hankyoreh

By Jung Se-ra, staff reporter

“I touched down on American soil at the age of 11 and grew up as a Korean-American. Even though I am currently in graduate school pursuing a Master’s degree in political science, I have never been able to vote, neither in the US nor in South Korea,” said Ju Hong (Korean name Hong Ju-young) with sadness in his voice.

Hong, who immigrated to the US as a child, met with a Hankyoreh reporter on June 3, the day before Koreans voted in municipal elections. He left South Korea for the US with his mother and older sister in 2001. Ju’s family had undergone the fate of many others during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s - his parents’ business had gone under and they had gotten divorced.

After that, his mother decided to take Ju and his sister abroad to begin a new life as immigrants. The family went to the US on a six-month tourist visa and then extended the visa by six more months, but they lived the next ten years as illegal aliens, also referred to as undocumented immigrants. Though Ju regarded himself as an Asian-American during his years in primary and secondary school in Oakland, California, he would come to learn that American citizenship was a distant dream.

Hong attracted attention when he yelled “stop the deportations” in the middle of a speech that US President Barack Obama made about passing legislation to reform immigration during a stop in San Francisco in Nov. 2013. Hong was trying to draw attention to the fact that even while the Obama administration is pressing for immigration reform, it has deported more than two million people, more than any other administration in history. Hong argues that the administration’s program to stamp out crime among immigrants, which was created in the name of arresting foreign terrorists to maintain national security, is being used indiscriminately to deport undocumented immigrants for jaywalking and other minor infractions.

“The first time I learned of my predicament was when I was in my final year of high school, getting ready to apply for college. I had decent grades, so I was accepted at a good university. But whereas my elementary, middle, and high school hadn’t cared whether I was a citizen or not, there were so many legal and financial hurdles to getting into college without legal status. Even if you find some way to get into college, it’s hard to get a decent job,” said Hong.

The US government implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program in 2012. Designed for young people like Hong who had followed their parents to the US and grown up there without documentation, the program defers deportation for two years and provides a work permit. Through the program, around 560,000 people who had arrived in the US before the age of 15 were given legal status, if only temporarily. Hong received benefits of DACA as well.

But his sister, who is four years older, did not meet the requirements, since she arrived in the US at the age of 16. She and his mother therefore live in constant fear of being deported. Since their lives are based in the US, they cannot visit South Korea, no matter how much they miss it, for fear of not being allowed to return to the US.

It was only after Hong became a legal resident of the US that he was able to visit South Korea last month, 13 years after leaving. He is currently working on a documentary about his return to South Korea, which he plans to use in the campaign for immigrant rights. He is working for a group that promotes the interests of South Korean immigrants to the US. After he completes graduate school, his dream is to support immigration policy in the state legislature or in Congress.

“I study, work, and pay taxes in the US, but I have hardly any rights. About one in seven Korean immigrants to the US are undocumented. When our house was robbed, we couldn’t report it to the police, and when we visited distant states, we had to go overland instead of flying the way others do. This is the same experience of other Korean undocumented immigrants and their children. I hope that Korean society and the Korean government will give some more thought to these people’s rights,” said Hong.

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