During the dead of winter, my skin usually looks milky white. Sometimes I smooth and straighten my naturally curly locks. I've never been to Mexico, Spain or even a border state. I'm not fluent in Spanish and at times I cannot understand things my grandmother says. Pero yo soy Latina.

My mother was born in Edinburg, Texas. She falls near the middle of eight children. My grandmother came to the United States from Mexico, and although he died long before I was born, my grandfather from Spain was an amazing relative I would have loved to know.

I am Latina; half of who I am originated in countries across the U.S. border. There are times when ethnicity and race become topics of conversation, and in these moments, I am often forced to defend myself so as not to deny the existence and lives of my family — the people I love and care for the most.

We have been blueberry pickers, house cleaners and janitors. My family members started at the bottom of the barrel in jobs that were seemingly menial and certainly stereotypical of Mexican Americans and Latinos in the United States. Now, my aunts, uncles and mother are making $15 an hour as managers of national companies and working at businesses, factories and corporations in New York City and other big cities at well over minimum wage.

My mother has five children; I'm right in the middle at 21 years old and a professional writing senior at MSU. My oldest sister is raising a beautiful family in a Lansing suburb while studying nursing at LCC and working at Ingham Regional Medical Center. After graduating with honors from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, my other sister went on to study law at the same institution and is now working at a Mexican American legal defense firm in Chicago. My two younger brothers are still in middle and high school, but will undoubtedly be college-bound after they graduate. Nosotros somos Latinos.

All of us — we are Latinos. I'm not sure we'd be where we are today if my grandparents hadn't made the journey to the United States so long ago. Can you blame them for wanting all that we have now?

Even though my relatives are all legal citizens of the United States, I can't help but think about the turmoil and great stress other Mexican American families are facing with the proposed anti-immigration reforms. In a lot of ways, we are alike.

My grandparents both left countries where they were limited in available opportunities and careers, places that made them unhappy and unsuccessful. They decided to come to America, the land of the free and home of the brave. Supposedly there would be more prospects and greater chances of happiness and survival in the United States. Those greater chances were as farmhands, cleaners and hard laborers — jobs that other Americans passed over for more advanced and high-paying careers.

But this was just the jumping point of a revolution. Immigrants began to climb silently up the success ladder, most starting on the lowest rung. Today, many Latinos have found happiness and professional achievement, but still not equality.

And just as Latinos have managed to rise above the status of maids and farmers, our government passes laws and bills to force people back out of the country. Under these reforms, children will be torn from their mothers and fathers in tear-filled goodbyes. Relatives awaiting U.S. sanction on the other side of the Mexican border will never reunite with their families who made the cross years earlier. The doors to the land of opportunity will be slammed shut in the solemn faces of those seeking the religious and personal freedoms our country promises.

How can we be so quick to refuse immigration when that is exactly how our country came to be? And moreover, how can we go from one home to the next, banging on doors, demanding that Latinos produce their green cards or leave the country? What kind of people are we to say that 2-year-old children born in this country can stay, but their mothers who came from countries like Cuba and Nicaragua with communist governments must go back to a country that wasn't good to them to begin with?

I find it extremely disgusting and disturbing to hear about states like Pennsylvania that are taking extreme measures to rid their neighborhoods of illegal immigrants, who Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe so affectionately said are trying to "steal the American dream instead of working for it."

As I see it, there is no robbery taking place here. These people are working incredibly hard in positions that most Americans consider themselves above. They are working toward a dream, but is it really an American dream to work in the professions most commonly filled by Latinos?

Ten years from now, I'd love to see ex-CEOs and former businesspeople barebacked in a blueberry field picking bloody thorns from their rough, tanned fingers while sweating profusely in sweltering 90-degree heat. Yes, that sounds like the American dream.