MAKING LIFE BETTER FOR IMMIGRANTS
Alicia Flores steers people to citizenship, encourages them to exercise right to vote
OXNARD, Calif. - Alicia Flores found purpose when it seemed she had lost everything.
Bankruptcy in 1997 cost her the convenience store she owned in Camarillo as well as her home in Oxnard.
The losses pushed her into a job with a nonprofit and a life of activism that revolves around finding unity through change.
She helped organize a 2006 immigration reform march that filled the streets of Los Angeles with 500,000 people chanting “si se puede,” Spanish for “yes we can.”
When Pope Francis came to Washington, D.C., in September 2015, she went too.
She helped lift 5-year-old Sophie Cruz over a barricade so the girl from Los Angeles could meet the pontiff. She asked him to help her parents and others who came to this country without legal documents.
As leader of La Hermandad Hank Lacayo Youth & Family Center in Oxnard, she navigates people to citizenship via classes in English and American government. When they become citizens, she tells them their most important right — their duty — is to vote.
That right, she said, is the key to changing an immigration system she believes spawns fear and separates families.
“I cannot die,” she said, “before I see change.”
Flores came to the country from the state of Sonora in Mexico with her parents and seven siblings. As a child, she picked strawberries and tomatoes in Oxnard-area farm fields.
Her family came to the country on tourist visas, staying when the visas expired. After Flores’ brother was born in Oxnard, they became citizens. It is not — has never been — something she takes for granted.
“I’m part of this great nation,” she said. “It has given me opportunity. This is my home.”
Q&A
What does it mean to you to be an American? For me to be an American is to be able to help the community, to empower people to make the country greater than it is now. I help people to become U.S. citizens and to be able to vote. The candidates they choose are the ones who are going to change their lives.
What moment touched and motivated you to launch this effort? I used to work in agriculture, and I saw how the community worked so hard and yet they didn’t have enough money to support their families. They worked in rain, on days when it was hot, and on weekends. Yet they were living in poverty. I always wanted them to have better pay and a better life.
What gives you hope or what concerns you? It worries me to see that now that we have a new president, families (without legal documents) are going to suffer separation. I see the community being afraid. Every day they come here, letting me know how afraid they are, how afraid they are when they go to work because we’ve seen people being picked up. It’s a lot of fear that the community is living with now.
What do you hope to accomplish through your efforts? Some of the people who come to see me have a child who is a U.S. citizen ... and is now 21. They say, “I’ve been waiting for them to become adults. Now I can apply to become a permanent resident to get my legal status.” When I ask them how they came into the United States and they came without documents … that’s when I give them the bad news. They cannot adjust their status because they violated the law 20 years ago. I feel very bad to see the faces of these mothers and parents. This is the reason I cannot get tired working for immigration reform.