What is the price of being an immigrant?

Heartbreak? Yes, that heartbreak of leaving everything behind. Leaving family, your culture, your world to go work in an alien place. Add to that the fact that the place you go to you are not wanted. You read in the papers, in the internet and listen in the radio. I hate them, they are scum, thieves and criminals. Adult immigrants take it to heart and deal with it, it was their decision. They deal with it as best they can.

But what about an undocumented student? What about those who had no choice in the matter of which they came? What happens to them, when they hear that they are considered scum, rats, and that they should be shot for breathing in the same space as a citizen.

Heartbreak. Heartbreak because we think we don’t deserve to be attacked in such vicious ways. We didn’t ask for this burden, implanted to us by our parents. No one who is under 18 is scum. Yet…here I am, defending myself against all the attacks because I’m considered less American than my peers.

It is a battle in the mind as we wrestle with the possibility of, “are they right?” But I know the anti-immigrants are not right, and they never will be. I have passed every challenge presented in front of me. I have excelled in school as best as I could. I have dealt with the fact that I’m 1 of 3 undocumented students at my university with the population of over 17,000. And I deal with the fact that I’m different from my peers in ways that they don’t see, know or understand.

So here we are, the odds against us in a gigantic way and yet some of us are still capable of going to college. We are still capable of becoming doctors, teachers, scientists, and more. Despite the burden and the heartbreak, we still succeed. We defy all notion of what is possible.

What is the price of being an undocumented student?

The price is your existence being challenged everyday, in heartbreak and sadness, but in the end, we know our fight for education is one worth fighting for, no matter what the price or obstacles. Not because we choose to, but because we have to.