Marvin Yancy

El Salvador

Construction worker- Asylum Seeker

We’re a family of four members. We decided to come to the United States for the first time in 2006. We were here for about five years, but we left our two children in El Salvador with their grandmother.

We went back to El Salvador in 2011 but here was so much gang violence that we had to leave. We came back in 2015 with the children.

We had to pay coyotes and we risked our lives to come here.

We are trying to get political asylum and have a court date in 2019. I got injured in a construction accident so am out of work now. I had surgery two months ago and I am getting better.

We like the culture here in America- all the different kinds of people and all the opportunities here that we do not have in El Salvador.

Sometimes we meet racist people. Once I was walking, there was a person coming towards me. We were in the same side of the sidewalk and when the person realized I was Latino, he moved away and his face gave me a really bad expression. In another occasion, a person didn’t want us to work in his house because we were immigrants.

We are praying to God to work hard and do the right thing so we can stay here. Because we cannot go back to our country. It will be like suicide.

This is not our own decision to come here, we were obligated to come. And we would tell them that we came here to the United States to help the country, not to do the opposite. To help it be a better country than what it is. And by working hard we will show that Latinos are here to help.