I never liked the word “adult” because I felt it was a contrivance that simply indicated that a person had reached an age where their actions would be inexcusable. I never liked it because I always wanted excusable actions - I wanted the cushioning to fuck up gloriously - to make giant mistakes, to leave dumb, muddied footprints on the floor of every home I entered. There were hierarchies - there was teenager, and college student, and graduate student, and then I ran out, and I was called an adult but what I was called was wrong - I was not an adult - I was wrong - I was the wrong thing - I was the wrong thing doing the wrong things - a bad thing doing bad things - i was the bad thing - the wrong thing - a dead thing - I was wrong - not an adult - the wrong thing - the wrong thing - on fire - like a cartoon dynamite stick - the wick - on fire - the wrong thing - the sizzle of rope burning - napalm - the wrong thing - the wreckage - a fuck up - a blown fuse, then the current - a dead thing - the rotting - and fire. I am an impostor. I can’t say I’m unraveling because I’ve never been together. 

I’ve never settled in anywhere I’ve lived because I’ve never expected to live there long. Every apartment and room I’ve occupied has always had a brown box in the closet, just in case. Escape plans are important.

This place is no different. 

“The ‘handling’ of my move happened in a haze of emotion and dust, in rooms filled with boxes and garbage bags. Such is the physical and emotional labour of putting oneself and one’s things into motion.” - Jane M. Jacobs, “Editiorial: Home rules” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

“I think I’m staying here,”

in Phoenix. 

You’re staying there, 

in Phoenix.

And because I am me,

my migrant body, 

with its repertoire

of constant movements, 

cannot help its hurt. 

I have ripped my roots 

for more than convenience or fear. 

I’ve spun myself off axis 

for boys with kerosene kisses 

and matchstick fingers. 

So I wonder if I’ll ever whisper the word

“Coward”

in your ear 

the next time we are inside each other

If “boyfriend” is a different way

for you to say

“out-of-state fuck”

You’ve never seen my bedroom. 

Do you know how many siblings I have?

Their names?

Have you ever counted the miles between us?

Baby, 

I grow tired of charting my relationships 

on frequent flyer maps

embossed onto in-flight cocktail napkins

and I don’t know that I have it in me 

to write a poem about another boy like you

on the back of a bus ticket. 

- J.I. Valles-Morales, 5/21/2013

“If we are serious about migration reform in this country, and we fully recognize the broken system we have cultivated, then we cannot pick and choose which undocumented migrants will be granted a stay and which are subject to deportation. If we are serious in our contention that the system is broken, that our laws are unjust, then we cannot let fantasies of good and bad migrants run rampant while we develop a course of action to change. The Obama administration is responsible for the highest number of deportations in recent memory, using the bodies of undocumented migrants as bargaining chips in the name of bipartisanship. It is not only ethical, but just to put a moratorium on all deportations until we are able to fix the immigration system. Do not split families, destroy lives, uproot individuals just because you are dragging your feet.” - Eddie Gamboa, 2013

Between 2008 and 2009, two of my brothers were deported. My brother Ernesto mostly worked kitchen jobs in chain restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. My brother Govelin was a day-laborer in El Paso. Neither of these men sought anything extravagant or noble - food on the table, soccer games on the weekend, beer money. Neither of them received an education past middle or high school in Mexico and neither had any desire to return to school. Were they hard-workers? Absolutely. Is there any kind of “American Dream” narrative behind their stories. Not really, no. Not if you were to ask them (I have). Staying alive, well-fed, clothed, and minimally comfortable was enough. I write this because I grow weary and suspicious of the way that narratives of “hard-working” immigrants are used in national and local conversations about immigration reform. Some of us are not extraordinary and our struggle is not about building a business from the ground up, or pursuing a doctoral degree, or becoming an important member of American society. In creating an exceptional immigrant in the cultural imaginary we are also creating a “bad” immigrant - we are all either hard-working, struggling martyrs with grand dreams that are impossible, criminal deviants infecting the American body, or we are not mentioned at all. 

My concern here is not that we should stop lauding and sharing stories about DREAMers or those immigrants who have had the wherewithal to cobble a path towards a “success story.” My concern is that our conversations about citizenship will continue to evaluate citizenship on a kind of merit system. Why should citizenship be a moral compulsion? Why can’t my brother, who likes to get shit-faced drunk on Saturday nights and sometimes says really homophobic garbage, be a citizen? 

I came to the United States hidden in the back of a truck. The U.S. has no record of me prior to 1996. Despite this fact, a series of legislative acts in the 1980s and several happy accidents in my life led to my becoming a U.S. citizen in 2005. My citizenship status is built on circumstances largely out of my control. My brothers were deported due to circumstances largely out of their control. 

National ideals about who is a good, contributing, productive immigrant leave my brothers out of the picture. You are reducing our struggle to labor and production when all we are asking for is recognition that we have a human right to food, and breathing, and to hugging our mothers on Christmas because we can cross a bridge freely. Our bodies have the right to move in ways that don’t result in a product you paid for. Merit-based citizenship will continue to confine our bodies as only useful when they are in the act of performing labor for the benefit of a nation that has spit us out time and again.

J.I. Valles-Morales, 5/15/2013