Immigrant Business Owner To Trump: 'Let Us Work'

This week, we've been hearing personal reflections from all across our community about the new Trump administration for WFDD's series “The Road Ahead.” Today, in our final installment, we talk to an immigrant business owner in the Triad, whose success is dependent on whether or not he's welcome here.

On one of those rare, winter days in North Carolina that felt like spring, people were out and about enjoying their lunch breaks. A light breeze carried the tantalizing smells of fresh tacos, luring many of them to an unassuming taco truck.

The owner separates piles of thinly sliced meat and onions to prepare a traditional Mexican meal of carne asada. WFDD is withholding his name because he's not a legal resident of this country, and he's concerned about his family and his business' wellbeing.

The taco truck owner grew up in a medium-sized port city in the eastern coastal state of Veracruz, Mexico. When he thinks back on his childhood there, he recalls the steamy heat, playing soccer in the streets with his four brothers, and the food.

“When I [was] little, my daddy always carried me to eat tacos, to the place, to the supermarket you know, and go and eat tacos all the time, or ceviche, or shrimp cocktail," he says. “I miss it.”

He came to the U.S. in the late nineties. Initially, he intended to work on a farm for six months and go back home. But he quickly realized he could provide a better life for his wife and children here. So, he stayed, winding up in North Carolina, eventually getting a food truck and opening up his own business. His days often begin at 6 a.m. and end well after dark, but he says he made the right choice.

“I think that what you do isn't work. When you like something, it's not work. When you don't like it, it's work. But if you like it, you can work twenty hours. You wake up and go back to work and there you are. And when you have a dream, you say ‘I came for something better, and that's what I'm going to do.'”

He realized another dream last year, after putting his eldest daughter through school — the first in his family to receive a college degree.

She's also a Dreamer – young immigrants who receive a temporary stay from deportation under former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. But President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the program, and his recent blitz of immigration orders has many in the Latino community worried.“You know it's something like — you don't have words [that] can say that, you know?” he says. “When I look in her heart, she got a better life, and she will work, and when she walked and got a diploma and everything I said, ‘Wow,' you know. I don't care how much I've been working. She's happy and I'm happy too.”

The taco truck vendor is not among them. He says he's a man of faith, and he's hopeful everything will work out for his daughter, and his other two children who are preparing for college. Still, the future is uncertain.

“Well, there will be changes,” he says. “But this is a country of opportunities. And he can say lots of things but will he do them? Who knows? We'll see and we'll wait and hope. And it's a nation like it says on the sign: ‘Under god — one nation under god.'"

But he insists he's not afraid for himself.

“The only thing that could happen is that he puts fear in the people," he says. "I'm not afraid, you know. It's okay, you know. If it happens, it happens.”

And he has this message for the new President.

“Let us work!" he says, laughing. "We came to work. The immigrants who come from these countries came to work. And this is a country of immigrants. I believe that all of this is an opportunity. I agree that for those who don't do things well, they have to go. But for those who come to work, and to make a better life — a better future for the family — we have the right to work."

For this food truck owner, the Triad is home. He says the community has embraced him and his family. Business is doing well. He now owns three trucks with hopes of buying more, and maybe someday even opening up a restaurant of his own.