“Each person without legal residence or citizenship documents has a unique story”, with this phrase Tereza Lee began one of her speeches about the DREAM Act project.
Last Friday, with the story of Madeleine Albright, we looked at the reasons why people migrate and how the challenges are different for everyone. Today, we will delve deeper into the topic, with the story of Tereza Lee, the woman who was born in Brazil and lived as an illegal immigrant in the USA.
Born in Brazil, Tereza Lee is the daughter of South Korean parents. They moved to the USA when she was just two years old.
At the age of 7, her father gathered the family and told them the secret: they were illegal immigrants and no one could know, as they were at risk of being separated. She says this made her live in constant fear of being deported and often had terrible nightmares.
Despite being very poor, without furniture at home and sometimes without food, her father, who was part of a religious congregation, had access to a piano.
That's how Lee began to learn to play the piano, on her own, channeling her energy into music. The piano became her passion and her salvation in the face of a difficult life.
She later took formal lessons, with her school's choir director, and then at the Merit School of Music, a school that aims to “help young people transform their lives and experience personal growth through music.” She took the test and qualified for classes.
At age 16, she became the first inner-city Chicago student to win a competition to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This experience was “surreal,” says Lee. “I didn’t think someone like me could win something like this.”
Later, one of her teachers, Ann Monaco, asked her which colleges she had applied to. Not knowing what to say, she said she wasn't going to college.
The teacher then printed out the forms and handed her 10 applications, asking her to fill them out. She filled it out, but as soon as the teacher received the papers she saw that the social security number was not filled out.
Lee began to cry and explained that she was an undocumented immigrant. It was the first time she had said this to anyone outside her family. And she asked the teacher not to report her, as the family could be separated.
The two then contacted a senator to write a bill that would allow her to attend college.
The senator presented the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) law, which seeks to guarantee citizenship to those who arrived in the United States as children.
By bad luck, the vote to approve the law was scheduled for September 12, 2001, the day before the terrorist attacks of September 11, which interrupted the vote and the dreams of thousands of students.
Several versions of the law have been introduced in Congress, although none have yet become law.
Lee moved to New York to attend the Manhattan School of Music, earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees. She currently has her doctorate. Not surprisingly, her thesis explores five composers who immigrated to the United States, and “what it means to be an American composer today, coming from an immigrant background.”
Currently, legalized through marriage, her fight is not over. In 2017, she was briefly imprisoned following a demonstration demanding support for the DREAM Act.
Tereza Lee's story is unique, but it also tells about the challenges of many other people who immigrate illegally and can have their lives completely changed overnight.
And since it is so rare to hear women's particular perspectives on migratory life, my exercise here is to increase our repertoire of these stories. Knowing different stories is an exercise in completing a broader view of any topic. If we pay attention, Lee's story is not just a fight for legalization, but a fight for more freedom.