A Standout Student, A Star At Goldman Sachs — And Undocumented

Transcript

ARUN RATH, HOST:

Now for a success story unlike any you've heard before. A Texas girl who's a high school and college superstar overachiever moves to New York City, lands a job in the male-dominated banking world and becomes a VP at Goldman Sachs - all while hiding the fact that she's an undocumented immigrant. That's the true life story of Julissa Arce, the subject of a remarkable profile this week in Bloomberg. Arce was born in Mexico. When she was 11, she and her parents came to the U.S. She was on a tourist visa, but it expired when she was 14.

JULISSA ARCE: Before my visa expired, we would go to Mexico to spend Christmas with my sisters and my extended family. And so that Christmas was coming up, and my mom told me that we weren't going to go to Mexico for Christmas that year. And that's the first time when I knew, like, oh, like, this means I can't leave the country. And if I can't leave the country, then what else does it mean?

My mom - she encouraged me to do my best. She never said, you can only do this because you're undocumented. It was completely the opposite. She said, you know, do the best that you can with the things that you can control, and the rest will fall into place, so that's what I did. I just - I kind of pretended like this thing wasn't an impediment.

I tried to be as normal a teenager as I could be. Football and cheerleading - and I got really involved in school, did really well in math, especially. I've always liked numbers because they just make sense to me. They're not ambiguous. And with all the ambiguity in my life, I kind of really was able to hang on to numbers making sense.

I majored in finance at the University of Texas, and I interned at Goldman the summer of my junior year. And I did really well, so Goldman gave me a full-time offer. And once I was there, I - you know, I worked really hard. Sometimes I think people watch, like, "The Wolf Of Wall Street," and they think, you know, that's the way it is. But I was working a hundred hours a week and eating dinner at my desk and working on weekends and living in an apartment the size of a closet.

I felt like if I could work hard enough, then I could earn my way into America, but I used fake documents to get my job on Wall Street. And I think maybe people think it was easy to make that decision, and it wasn't easy. It was a very, very difficult decision to make, and I think people can relate to that. Like, we've all had to make decisions where no matter what we decide, we still feel that we're doing something wrong or like we're choosing the wrong thing.

My two options were to give up on my future or to break the law. Like, those were my only two choices. In a way, it was easier to focus and worry about getting promoted and earning raises and working my way through the corporate ladder than it was to worry about being undocumented and what that meant. And I was scared to go to work every day. I thought maybe today is the day that somebody's going to find out I'm undocumented, and I'll be escorted out. And it'll be really embarrassing, and it's all going to be over.

Then my dad passed away in 2007, and because he was living in Mexico, I couldn't go see him. So I never - I never saw my dad alive again. When someone that you really love, like your father, dies, and you're not able to be by their side, it shakes you to the core. So I had decided that I needed to go back to Mexico because I just couldn't - I couldn't handle it anymore. But I was dating someone, and he proposed to me, and we got married. And because he's a U.S. citizen, I was able to get legal status and get my green card, and eventually, I became a citizen.

You never thought that a piece of paper could mean so much, but when I was reciting the oath of allegiance, I couldn't even say it. My voice was cracking, and I was getting really emotional about all the words that you say. So I just kind of took a deep breath and finished saying the oath of allegiance, and I just felt like this big weight got lifted off my shoulders. And I could finally say that I'm officially American. So just being recognized by your own country - it felt so amazing. And I just wish more people had the opportunity to do that. Like, I wish - I wish more people had a path to get there. Immigrants are not just statistics that politicians can use when they're debating. We're human beings, and we have stories to tell. And we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams just like everybody else.

RATH: That's Julissa Arce of the group Define American, founded by Jose Antonio Vargas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and undocumented immigrant. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.