Citizen Illegal

Olivarez’s parents were undocumented immigrants when they arrived in the United States in 1987, later becoming US citizens. They came at a time when Mexican immigration was on the rise. In the 1980s, it nearly doubled, reaching a total of 4,298,000 Mexican-born immigrants in the US by 1990. The figure almost doubled again in the 1990s, and peaked in 2010 at 11,711,000. After that there was a decline to 10,918,000 by 2023, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). According to the MPI, an estimated 45% of Mexican immigrants were in the country illegally in 2022. The number had been steadily falling since 2007, from 7.7 million people to 5.1 million in 2022, a decline of 34%. 

Chicago, where the Olivarez family settled, became an increasingly popular destination for Mexican immigrants during this time. In the 1990s, the number of Mexican immigrants to Chicago rose by 117,000, contributing to the city’s population growth. Many of them worked in steel mills (like Olivarez’s father), meatpacking plants, and on the railroad. According to the 2000 census, there were more than 530,000 Mexicans in the city of Chicago, and more than 1.1 million in the larger metropolitan area. 

During the 1990s, there was a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment in the US, which continued into the 21st century.