Aggregated Immigration Stories

"It wasn’t until the third grade that Robin Whiteley realized something separated him from the rest of his family.

Classmates at his East Texas elementary school began taunting him about his brown skin — several shades darker than that of his fair-skinned siblings.

"They called me a Mexican," he said. "It was the first time I had heard that in my life. I remember going home and asking my mom, ‘What’s a Mexican?’"

Now, 35 years old and a bear of a man, the question still plagues him.

Adopted by an American family the day after his birth in Ciudad Juarez, Chih., Whiteley has only been to Mexico on short trips to Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey. He doesn’t speak the language. He doesn’t know anyone there.

But according to the U.S. government, he remains to this day a Mexican national with no legal right to be in the United States."

JEREMY ROEBUCK in the Brownsville Herald.