How does the author address the psychological effects of discrimination and poverty in the nonfiction book, The Undocumented Americans?

Many immigrants leave desperate situations and unknowingly enter another as they try to provide the basic necessities of life in the United States. Most immigrants enter the United States in search of work or fleeing from violence in their home countries. Joaquín crosses the desert to reach the United States in order to find work. Surviving a near-death experience in the mountainous desert, his first steady job was on a ferry service, and he helped transport workers in and out of Ground Zero after September 11, 2001. Despite heroic efforts, both personal and professional, the ferry company fires all the Mexican workers post 9/11. Because of this backlash against immigrants, Joaquín is now a day laborer—and his story is not an only case. Immigrant workers are at the bequest of employers, lack work regulations and are frequently harassed and fired at will. The lack of security in job status, which translates to survival, negatively affects mood, emotional and mental states.

Villavicencio writes of the psychological effects of her abandonment in Ecuador and relates it to all the children separated from their parents, including the most recent cases at the United States southern border when families were separated under an immigration policy. Research in traumatic separation has shown it to seriously inhibit the branching of dendrites and neurons in the brain. Villavicencio believes separated children “have all been touched by this monster, and our brains are forever changed, and we all have trees without branches in there, and what will happen to us? What will we become? Who will take care of us” (61)? Here, Villavicencio implies that the scars of discriminatory policies and practices affect generations of people.

The psychological impact of poverty goes beyond material shortage, and can damage mental, physical and emotional development. The author, like many immigrants, has grown up in poverty, and she describes her family’s poverty as “walking in a hurricane. I buy my parents umbrella after umbrella; each provides some relief, then breaks—cheap fixes, all of them” (153). The mental strain of not having enough resources to pay the necessities of life creates increased mental anxiety, triggering such issues as emotional irritability or anger, headaches, nervousness, and energy loss. And while the cycle of poverty continues for her family, Villavicencio has guilt over making it out of poverty—at least for time being. She feels “constantly disgusting, dirty, hungover, toxins unless …hemorrhaging money in this very specific way that [she finds] cleansing” (153). This feeling of cleansing prompts Villavicencio to give Octavio Márquez $400 dollars because she learned his employer had not paid him his wages. And while poverty may affect things like decision-making, awareness, memory and focus, so can the feeling of guilt.