And it it obviously is deeply personal and thats what well spend time on. It does touch on larger issues about aspects of immigration in America Today and americas heritage. I hope well get to that as well. But lets begin at the beginning, which, of course, is the fact that you are from mexico. You were born in mexico and spent your Early Childhood years there. But its interesting that your childhood and how you grew up isnt really the stereo type. That youre not from an impoverished background, youre not from a small isolated village. Could you talk to our audience about your home, your family, the circumstances of your upbringing . Yeah, thank you so much for having me and im excited to have this conversation. I grew up in mexico and my family, theyre all entrepreneurs and they worked really, really hard to be able to provide my siblings and i a better life and even when i was in mexico, i was really surrounded by a really large support system because my family is really close, not just emotionally close, but we literally live within walking distance from each other. But my childhood in mexico is was very different from peoples minds what they grow up. What a lot of tourists experience in mexico and see kids selling gum on the side of the road and that wasnt my experience because my parents worked so hard and my grandparents worked so hard to make sure that that wasnt my experience. So i group up in mexico from a middle income family. I used to take piano lessons and karate lessons and every kind of lesson that was available in my small hometown, but that also came with sacrifice and the biggest sacrifice that my parents were making in order for me to have that kind of life was that we werent together. My parents lived in the u. S. And i lived in mexico and we would only see each other every few months or i would come to the u. S. And visit them in the summers. Well, tell us more about that, those circumstances of your parents deciding to come to the u. S. And to live apart from their children. What how did you experience that as a child . What was that . Were you aware that that was somewhat unusual . How did it feel . Yeah, i was definitely aware that it was unusual because i one, i missed my parents and two, i could see parents coming with their children to school, to parentteacher conferences, to different mothers day events and my parents werent there all the time. And they, just like i said, they wanted us to have a better life so when they i was three years old they used to import sterling silver in the u. S. And sell it at trade shoes across the country and go back and forth as part of their business, but, you know, as a little girl, as a child not having your parents with you and only seeing them every few months, first of all, you feel like theres a little bit of strangers to you. When i would see my parents, they would come bearing lots of presents and when i came to visit them in the u. S. , we were it was Summer Vacation so it was a very different experience than having parents who are with you every single dayment so, it was and for me, it was also a lonely experience because as close as my family was, my siblings, my two older sisters are five and ten years older than me. So it was very difficult being so alone at that early age and ultimately thats why my parents decided to bring me to live with them. They had hit some hard Financial Times and were unable to go visit mexico as much and be with me as much and because i was so young, they realized that thats not the best way to raise a child so thats when they decided to bring me to live with them permanently in the u. S. And thats where thats where my life completely, completely changed. Host well, thats a very important and very moving part of the book because it is also accompanied by the fact that you were the youngest child in the family and so you really were a family favorite, in fact, i love the place where you say that you were a bit of a brat as a youngster because you just had so much you were very gregarious and you loved to be a performer and so forth. And then what happens . Your mother has another child and i believe youre nine years old and suddenly you have a younger brother and its a little bit of a different dynamic, isnt it . Yeah, i mean, my my little brother and i have a great relationship now, but i think when he when i found out that my mom was pregnant with my little brother in mexico we have a saying when youre the favorite child you stayed on the donkey and that comes from the bible of mary sitting on the donkey as they were walking through the desert to bethlehem. So my whole family would tease me about kicking me off the donkey and my little brother would have that place. Not only that, but in my mind as a 10yearold girl, this baby was going to not only take my parents love from me, but he would get he or she i didnt know at the time it would be a boy, but they would get to live with my parents in america and i found out he was a boy and things getting worse in my 10yearold mind because its a really big deal to have a male baby in my culture and in mexican families. So, that was a lot to take in as a little girl and that coupled with the fact that my sisters were older, they were now going to college and high school in a different city. Before i at least had my sisters with me and all of a sudden, my mom was having a new baby, my sisters were going to live in different city, so then i felt not just abandoned by my parents, but now by my sisters, too. And that was that was a lot for me to handle at that early age. Host well, so, in the middle of all of that Emotional Turmoil and what, as you say a 10yearold mind, its very difficult to understand these things, your parents decide that in fact you should come to the United States and you do, which under these circumstances, if someone were writing a fairy tale, it would be okay, and they lived happily ever after, but we all know that reality is different and you describe a reality then that is certainly different. Tell us about that reality of coming to the United States and then being here rather than with your family, your larger family. Guest so i didnt really didnt know i was coming to live here. When i came to visit that summer, i thought it was just like any other summer when i came to visit my parents and then would go back to mexico once the school year started. But that summer i never went back and it was a really difficult transition for me because, i think, a lot of people can relate to the fact that when youre a kid, one of the most scary things to do is to go to a new school and make new friends and i had to do that and learn a new language and all of a sudden learn how to have parents, who were with me all the time. And i also had, in my mind, america was this sort of fairy tale in a way, was this magical place that i experienced through my Summer Vacations of going to six flags and sea world and what i saw on television. So, there were a couple of shows that were dubbed in spanish i walked in mexico, dennis the menace, Beverly Hills 90210 and everybody in those shows was rich and white and once i moved to san antonio, i realized there were people who looked like me that were american. And living here my experience was difference because also my parents financial situation had changed so much and so drastically. So, even things that i had access to before, such as all the lessons that i mentioned, we couldnt afford that anymore. And it was very difficult to experience that and to see my parents working so hard, but at the same time it was really eyeopening to me because before that, i never realized just how hard and just how much my parents were sacrificing in order for me to have the life that i had, but being here, i could see it firsthand and i could see just how much they were laboring. They were working all the time, all the time, they were working so hard. Host thats, of course, one of the things about being immigrants in the United States and they were in a situation where they had visas, you had a visa to come to the United States which is a bit different than most other mexicans coming to the United States. So and they had had a successful business. What happened . What happened that made their financial circumstances change so . Yeah, it was interesting, this whenever i think we think of undocumented people we always think of people crossing the border, but the reality is that 40 of undocumented immigrants in this country never crossed the border illegally. Their visas expired. In my case, it was a tourist visa that expired, but what happened with my parents business is that they import sterling silver as i mentioned and they had a pretty a pretty good routine of getting the silver in laredo, texas and going through customs and then bringing it to san antonio and in one of those trips the silver in the van was stolen and it was probably 100,000 worth of stirling silver that was stolen on the u. S. Side of the border and they were never able to recover from that. Im always amazed at how much my parents accomplished with the resources that they had. My mom never graduated from high schoolment my dad finished high school by going to night school and so they they accomplished so much that they could, but there were some things that they probably didnt think about and so that the silver that was stolen wasnt insured so they were just unable to recover after that robbery and it wasnt for lack of trying, it was just a really difficult circumstance that they found themselves in. Host what did they do then in order to make a living. Guest so they they took out they took out a mortgage and tried to rebuild the silver business, but it just wasnt it wasnt the same. So my mom being the relentless entrepreneurial woman that she is saw an opportunity to start selling funnel cakes and start selling snow cones and all sorts of different food items at festivals in san antonio. We used to go to the festivals when we were little kids, used to take us, so he she saw an opportunity to start that business and thats what we started doing, started selling funnel cakes in san antonio. Host and you were very much a part of that, this was a Family Enterprise in terms of working when you could to help and so forth, but in the meanwhile, youre in school. Youre smart. Youre a very studious or disciplined student, and, but school is by and large a really hard experience for you. Sixth grade you mention as being one of the most terrible years of your life and you become aware of being mexican. Talk about that. Talk about that awareness and what it meant to be striving in school, how others treated you. Tell us how that felt. Guest yeah, so, i think going back to what my idea of america was, and only seeing one group of people portrayed on Television Like i wasnt part of that and that experience came back when i was learning about the Civil Rights Movement and the history that we tell in the textbooks is a very its from a perspective of a black and white narrative and so i never learned about latinos during the Civil Rights Movement and my parents never really talked to me about racism and race in america and i dont know if that was because they didnt experience it or because they thought that that i was growing up in america and learning english and i was quote, assimilating, that i wouldnt have that experience, but and learning about the Civil Rights Movement impacted me deeply and i used to cry to my dad when he picked me up from school and tell him about the atrocities that i was learning about in school, but i didnt see myself in that so i didnt think that applied to me, but, of course, in sixth grade as you mentioned, there was a kid who when i was placed in an honors math class and asked the question, why is she in the honors math class, shes a mexican and cant speak english. It took everything i had not to cry and in my broken english i said, you i dont need to learn how to speak english to do math. Math is a universal language and thats why i was always so drawn to it because two plus two is four in any language, but that experience really, even at that early age, i understood the issues that are in our culture and i realized that i may not be i may not have been talked about in the textbooks, but that it was something that i was going to experience in my life. Host yes, so thats an awareness that youre now growing into and having to deal with, but you are contending so youre contending with a lot of emotional pressures as well as the social pressures of trying to make friends and do school work, help your family and your parents with their work, but youre not really at this point very aware of immigration status or of what is to come in terms of being illegally in the country. Talk take us forward to how that came about. How did you learn that . What were the circumstances and how did you understand that at the time. Guest yeah, so i youre right that i was not aware of the immigration issues because i had really, for a long time, been able to go back and forth between mexico and the u. S. So thats what was normal to me and i thought that would be available to me always and when my visa expired at the age of 14, my mother was very reluc reluctant to talk about that and my visa having expired and once my visa being expired and unable to renew it and it was a t tourist visa and i was studying in the u. S. Ment im a 14yearold girl, i never asked to come here and here i am now having to understand that my visa is expired. My mother tells me this because i was pushing her and pushing her about planning my quincien rchr quincienra. And where are we going to mexico and have this. I knew our financial situation was changed. I dont care if its a small party i want to have this in my life and one day she blurted out that my visa had expired and on that day that she told me this, i didnt fully comprehend the enormous revelation she had made to me. I couldnt understand the way in which that one conversation was going to shape and impact the rest of my life. I couldnt have known. Host no, you couldnt have known and it plays itself out then over the subsequent years and i think in the fascinating way in which you write about it in the book, its so totally tied up with the quinciera and you said something how important it is in your culturculture and that kind of a disappointment, one cant overstate what a disappointment that would have been, but now, you have this knowledge that youre not supposed to be in this country and so, youre illegally in the country and thats the beginning of the big secret, the big secret being such a critical part then of of your experience and of your story. Help people understand just as a High School Student now why th that why that is such a complication. Guest theres a lot that goes into you realizing that youre undocumented and how much that changes your how much that changes your life. All of a sudden every decision that you make, you have to think about your immigration status and that becomes the center of every decision that you make. And you also start to feel very ashamed. I think thats the right word. I felt ashamed of being undocumented. I felt like that somehow made me less than and a lot of that had to do with the way that the issue of immigration is talked about in the media and the way that the news cover the issue. I never heard stories of undocumented people who were graduating in the top 5 of their High School Class or who were entrepreneurs and employed u. S. Citizens and those arent the stories i was hearing, it was about illegal aliens being criminals and when i looked at my parents and when i looked at myself, that narrative didnt fit me, but thats how you start to think about yourself. It does something to your psyche when someone is calling you illegal because how can you as a person be illegal . But you start to internalize all of those things and just there were so many things that to most people are just everyday things that they dont have to think about twice. A lot of my classmates, for example, were getting ready to take drivers ed and get their drivers licenses and i was always going to get questions when i was going to take drivers ed and get my drivers license. So you start having to tell these little lies so nobody finds out your truth, your secret. And so, even things like that, like not being able to get a drivers license or when all of my classmates were starting to think about college, for me, thinking about college, as much as that was instilled in me from an early age about education, is my salvation and education is going to open doors of opportunity, and my parents did Everything Possible to make sure that i had the best education that i could have, but even though i was qualified to go to any number of colleges, when the time came to apply, i was rejected from all of them because of my lack of a ninedigit Social Security number. Host yes, the way you describe the issue of applying and the blank that you had to leave for Social Security number does capture in such a specific way the things that we assume, that you and people like you could not assume, just a simple thing like being able to fill in a Social Security number. But you did excel in high school and you worked extraordinarily hard and it was against some pretty difficult personal circumstances in your home and with your parents at that point. So how did you get into college . Well, one of the biggest things that i keep going back to my parents because i i cant thank them enough for everything and for how they raised me. One of the things that my mom told me was that, there are a million things you cannot control and why focus on those things. You have to focus on the things that you can control and do your best and the rest will fall into place. And so thats what i did in college, i thought, if i dont if i dont steady study hard and im not disciplined about my school work then for sure im not going to be able to go to college or go to a great school. So i graduated in the top 5 of my High School Class and didnt know where i was going to go to college as i walked across the stage in my cap and gown at my high school dwad graduation and that was difficult because every student that graduates and walks across the stage theyll say over the loud mic where theyre going to school. Soandso is graduating, theyre attending such and such university in the fall. And when i walked across the stage it was just, julissa arce because i had no plans for college. Explaining that to my classmates and my teachers why wasnt i going to college when i had the grades that i had and when i had the resume that i had, was, i mean, i almost didnt want to i had to close myself off. There were days i didnt feel like going to school because i didnt want to answer the questions again and again and again, but i was really fortunate because the state of texas in 2001 became the first state in all of the u. S. To allow undocumented students to go to college stay in state tuition and receive tuition. And 2001 i graduated from high school and i learned about the new law and i got in touch with the state senator the sponsor for the bill and i told him and his staff about my circumstances and whether or not i would be able to go to school that fall because i gotten rejected. But luckily, they were able to send a letter to the university of texas at austin, simply asking to reconsider my application, given this new law. And because my grades and my test scores and Everything Else qualified me to be accepted, i received a letter two weeks before the semester started that i was accepted to the university of texas at austin. It was one of the one of the happiest days just knowing that finally there was some reward for the hard work that i had put in and for the hard work that my parents had put in, long before i was even born. Host well, it is an incredible story and the timing of and the couple of angels that were sitting on your shoulders, one being the woman in the Senators Office who really took a liking to you and made it her personal project to be sure that this law that just passed could in fact apply right that next school year and the other, seems to me, was his name mr. G, your physics teacher. Yes. Host just tell a little about, because hes the one that really got you to make that call and so forth. Tell us a little about mr. Gee because its amazing to people that are around in ones lives that just make all the difference. Guest yeah, hes my high school teacher, i still keep in touch with him. Hes been a great mentor throughout my life and in high school he was this quirky teacher and he would read us stories and every class he began by telling us a story, a motivational story and that would go into physics class and he really encouraged me to apply. I never really told him out loud, im undocumented. I dont have papers. I would just say, you know, say, i dont really think i can apply to school and financial situation is hard and my little brother and i might have to stay home next year to help around the house and help with my mom. And he would really encouraged me he said, youre going to have to apply and have to let you in. I dont know if he knew. And if he did know he never made me feel embarrassed about it, he never pushed me to tell more than i was comfortable telling him about and he, you know, he really encouraged me to apply to all different kinds of schools. He would tell me that, his letters of recommendation would have to get me in and if they didnt, then, he didnt know what was wrong with the world. And the university of texas at austin, a great school, a great program, you have to apply there and i didnt want to let him down and so i applied to all of these schools because of him. Host well. Guest its incredible to me sorry, go ahead. Host i was going to say, thank goodness for people like that because that. Guest yeah. Host he made the difference in your future. Guest yeah, absolutely. Host so, now youre at university of texas and youre at one of the top schools in the country and youve chosen to major in business and youre in one of the top Business Schools in the country. So you know, theres the whole story then of college and the people you meet and the your pos se and your friends and we wont go into that because we want people to read the book, but striking to me about college, deeper issues themes that run through the book and one of them is family, how driven you are, were, about concerns about your family and closeness to your family and the other is your incredible desire and drive to earn money, to have money, and i wonder whether you could talk a bit about that drive and about those two parts of your life as they became really forces during this time that youre in college. Yeah. My experience as a child, i saw i saw when i was very young living in mexico, i had a very nice comfortable life. I moved to the u. S. And i see how much my parents are struggling, how much theyre struggling to make ends meet and that really was instructive in my life and realizing that i didnt want to struggle financially when i was older and i wanted to be able to provide for my family, to provide for my mom and my dad and for my little brother and that really drove me. And i think when you grow up and you dont have, it really drives you and it motivates you to work hard to get those things and for me, Financial Success was more than just the money. To me, having Financial Success was a way to earn my way into america. I thought that if i could earn enough money then maybe somehow i would be able to fix my immigration status and maybe somehow i would be accepted into america because maybe i could earn my way into it. Of course, i was poorly naive in that thinking because thats not at all how it works, but that was my drive and thats what i worked towards. I worked really hard because i thought i want to get a great paying job and i didnt know, of course, whether i could or not because i was still undocumented, but kept sort of my mothers words in the back of my mind, do the things that you can and let the other things you cant control, let them play themselves out. So i focused a lot on school and, yeah, youre right, that Financial Success was what drove me, but there was so much behind that. It wasnt just only to get rich, it was all the things that i could do once i had that Financial Success. Host thats so clear in the way that you write the book and in what it is that you do with yo your, you know, with your ultimate, you know, later Financial Success. Im going to read just one paragraph that i think captures it so well and really describes how what youre up against. What you were facing. Its on page 83. I was ready to escape and by then it was about much more than just the escape from my unhappy home life. Going to college was the next step in the American Dream id been taught to chase. I thought constantly about what it would feel like to be someone important, successful and powerful. I wanted to make all kinds of money so i could solve all of our problems. I would finish the dream home my parents had stopped building, pay for my father to go to hab and pay for julios education. I would resolve immigration status so it wouldnt be a challenge anymore, for us to live the great promise that america gives to so many. If i was successful and rich, why would anyone want to turn me away . Its such a powerful set of ideas and circumstances that you were dealing with in trying to tackle and grapple with. So youre in college, you turn out to be, as in high school, an exceptional student, youre not only an exceptional student in terms of grades, you have friendships, but youre working your way through. Working hard, for a while youre commuting back and forth to san antonio, doing funnel cakes on the weekend in order to be able to pay for school. And then, you recognize through the Student Business Organization that you should be getting an internship and so youre very savvy in getting an internship and you manage to land in the summer of your junior year, i believe, at Goldman Sachs in new york. So you have this extraordinary internship, this tremendous opportunity, but youre also still dealing with the issue that you dont have documents, youre going to have to go through background checks, et cetera, and you get a job offer from them. You have the opportunity to be in a really extraordinary mentorship program. I want you to talk to people in this audience about what that was like, being in new york, being at a top flight firm like Goldman Sachs and for me, it was in many ways captured by this story that has to do with never eating the shrimp. Dont ever eat the shrimp, as a way of illustrating what that culture was like and what that work was like. Tell that story and use it as an illustration of helping people to understand what that life coming into Goldman Sachs was like. Guest yeah, its working at goldman and having that opportunity, as you mentioned, of interning for goldman for the summer was an opportunity and stark world that i grew up in and finance and pinnacle of wall street. You were here to work and this story about dont eat the shrimp. We have an opportunity to go to Networking Events and through the mentorship and opportunities, they taught us a lot of technical things about financial modeling and interpersonal relationships and how you handing yourself in a business context. The big thing was even though there was so many food and someone who didnt grow up like that, seeing all of this like massive amounts of food and shrimp cocktails and fancy things that i wasnt used to, of course you want to go and take part in that, but you were told, no, you were there to network and you were there to try to get a job. So you dont eat the shrimp, you need to have your hand free to be able to shake hand, to take peoples business cards, to write notes on the back of those business cards so you can later thank them with a personal note so you can send them handwritten thank you notes. Were you there to network. Every every networking opportunity in new york city is an opportunity to land a job, to land your next deal, to land your next promotion, even. So that was the culture that you lived in and you could never you could never turn off. It was never just having a drink. Host so in addition to learning those social skills and learning to network, you were doing really intense work and you were obviously very good at it. Why were you whats your were you surprised at how successful you were . What is it, do you think, that allowed you to be so very successful at Goldman Sachs as a young financial analyst . The first thing is that ive always been taught to work hard. Thats like the very first, base a layer things that i must do. So i was the first one to come in and last one to leave and i worked really, really hard. I asked more questions. I did research that maybe someone else might not do. And so i wasnt i wasnt surprised at the success that i had because i very much felt like i was earning that success and i was working really hard towards that success, but, you know, i was always incredibly fortunate to have amazing mentors that taught me things that i may have not known or they told me things that i needed to look out for. They helped me to understand and navigate the Political Part of the Business World because you can do the work and you can be the best person the a your job, but you still also have to worry and think about navigating, like i said, the political aspects of it. Who is going to speak up for you when there are meetings about who is getting promoted and when there are meetings about what the raises are going to be and bonuses are going to be. You want to make sure that there is someone in that room advocating for you. So, all of those things i wouldnt have known if it it wasnt for the incredible mentors that i had. Host well, were you in a situation where there were several people that really took care of you, that really helped you learn, as you said, but you also were latina, you were obviously female, not that many females in that Business World, more, but not nearly as no way parity or anything like that at this point, and you were continuing to deal with this incredible secret and always concerned about whether it might catch up with you at some point. So i have to talk a little about when you actually got the job offer after the internship, came to new york, moved to new york, had an apartment, and were facing the first day of going to work and knowing that you, yet again, were going to have to deal with documents, background checks and so forth. What happened to you . Yeah, that day was really scary because i had already i had already passed the background check, but on this first day of analyst streaming as you do in any new job, you have to fill out your tax form and you have to give two copies of i. D. , and so i didnt know whether my documents were going to stand out because they were going to look different than everybodys real documents so it was a really it was a really scary day. I mean, i was so nervous that and so scared and you know, this fear that you live in when youre undocumented always having to hide, always having to live your life in the shadows, always worried and scared that someone might find out and you might get deported and everything you work so hard for is just going to poof, and disappear, so its it was really, it was so much that if i wasnt dealing with it emotionally because i still had to present myself in a professional manner, it definitely came out in a physical way with me. I mean, i had awful headaches and back pain and all sorts of ailments at a very young age because of the incredible stress that i was under of having to keep this secret while at the same time trying to stand out with my work. There was always this push and pull of i want to go really fast and i want to get promoted and i want to stand out and at the same time, having to take a step back because you dont want to get noticed, because you dont want to get found out. So, it was a lot. It was a lot to deal with. Host and on that issue of documents, tell us, because people dont really its hard to fathom how somebody that doesnt have documents in fact can fill out those forms and the level of scrutiny that there is or isnt given to it. What documents did you have . So i had i still had a Social Security card and a green card, but those documents were fake and when i think back to making that decision of getting those papers, it was a really difficult decision to make and i hope that we can all relate to having to make really difficult choices and decisions in our lives. I think all of us at one point have been faced with those kinds of decisions where there just isnt a right answer so you do the best you can and you move forward and i was 19 years old when i made the decision to purchase this fake documents. The funnel cake stand that i had had to be shut down because the city of san antonio built a museum and then i was then i had to make a decision do i drop out of school or do i get a job and continue to find ways to pay for school. And thats a decision that i had made. And so, those are the documents that i used to a few years later apply for this job at Goldman Sachs. And you know, i dont know how these documents work. They were they were fake to the truest sense of the word that they didnt belong to anyone. I wasnt stealing someones identity. They were completely made up numbers and somehow and somehow they worked that when you go through a background check, theyre checking for a criminal background which i, of course, didnt have and i think the other aspect of this is that because we have this idea in our mind of who undocumented people are, the jobs that we do, no one was really going to question my documents, right . I had graduated from a top five school in the country and i was polished because of the mentoring that i had gone through. When i presented my papers no one was really going to look at them and say, are these papers real. It was more of a check the box as they did with everybody else on that day at analyst training. Host and what youre describing, of course, is that from all external characteristics, you werent the stereo type and you werent in the settings where any kind of preconceived notion would have come into play and it is a ve very theres a lot to think about in that reality. So you managed to get through these things and you managed and youre obviously now doing very well at goldman, youre promoted, youre getting at a certain point, very substantial salary increases. Youre, from all external indications really on the path to success and youre doing extremely well, and as much as thats the case on the outside, its very different on the inside, very much on the inside youre having different emotions, different reactions to all of this. Describe to us that those contradictions. Guest yeah, on one hand my story and my journey was the definition of the American Dream, right, coming from the background that i came in, and working really hard and moving up the economic ladder. And on the other hand, i couldnt have been farther away from the definition of the American Dream because i wasnt legally part of what defines americans and i always had to to balance those two ideas in my mind. You know, on one hand i had Financial Resources that i understand arent available to a lot of people in our country and on the other hand, even though i had those Financial Resources i was Still Limited in the things that i could do. I still couldnt drive with a valid drivers license, i couldnt have a credit card. I couldnt even invest my own money, even though i was working in the financial industry and i was working with investments and i couldnt apply those things to my own personal life because of my immigration status. So there was always this, as you said, this contradiction in my life. And in some ways it kept me grounded and in other ways there were just constant reminders, constant reminders that i wasnt i wasnt really a part of the fabric and the makeup of our country and i couldnt contribute fully as i wanted to. Host well, and then, of course, you had the very sad circumstances of your father dying and your grandmother dying and you werent able to to go home and see them, either to go to their funerals or be with them in their last days because of the fact of your not having status in the United States made it impossible to come back and you would have had to abandon what was at this point really a successful future. So, you know, you then ultimately meet somebody, you get married, that person is an american citizen, that makes it possible for you to adjust your status. Youre only able to do so because you came here on a visa and that gets into a technicality, which we, you know, wont be able to really pursue, but you were among the lucky people that was that have been able to adjust status and youve now become a citizen. And in the process, a lot of personal journey was taking place, a lot of changes in your own thinking that led you to leave the financial industry. So youve left the financial industry and youre now really developing an entirely new chapter in your life. Talk to us about writing this book and this personal story, which is in many ways a story of triumph, its also a story of deep pain. Why are you telling it . Guest i realized that i had a powerful story to tell. The kind of story that could really have an impact on the dialog that we have around really important issues of immigration, and of immigrants. That my story could give hope to the millions of people who are still living in the reality that i lived in for so long and i felt a really deep sense of responsibility to share that story and and to keep the ladder so other people can climb up it and reach down and bring people up with me. And in writing this book, you know, i wrote an outline nine years ago of the book that i would one day write and it was about a month after my dad passed away and i remember that journal entry talking about that one day im going to use this pain and this suffering and its all going to mean something and its all going to be for something and in writing this book is the result of that wild aspiration that i had nine years ago and telling my story has been inkrcrediincredit incredibly saying this is my truth and my story. On a broader level, i hope it validates the experience and the feelings and the fear that millions of people are facing because it can be very lonely feeling that way without having anyone else that you can relate. When you feel like youre alone in this world and youre the only person experiencing these things and knowing that there are other people helps tremendously. And so, i have really high hopes for this book. I really hope that people are able to pick up a copy and find themselves in my experience and hopefully have been able to create enough human connections that we can we havent if someones not undocumented or dont consider themselves an immigrant or at all, this book is an american story, even beyond being a story about an immigrant. Host its interesting that in coming to grips with this new future that youre putting together, this issue of loneliness does come through so clearly that even at the level of sophistication and success that you were operating, you actually werent nearly as aware as you probably are now about how many other people share that story and all of the grass roots effort and activity that has begun to develop in recent years around people like you, not entirely like you because youve had a very exceptional Success Story here, but you are really finding a whole Different Community of people to connect with from what i can see, am i right in that . Yeah, you are and in some ways, in a lot of ways, i feel like im a little bit late to the big game here because im just in the last two, three years, really immersed myself into the fights for immigrants rights and, but there have been so many people that have for a long time before i came out with my story, that have been working tirelessly their entire lives to provide more rights to immigrants, to change the conversation around immigration and to fight for people to live with dignity and to be seen with dignity. And so, and you know, my my experience is different because everybodys experiences are unique and different, of course. And it was sometimes easy to forget, right . Like being in my apartment on wall street, it was easy to forget that there were people struggling so much more than i was and now being a part of this world and hearing the stories, every single day, hearing from people who are living who are living those experiences is incredibly emotional and i feel so proud to be able to be a part of this community and to know that im not alone anymore. Im not alone in the experience that i had and im not alone in work that im trying to do and the things that im trying to achieve now. Host well, talking about changing the conversation, i do want to give you the opportunity to Say Something about this election season that were in and the way in which immigration is being described, particularly the 11 Million People in the country who dont have legal status. What would you want them to be hearing, given the public debate thats currently taking place. Guest yeah, this the narrative in this election and the rhetoric in this election have been and it is incredibly harmful and dangerous and its factually incorrect because the story that we hear is that 11 Million Immigrants are the reason and the source of all of our countrys problems and that if we just get rid of them, that there will be no more problems in america. And of course, that couldnt be farther to the truth and in fact, when i think about immigrants and why we come here, i always i always have this thought in my mind that immigrants are willing to risk their very lives, they are willing to cross oceans and walk through deserts and leave everything behind because thats how much they believe in america. Thats how much they believe that they can come to this country in search of a better life and if we wanted to just get by and get on welfare as many people believe, we would have stayed where we were. Thats not why we come here. And getting rid of 11 Million People is not only dehumanizing rhetoric, but when you think about just from an economic standpoint, if from one day to the next your population shrinks by 11 Million People, and 11 Million People dont go to work tomorrow and 11 Million People arent buying things and paying sales taxes and creating economic activity, thats going to have a deep impact in the economy of our country. Not only is deporting 11 Million People not a solution, it actually would create significant economic problems for america. Host well, julissa, this has been an amazing time to spend with you. Very, very best wishes and thank you so much for writing this book about your story. Guest thank you so much for having me. Cspan where history unfolds daily. In 1979 cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies thats brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Book tv tapes hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Here is look at some events well be covering this week. On monday, Northwestern University professors Robert Gordon and joel moker will look at the council on global affairs. Tuesday book people bookstore, examining u. S. Operations in the pacific world world war ii with a focus on the u. S. Invasion of the mayor yan marianna islands. And Jonathan Rose will look at the future housing insecurity and income inequality. And richard snows recounting of the creation of the union armys war ship monitor and how it changed naval warfare. And a writer at Sports Illustrated will look at demise of the Steel Industry in aliquippa, pennsylvania through the high school football. Well be live from the texas book festival in austin with author talks, which include former attorney general alberto gonzales. And clint hill and much more. And thats a look at some of the author programs book tv is covering this week. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air in the near future on book tv on cspan 2