s got a few more endnotes than most memoirs, but we wanted it to center Alix’s story: her family, her ongoing insecurities, her dreams.

This probably isn’t the way most folks go about writing memoirs, but we engaged in a Chicana feminist methodological approach called “pláticas.” There’s a long, scholarly lineage for this approach and, for us, it really centered a critical and sustained dialogue. This wasn’t about us getting to an agreement about some of the points in the book so much as to get to a place of understanding and perspective taking. While this book centers Alix’s story, it is informed by ongoing conversations (that still remain unfinished) between the two of us. Probably the obvious places to point to this within the book are the ways we talk about religion — Alix is a devout Christian and Antero is squarely agnostic — as well as exploring power hierarchies when it comes to labor.

Really, what all of this comes down to is trying to challenge whose knowledge “counts” in the broader community. If you are watching mainstream media coverage in this present assault on immigrant communities, you’re seeing plenty of well-intentioned scholars and pundits talking about the undocumented community and relatively few individuals from within this community getting the same kind of space to share their tacit expertise. This book’s journey — from flipping a research process on its head to finding the right voice — has been one of resituating Alix and the undocumented community as valued experts too often overlooked in times when their voices are critical.

You describe being an undocumented person in the United States as an “exhausting mental game.” Not just exhausting, but a game — which suggests that there’s this feeling that you can win or lose, that there are spoken and unspoken rules, and figuring them out (and how to play by them, or not play by them) is part of what makes it so exhausting. As you point out, it’s not that you’re trying to make yourself invisible — that’s a myth. The government knows exactly where you are — you are “conspicuously documented.” You know that the government could find any reason to deport you, so you try very hard not to give them one — which works because the government understands there are real benefits to your presence.

That last part — that’s what I don’t think a lot of people understand. I’d love to hear how you came to understand it. And, as a secondary question, how the recent escalation of ICE raids by the Trump administration has changed the rules of the game…..and made it even more exhausting.

For me, Alix, I came to most clearly see this country’s reliance on my labor when I finally saw just how difficult it was for someone in my position to continue my studies to become a lawyer in this country. I realized I was more useful as cheap labor for this country rather than as someone compensated for my intellect. The United States doesn’t help undocumented people primarily because it’s good for the economy to have people in my position. We’re doing the jobs that nobody wants to do but are necessary for this country to thrive. Exploitation of people like me is why billionaires exist. Up until the recent focus on horrific ICE abductions in my community, coverage of immigration reform often focused on “good” undocumented students — dreamers — persevering in elite universities. While we must continue to fight for them like we fight for all members of the undocumented community, their narrative often takes away from the real barriers to education I’ve faced.

We’ll offer a small tidbit behind the scenes about the book: When we first pitched this book with our amazing agent, our working title wasn’t The Cost Being Undocumented. The full first draft was actually titled The Cost of Convenience. This idea of undocumented people functioning as something convenient to this country was fundamental to what we want to convey throughout the book. Ultimately, the title wasn’t quite direct enough in signaling the book’s focus on undocumented immigration. We changed the title, but still hold a soft spot for the book’s original incarnation.

In terms of the recent escalation of ICE raids by the Trump administration, the rules haven’t really changed. The game has just gotten far more exhausting. As we are writing out these answers together, Alix is more stressed than at any other point of our work together. It’s not just the fear of ICE, who we see on the streets regularly right now. The overlapping costs we talk about in the book are heavier than ever. Prescriptions Alix needs for some of the health challenges alluded to near the end of the book are both difficult to get fulfilled and increasingly more expensive. Mental health is just totally out the window right now.

If a primary goal for Trump — on the campaign trail and now that he’s back in office — was to instill terror in the lives of immigrants, he’s been incredibly effective. In this way, it’s not that this country no longer needs us. We are seeing many aspects of our economy buckle under the lack of immigrants showing up as a result of this current assault. However, we have a new kind of convenience as well. This country needs immigrants as a scapegoat for this presidential administration. Deporting immigrants right now, in abhorrent and violent ways, is still convenient for the leadership of this country, distracting folks from myriad lawsuits, unfulfilled promises, and other very real threats to America’s well-being.

As an elaboration on that question — can we talk a bit about the anxiety and labor of trying to “pass” as a documented citizen? At checkpoints, but also in other corners of everyday life — and the deep sadness that being in a place where you surrounded by other Latinos actually feels profoundly unsafe?

For me, Alix, right now I’m not in a place where I am even thinking about how I can “pass.” For people that want to do me harm, I look “Mexican.” I’m not looking for ways to look or sound more white. There’s no way to hide who I am. Seeing what is happening on the streets around me, I am absolutely terrified. I came to this country fleeing cartel-related violence only to find U.S.-funded thugs abducting people like me. Instead of trying to pass, I am trying to hide as much as possible.

This notion of passing is one we’ve been thinking about particularly as it relates to promoting this book. In all seriousness, one “cost” of being undocumented in this present moment is not feeling safe enough to even go and see your book on the shelves of local shops. We are in this strange space with this book — it is both incredibly timely and an absolutely terrible time for us to try to promote this work. We’ve had a few in-person celebrations for the book’s release (and some more coming up if readers are interested in connecting with us). However, for all of these, Antero suggested repeatedly that we cancel these events. And yet, it feels necessary to celebrate the small things we still have left. Celebrating this book is an act of resistance for me.

We worked tremendously hard on the story and research we share in this book. Years of collaboration and a lifetime of hardship. We are so proud of the work that it encompasses and want to celebrate this with the broader community this work represents. Doing in-person events, even as I am not able to “pass” while doing so, feels necessary for myself and for our audience.

The framing of the book in terms of “costs” is incredibly effective — and given my previous work on exploitation and burnout, I was particularly compelled by the chapter on work, and the sort of work that can be coerced out of people with no (or very, very few) labor or legal protections. This is incredibly convenient for so many industries — and for families that want a certain level of service but also don’t want to pay a living wage for it.

Can you talk us through the costs of finding employment while undocumented — and how that connects to the (to my mind, fairly noxious) habit of caveating that various people deported by ICE were “hard-working?”

Finding jobs as an undocumented person is sickening. We can’t think of a better word for it. There is so much anxiety. Walking into an interview, you know that abuse and unfair payment are a given. You hold anxiety in your body, anticipating having to negotiate the hell out of the terms of your employment and still settle for the bare minimum.

Many of the long term jobs we write about are harder to find in the summer. There is so much space for employers to abuse undocumented workers. They know you are desperate. They know you have probably been job searching for several months and that there is always someone else waiting in line for your position. There are no consequences for individuals to offer you far less than what you’d make if you were hired “above the table.”

Particularly for domestic laborers, like nannies, the hypocrisy of these negotiations feels mind blowing: oftentimes you’re negotiating with affluent, liberal-leaning families. They have all the right yard signs and political stickers, but when it comes to compensation and terms of employment, they are absolutely ruthless. Yes, we talk about wage theft and sexual harassment in the book, but we want to make clear that the costs to the undocumented community when it comes to labor are transacted inhumanely in people’s homes all over this country every day.

You’re right that the framing of “hard working” immigrants does no favors to the broader immigrant rights movement. Fighting over “good” or “hard-working” immigrants is pulling us away from a bigger picture of kidnapping and abduction that is happening on U.S. land at this very moment.

As our book hopefully makes clear, no individual chooses to leave behind a home, a family, a fully developed life without dire circumstances forcing them to do so. The myth of the good immigrant is one that continually cleaves our community and reduces for whom we fight, as if one individual’s life is less worthy than another’s. And of course, the positioning of individuals as gang members, criminals, and threats allows media consumers to not look at the fact that we’re talking about people. Despite everything we’re seeing on TV, let’s not forget the fundamentally American idea of due process. Every single person in this country — regardless of immigration status — is legally allowed the opportunity to make their case for presence in this country.

5) To close, I’d love for us to talk a bit about a point that comes up over and over again in the book: that people forget that undocumented people aren’t just workers, aren’t just numbers. They’re people with real lives. People with hopes for love and family, people of faith who can’t practice their religion the way they want, people who are homesick but can never return home.

The book as a whole is a powerful corrective to that narrative, and I’m wondering what you’d like to see more of (or less of) as we write about and fight back against the dehumanization of immigrants. What sort of advocacy — and reform — that aims to restore that humanity look like?

Thank you for this question. We drilled down to the memoir that this book became because it felt impossible to ever fully tell the stories of the millions of individuals labeled undocumented in this country. We hope readers get a glimpse at one person’s life, the circumstances of her move to the United States, and the costs that daily life imposes on her. In this way, we want readers to be open and receptive to the human stories around them. Perhaps obviously, we want people to know the stories of immigrants so that they know why we need humanizing immigration reform. We’d be remiss not to mention that alongside writing this book, we’ve been co-editing La Cuenta for the past three years. It’s a small but mighty substack that works to broaden perspectives about the undocumented community. We invite folks to not only subscribe but to consider submitting questions, essays, poems, or other contributions to our community.

At the same time, we also don’t want to underestimate the role of money in the current climate. (The final chapter of this book attempts to approximate a dollar amount of the costs incurred for being undocumented for Alix.) As our book hopefully makes clear, the costs for surviving while labeled undocumented are exorbitant. Given how many people are losing jobs, losing family members, and losing hope, if you have income to support mutual aid networks or to buy the products and services of local food vendors, that is absolutely something we want people to do. Your dollars can go a long way. And it’s not just about the financial support but about what it does in this moment. The sooner the person selling flowers on the side of the freeway sells out of their product, the sooner they are safely off the streets and away from the eyes of ICE.

People who are U.S. citizens can use their privilege in many ways right now. You can show up for demonstrations that the undocumented community cannot. You can confront and document ICE to help protect communities under threat. You can contact your local elected leaders and ask why state police forces are protecting masked federal agents who are hurting our communities. Your tax dollars are funding these efforts. You can distribute know your rights cards and help be a better on the ground advocate right now. You can sign up to deliver groceries to people that cannot safely leave their homes. Some of these actions might feel scary. To go back to our working title of the book… they might even feel inconvenient. However, this is a responsibility you can shoulder in this moment. ●

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You can buy The Cost of Being Undocumented here and subscribe to Alix and Antero’s newsletter, La Cuenta, which they co-edit, below:

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