Sueños Unidos/Dreamers United - A Blog
Welcome to Mountain Dreamers’ new blog, Sueños Unidos/Dreamers United. On our blog we will feature stories of locals Dreamers, DACA recipients, immigrants, and their families. Because of the COVID-19 crisis, we will also provide updates and information relevant to the Mountain Region’s immigrant community. Please see our permanent COVID 19 resource page on our website at:
“I’m Going to Disney” - Carime’s story
“I’m going to Disneyland” is more than a marketing slogan or a Super Bowl tagline made by winning football players. “I’m going to Disney” was what Carime Lee’s mom told her to say upon entry to the United States.
At 6-years-old, Carime and her 8-year-old older sister left Colombia with their mom, who remarried a Colombian man (and US citizen) living in Florida. They traveled to and from her homeland every six months, and on every return trip, Carime told custom agents she was "going to Disney". It wasn’t a lie—she’d seen Mickey Mouse and her favorite, Princess Jasmine, but there was more to their story than going to Disneyland. Eventually, she questioned the statement. Carime had a home, went to school, and had friends in Florida, but they had to go in and out of the country to keep their visas current while their application for Legal Permanent Residency was processed. She was afraid of what would happen if the full truth were exposed - would her family get separated? Go to jail? Be deported? Eventually, Carime’s mom obtained citizenship, paving the way for both of her daughters to do the same. In eighth grade, Carime became a United States citizen.
When she first started school, Carime took ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes and made friends with kids who spoke Vietnamese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and Jamaican Patois as well as English. “It was America: a melting pot of people, customs, religions, and traditions,” she says. But Carime also remembers being the only brown girl living in a white neighborhood, excluded from certain classes and activities because of implicit racial bias. It gave her the grit she needed to surpass everyone’s expectations. Carime learned impeccable English, dropped her accent, became captain of her cheerleading squad, took honors and Advanced Placement classes, and served as vice president of DECA: Distributive Education Club of America. Despite her academic achievements, when another student at her high school was deferred to Florida State, and Carime was accepted, he blithely told her it was because she had a Spanish story to tell. She felt angry and dismissed. She had worked hard in high school to be able to join her sister at Florida State. Though she had known discrimination in a general way before, for the first time in her life she felt what it was like to be personally, individually discriminated against.
Carime received a law degree from Ave Maria School of Law in 2014 and a LLM (legal masters) from University of Miami School of Law in 2019. She and her husband now live with their three huskies in Summit County, where she’s a practicing lawyer for West Huntley Gregory in Breckenridge. When Carime was asked to serve on the board of Mountain Dreamers, she agreed without hesitation. “I believe in bringing awareness and educating others about the plight of immigrants. We are all here for the same reason; to live a good life.” She believes Mountain Dreamers provides a valuable service to the community and thinks the economy in Summit County, as well as the rest of the country, can never be successful without the hard work of immigrants and their families.
Carime cares deeply about the plight of undocumented people and urges everyone to understand their stories. “I can’t imagine the terror kids endure being separated from their families and detained. And we recently worked with a woman who, in her homeland, was raped and beaten by a gang so badly that she’s now blind. She and her child are here, seeking asylum. All they want is a safe and better life.” She says the current administration has a different set of values from the traditional idea of the melting pot.
At the end of the day, Carime says, “We have more similarities than differences, but it’s the differences that make us great.”
