My cousin is dying in a New-York City area hospital. Her husband was just diagnosed with Diabetes and her two year old has a stomach virus. Throughout her whole life, Max has struggled with a genetic, blood disorder known as Sickle Cell Disease. SCD mostly affects people of African ancestry; it is incurable. This has greatly robbed her of many things, including the productive life she lead prior to being hospitalized. although in great pain, both her smile and love for life have been left untouched. Growing up, we would all helplessly watch as she spent weeks, sometimes months in the less than stellar hospitals of Dakar (Senegal).

Somehow, when she was 25, my cousin was fortunate enough to get a visitor visa to the U.S. and since her mother was already here, needless to say, she overstayed. Max found a bill-paying-job, got married, had a child and settled into her new life.

Little is known about SCD in Africa; so those afflicted with the disease silently suffer and more often than not die from the complications it never fails to cause. Here, she could lead a normal life and up until recently, she did.

Since she is an illegal alien, my cousin cannot petition for any of her immediate family members to come and be by her bedside. Two years earlier, her mother- my aunt and fellow alien, dejected by CIR's failure had packed her belongings and returned to Dakar.

Yes, my cousin is an illegal alien. But had you met her in the real world, had you gotten to know her, you would have like her; that I‘m sure.

And maybe, you would have even been able to see the human in her. The human she is.