“You’re not an immigrant – you’re international,” a coworker once said to me, over tacos from a truck in East LA.

“What’s the difference?” I asked, confused. Was I supposed to be flattered?

“An immigrant is like… a Mexican. Working illegally and shit.”

I didn’t know what to say. That moment left me unsettled. Not just because of his ignorance, but because I realized: to some people, immigrant doesn’t mean “someone who moves to another country to build a life.” It means illegal. Other. Less than.

But by definition, that’s exactly what I am – and have been – for the past ten years.

That conversation kept echoing in my head while I was writing I Don’t Even Skate, my latest short film. It’s about Nahiki, a skater girl who almost never gets on her skateboard. She’s undocumented, working under the table in a job that takes advantage of her. She’s got bills, responsibilities. No freedom to mess up. However, she doesn’t fit the stereotype.

And that’s exactly the point.

Her best friend, Jelly, does skate. He’s carefree, American-born, and gets to “figure things out.” He has the luxury of being lost. Nahiki doesn’t. She’s in survival mode. Her story isn’t loud or tragic – it’s quiet, constrained. She doesn’t need to declare who she is. You feel it in her silence, her fatigue, her hustle.

That’s what being undocumented is like – an invisible weight carried with no fanfare.

When people leave their countries to come to a new one, they venture into the unknown, without a safety net or support system, learning a new language, decoding unfamiliar norms, dealing with culture shock… It’s brutal. Not just because of how much adapting it takes, but because of the emotional toll. That kind of courage should be admirable.

And yet – “immigrant.”

Why has that word become something to flinch at? Why does immigrant come loaded with shame, while international sounds polished and aspirational?

Immigrants are scrutinized. Internationals are welcome.

The word itself isn’t inherently negative. We made it that way. It’s been racialized, politicized, weaponized. Not everyone who crosses a border is labeled an “immigrant.” That marker is handed out or withheld based on how we look, how we sound, how much money we have.

With I Don’t Even Skate, I push back on that.

First, I give you a character whose story you don’t fully know. You don’t know if she came to Los Angeles as a student, as an au pair, or if she “jumped the border.” You don’t get that information, because it’s not the point. What matters is this: she can’t work legally, simply because she wasn’t born in the U.S.

When I was casting, I wasn’t looking for someone who looked white/American, but I also didn’t want her to immediately read as “Latina.” I wanted someone racially ambiguous, without an accent, because I knew audiences would project their assumptions on her.

Let’s be real – people have their opinions about immigration. I don’t want them to dismiss her because she looks foreign. Or side with her for the same reason.

I want them to see her first. To actually get to know her.

Because that’s how people start to care. They don’t connect with stats or headlines about “undocumented immigrants” on the news. They connect with human beings, regardless of labels.

So, if people are going to care about the story, they need to know my protagonist. Know her struggle. And her main one? She can’t pursue her passion, because she’s stuck in a system designed to make her fail.

This isn’t just a story. It’s real life.

I live in Los Angeles, where ICE raids are, once again, a daily threat. They’re targeting the Latino community like everyone’s part of a gang, a problem, a threat. They’re painting an entire community as criminals. As monsters.

But they’re people who came here to survive. To work. To live.

And now? People are scared to do just that. Go to work. Get groceries. Go to school. Celebrate milestones like graduations, things that should be normal. Joyful.

People are afraid to live.

Read that again – People are afraid to live.

How wild is that in 2025? You’d think in one of the “most advanced” societies on earth, we’d at least see human beings as human beings. But no. Say the word immigrant or Latino, and suddenly it’s all justified.

But here’s something most people don’t know: the U.S. is home to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants from Europe, Canada, and Oceania. They’re the undocumented “internationals.”

According to the Center for Migration Studies, about 450,000 undocumented “internationals” live in the U.S., roughly 4% of the 12.2 million undocumented people here. Many of them overstay visas. They work under the table.

Now, swap international for immigrant. See if it hits differently.

Sure, it’s a small slice of the whole, but if this is supposedly the biggest mass deportation push in history, why isn’t ICE targeting everyone?

ICE isn’t raiding French cafés or Irish pubs. Nobody’s stopping blond tourists in Echo Park to check their status. It’s not about legality. It’s about perception, about who looks “illegal.”

It’s about “racially cleansing the society.” That’s the system Nahiki lives in. That’s the system we live in.

And that’s why I avoided the usual immigrant clichés. I’m telling a story that feels so universal that even the so-called majority – white, middle-class Americans – can recognize themselves in her.

I Don’t Even Skate isn’t just about immigration or skateboarding. It’s about the moment when your life drifts away from what you imagined it could be. It’s about how purpose gets buried under responsibility.

That kind of disorientation? It’s not exclusive to immigrants. Anyone who’s had to put a dream on hold knows what that feels like. Anyone who’s had to fight just to earn the right to stay has lived it.

And maybe, that’s the most American story of all.

Once upon a time, being an immigrant meant you had guts. It meant you were chasing something better. A dreamer. A fighter. Now, that same courage can get you criminalized – depending on where you’re from and how you got here.

Today, being an immigrant – especially a brown, working-class one – is like running a marathon uphill and blindfolded with the spectators shouting that you’re lucky to even be on the track.

We don’t get to fall. We don’t get second chances. While others fail forward, we’re told to be grateful just to be here. Before we can dream, we have to survive.

That’s not resilience. That’s exhaustion. That’s injustice.

And that’s what I Don’t Even Skate is really about. It’s quiet, but it’s a protest. Set in the same Los Angeles where the “riots” erupted.

Nahiki doesn’t riot. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t even skate.

But she endures.

And that, in itself, is an act of resistance.

Maybe that’s why I named the film I Don’t Even Skate. Because it’s not about what you do – it’s about what you can’t do. It’s about longing. The not-yet. The almost. That ache of waiting for your life to begin.

Nahiki wants to skate.

But first, she has to survive.