Germán Cadenas entered the United States at the age of 15 along with his mother and younger brother to visit his father; however, given the need in his native country, Venezuela, they decided to let their visas expire and stay in the USA, so Cadenas lived as an undocumented immigrant for 9 years.
After almost 10 years, at the age of 34, Cadenas was able to become a U.S. citizen, a professor of Psychology at Lehigh University, and has managed to publish a large amount of research focused on the psychology of undocumented immigrants.
According to research they have compiled over more than a decade, American immigrant communities have been shown to suffer from mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and feelings of low self-esteem.
Researchers and advocates say these mental health problems can be caused by being persecuted, detained, and marginalized, as well as feeling dehumanized in every possible way. Examples include exclusionary higher education, exploitative and low-paying employment practices, civil rights violations, and uncertainty in changing immigration policies.
Cadenas discovered that once immigrants identify systems that harm them mentally and then join social justice activism to resist and dismantle those same systems, their efforts serve as a "coping mechanism that helps defend their psychological health" and helps others heal.
That is why Germán created activist movements, from which to work on the traumas that, like him, many immigrants deal with.
