From Dreams in Mexico to Reality in the United States: One Immigrants Journey to Making his Dreams Come True

Carlos Perez helps his father with making a cake. Growing up, Carlos would visit his father at work and help him bake and today, he is able to visit his father at his bakery.

When Martin Perez was growing up in a small town in Mexico, he dreamed about coming to America, providing for his family and being successful enough to own a house and a car.

Today, he has done all of the above, has raised 4 children and has opened up his very own business: Lilianna’s Bakery. To get to where he is today took many sleepless nights and time away from his wife and children, but he was able to turn his dreams into a reality.

Lilianna’s Bakery sells more than just bread and cakes. They also sell sweet breads that are a typical food for breakfast paired with coffee.

At age 26 and 16, Martin and Anna Perez knew that they needed to make life better for their unborn child. In Mexico, both of them grew up without much and had to help their families from a young age to keep up with necessities. When Martin’s father died when he was 10, he took up his father’s ice cream cart and would try selling frozen goods in the city center.

“At 10, it was a lot of hard work. There were men who used to bully my father before he died and they would come and start to bully me while I was trying to sell ice cream. My older brother would come and try to chase them away, but they would end up beating us both up,” said Martin as he recalled how hard it was trying to provide for his 9 other brothers and sisters.

A few months after Anna had their child, Martin knew that he needed to leave Puebla to come to the United States. He left his whole life behind and crossed the border into the U.S. From there, he made his way up to Illinois where he settled in Bensenville and got a job at Jimenez, a Hispanic grocery store. There, he started making bread and then moved on to baking cakes in their bakery.

Martin Perez has learned to make different cakes for all sorts of occasions. Here is one of the cakes that he has prepared for a birthday party.

“When I was young, I would work in my Uncle’s bakery in Mexico. At first, I started out washing dishes, but eventually I learned how to make bread. I was working there just to make some money, but I never knew it was going to be a lifelong career,” said Perez.

After about a year of being separated from his wife and son, Martin was able to save enough money for Anna and Carlos to come to America. From there, the couple worked hard to provide for their son and ended up having three more children, all girls. Raising 4 children in a completely different country was tough, but the Perez family has learned to integrate both American and Hispanic culture into their everyday lives.

In her spare time, Anna Perez loves to cook for her family. Here, she is showing her daughters how to cook one of her favorite meals, tacos de carnitas.

There have been times where it has been hard for Martin and Anna to relate to their children. Growing up in the United States is completely different than it is in Mexico. Martin’s oldest son, Carlos, has been the first to know what it is really like growing up with parents who are immigrants and the struggles that they have been through.

“I don’t want them to go through what I had to go through. I feel like it’s difficult for my parents to relate to my sisters and their struggles because their own were so different from when they were their age,” said Carlos.

At 22, Carlos’s life has been a roller-coaster. Having been born in Mexico, Carlos is not an American Citizen and has been working hard on his legal status. By being brought into the country before the age of 16, that made Carlos eligible to be a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. With this program, he was able to obtain a Social Security number and is able to work, go to school and have temporary protection from deportation.

Without this program, Carlos would not have been able to go to college, which was one of his biggest dreams. Both of his parents dropped out of school to help support their families back in Mexico. He wanted to be the first in his family to graduate college and he also wanted to be a role model for his sisters. Being a first generation college student is tough, but being a first generation immigrant college student has shown its challenges.

“It’s difficult. No one really can tell you what to do and how to do it. I feel really accomplished though. The fact that I can even be in a college setting is amazing, I feel like it is taken for granted by people that just see college as just one big party,” said Carlos.

Currently, Carlos is working on getting his citizenship with the help of his wife.With his wife as his sponsor, Perez will be able to obtain citizenship by going through the U.S. Mexico Embassy, but it is a long and strenuous process that has taken some people up to seven years to complete. If he ever had to go back to Mexico, Carlos does not know what would happen.

“I wake up every morning thinking that this could be my last day with my wife. The country that they would send me back to, I would have no grounds in. It’s easier for me to adjust because I know both languages, but still isn’t something that anyone would want to go through. My life was made here and I know nothing else,” said Perez.