Yo! Youth OutLook

(3m 26s, mp3, 2.4MB) Download FileMark Gambala from BYA (Berkeley Youth Alternative)—a community based jobs and recreation program for young people— approached my friends and me one day this Spring while we were just sitting on the shady park benches trying to keep out of the suns way. I was with Traviesa and Dopey.

"Hey you guys, I found a job for you!" is what he was yelling on his way over to us.

We just laughed if off thinking that it was going to turn out like always. He'll tell us he's going to give us a job at BYA then he'll bulls—t for hella long until we get tired of asking him about it. It turned out he really did have a job for us this time. All we had to do was go in and do the paper work. We followed him back to his office to handle it.

After giving him our names and addresses and all that stuff he told us we had to return the next day with our birth certificates, social security cards, and photo IDs.

Knowing that I could have that stuff to him by the next day I was excited to think that I was finally getting a job. I was so happy for myself that I didn't even hear when my best friend Traviesa mentioned to him that she wouldn't be able to work with him. All I heard was Mark saying "Why not? I thought you wanted a job!"

That's when she told me that she couldn't get a job there because she didn't have all the paper work.

She was born in Mexico and came to the United States with her family when she was four. They settled in Los Angeles for a couple of years then her family moved to Berkeley. I met her in middle school in one of my classes. Seeing her for the first time, I didn't even know that she was a Latina —when I found out she was Mexican it was more of a shock.

She's about five foot four, very long, black, straight hair. She has a much darker complexion then the typical Mexican. When I first met her I thought she was Filipino, maybe even mixed with a little bit of black, but definitely not Mexican.

She didn't even talk like she was Mexican. Usually somebody coming from Mexico at that age would have an accent while speaking English, not her. I heard our teacher say her last name, Gonzales, and that's when I asked her her nationality.

I didnt believe her at first but then she started bustin' out with the Spanish that's when I knew that she wasn't lying.

I was born here -- my mom was born in Mexico and my dad was born in the U.S. I don't have to worry about things like papers. I'm a Mexican American and she's a Mexican. We both have the same blood running through our veins only she was born on the other side of the border.

She acts no different than me and in our group of friends she doesn't get treated any differently. People at school talk to her like they would anybody else. The teachers teach her just like they would anybody else and she learns the material like anybody else would. She's just like me, only she can't work at the same place I can because she doesn't have a card that says she's legally in the United States.

Mark told her that maybe it wouldn't be a problem. "I'll see what I could do," is what he said. We left the BYA and on the way home she was telling me about how she really wanted that job but that she didn't think she was going to get it. I didn't think she was going to get it either but I didn't want to say that. She was feeling bad enough already, the last thing I wanted to do was rub it in. A week later we all got letters notifying us about the job. She didn't get it.

Victoria, 16, is a staff writer fo YO!

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