Oral history interview with Yuriana Aguilar

Collection

Identifier: SR12250

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This oral history interview with Yuriana Aguilar was conducted by Sankar Raman by phone call in 2017. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In this interview, Aguilar discusses her experience as an undocumented immigrant child from Mexico. She talks about pursuing higher education and a career in biology as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient. She talks about being the first in her family to get a college education, her motivation to succeed, and her research in cardiology. She describes her experience of being the guest of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris at a speech President Donald Trump delivered to Congress in 2017. She describes how, in the speech, he demonized and misrepresented undocumented immigrants. She closes the interview by talking about living under the specter of deportation and her hopes for a path to citizenship.

Dates

Creation: 2017

Creator

Aguilar, Yuriana (Interviewee, Person)
Raman, Sankar (Interviewer, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

Biographical note

Yuriana Aguilar was born in Mexico. Her family came to the United States when she was 5, and they settled in Fresno, California. She attended the University of California Merced, where she earned a bachelor of science degree in biology. After the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was established by the administration of President Barack Obama in 2012, she received protections under the program and continued her studies at UC Merced, earning a Ph.D. in 2016. She then worked as an instructor and post-doctoral fellow at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Extent

42.6 Megabytes (1 online resource (1 audio file (34 min., 10 sec.))) : MPEG-4

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

Oral history interview with Yuriana Aguilar conducted by Sankar Raman in 2017 for The Immigrant Story. Aguilar is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who came to the United States with her family when she was 5. She is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and earned a Ph.D. at the University of California Merced.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of The Immigrant Story, 2020 (Lib. Acc RL2020-017).

Publication note

An article about Yuriana Aguilar, "A Cardiac Scientist with Heart" by Sankar Raman, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at https://theimmigrantstory.org/scientist/.