Collection is open for research.
Gift of The Immigrant Story, June 2023 (RL2023-081).
Claudia Marcela Bonilla Morales was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, in 2001. In 2006, she and her mother immigrated to the United States to join her father, who was working in Beaverton, Oregon. She became a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which provides temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, and she attended Portland Community College.
Source: Information provided by Bonilla Morales in her interview.
Oral history interview with Marcela Bonilla Morales, by Sankar Raman, Nancy E. Dollahite, and Shea Seery, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Marcela Bonilla Morales was conducted by Sankar Raman, Nancy E. Dollahite, and Shea Seery on September 21, 2019. 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, Bonilla Morales discusses her family background and early life in San Salvador, El Salvador. She talks about adjusting to life in Beaverton, Oregon, after she and her family immigrated to the United States in 2006, including learning English. She also discusses her relationship with her older brother. She shares her high school experiences, including her education, her social life, and speaking to classes about her status as an undocumented immigrant. She talks about the process of registering for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) in order to apply to colleges; discusses her feelings about being undocumented; and shares her plans for the future. She closes the interview by talking about her experiences as a student at Portland Community College, and by sharing advice for other DACA recipients.
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,
An article about Marcela Bonilla Morales, "Expert in Languages at an Early Age" by Nancy E. Dollahite, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at