New York Times
By Liz Robbins
August 19, 2015
Ricardo Aca knew he could be fired. But he wanted the camera to roll anyway.
Mr.
Aca is shown holding his cellphone watching Donald J. Trump call
Mexicans who enter the United States rapists, criminals and drug
dealers. Then, Mr. Aca calmly tells
his story.
A
slight 24-year-old Mexican immigrant who graduated from high school and
community college in Queens, Mr. Aca works at the Koi SoHo restaurant,
which leases space inside
the Trump SoHo hotel. He made a short video with a filmmaker friend and
posted it on Facebook on Monday, where it attracted more than 300,000
views in 24 hours.
“I
was offended because this is not who we are, this is not who I am, this
is not anybody I know who is an immigrant,” Mr. Aca said in an
interview on Tuesday, wearing
his Mexican national team soccer jersey.
Amid
the uproar over immigration in the presidential race — marked by Mr.
Trump’s inflammatory comments about Mexicans and his plan to build a
wall along the border and
deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country — the
video ignited another debate over what it means to be legal in the
United States.
“I
know I could lose my job for just talking about Trump,” Mr. Aca says in
the video, “but it doesn’t make me proud every day to go to work under
his name.”
He
described himself as an undocumented immigrant who came here at age 14.
But in the video Mr. Aca did not say that he has documents that enable
him to remain in the
country legally. He was part of a wave of immigrants who came to the United States as children who have been granted deportation deferrals and work permits under a 2012 program.
With
this legal permit, Mr. Aca has worked as a busboy for two years for the
restaurant, which is not owned or operated by the Trump organization.
In a brief interview
in response to Mr. Aca’s video, Mr. Trump, whose immigration stance has
helped vault him to the lead among Republican candidates, said: “He’s
got a legal work permit. I’ve heard he does a good job. We thought he
was an illegal immigrant at first.”
But
while Mr. Trump was quick to point out that his companies employ only
people with legal work papers, his immigration policy is far less
flexible in its definition
of legal status. In announcing his immigration plan in a blueprint and
in various interviews, Mr. Trump said he opposed the plan that allowed
Mr. Aca to stay in the country and work.
For now, Mr. Trump said he would not press Mr. Aca’s employer to punish him, though he added, “I want to check his file.”
Mr.
Aca came to New York from Puebla, Mexico, with his 12-year-old sister.
His mother had sought legal avenues for the family to enter the United
States, applying for
visas, he said, but was unsuccessful. She wound up in New York, getting
a job sewing in a factory, and in 2005 arranged for her children to
cross the border in Arizona.
As
a teenager in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Mr. Aca steadily learned English from
listening to Britney Spears songs. He graduated from Grover Cleveland
High School in Ridgewood,
Queens, and received an associate’s degree in photography at LaGuardia
Community College.
He
works as an assistant in the photography lab there, and splits his time
working at a Williamsburg sushi restaurant, Cherry Izakaya, as a
runner, and at Koi. In the
video, he said he wanted his three jobs to dispel stereotypes that
Mexicans are lazy.
Asked why he defined himself as undocumented in the video, Mr. Aca explained his legal uncertainty.
“I’m
in the deferred action program, which I have to renew every two years,”
he said. “I consider myself an undocumented immigrant still because it
could just be taken
away from me at any time.”
On
Tuesday, the Koi restaurant group demanded that the filmmaker, Chase
Whiteside, take down the video, claiming that Mr. Aca had made false and
defamatory statements.
The video, titled “Meet Ricardo, an undocumented immigrant who works in
a Trump Hotel,” was misleading, according to Suzanne Chou, a lawyer for
Koi Group, because it implied Mr. Aca was working illegally — for a
Trump hotel. Koi SoHo, she said, is a “third
party tenant” in the hotel.
“Our company follows the law and if you are eligible to work at Koi, you can apply,” Ms. Chou said.
But
David W. Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration
Lawyers Association, volunteered on Mr. Whiteside’s behalf to write a
letter to the restaurant group
in response. He argued that while Mr. Aca was authorized to work, he
was still undocumented. He cited information on the website of the
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services stating, “deferred action does not confer lawful status upon an individual.”
On
Monday, shortly after the video was posted, the Koi payroll department
called Mr. Aca to bring the renewal of his work permit that he said he
had forgotten to submit
in December. When he walked into the kitchen, he said that line cooks
from Mexico and sushi chefs from Japan told him they were proud of him.
“It’s
important to stand up for what I believe in and to be able to defend
myself,” Mr. Aca said. “If I do work at Trump SoHo, I have the platform
to send this message.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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