WOODBURN, Ore. (AP) – Teresa Alonso Leon envisioned a better life in a promised land when she was brought from Mexico to America as a young girl. Instead, her family wound up in an unheated house in Oregon with no indoor plumbing, eking out a living by picking strawberries.
It is all the more remarkable, then, that Alonso is now one of the first people brought to the U.S. illegally to become a lawmaker in America.
“I think it shows that human potential does not know immigration status, and that among America’s immigrants, especially those who have come here as children and benefited from the right to education, their potential offers leadership for the country,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
The irony that Alonso was elected on the same day Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential race is not lost on her.
“We didn’t get our woman president that we were hoping for, but they got me as a legislator,” Alonso said with a laugh in her small office in the Oregon Capitol.