DREAMer Guest Post: Piash

My Name is Piash and I am an Undocumented American.

I was born in Bangladesh and lived there for ten years of my life. The year 2000 was a very exciting year for me. I was going to visit my aunt in United States for the first time in my life. I was promised a trip to Disneyland as well. I believed my parents when they told me all of this. What ten-year-old kid doesn’t believe his parents?

After about a month, my dad told me that we were staying in America permanently and I was to go to school here. I was enrolled in sixth grade the following fall and started my new life. My first year was the hardest for me. I was the foreign kid with the strange accent and I felt lost and confused. I didn’t have many friends but I spent a lot of time reading, learning English, and watching Saturday morning cartoons. As I immersed myself in this strange American culture, I started falling in love with it. As years passed, I started identifying myself as more American than Bangladeshi.

In high school, I found a group of close friends who welcomed me into their lives. I was happy with my life and I studied hard. I loved rock music. I stood in line for each new Harry Potter book. I was a big fan of ‘24’ and ‘Superman’ was my childhood hero. I loved history and learned all that I could about the United States and its past.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I first found out that I was undocumented. I came home to show my parents that I got a 100 on my driver’s ed class and I wanted to go to DMV to get my learner’s permit. My parents told me that my dad’s asylum case was still pending in court and they didn’t know how long it would take. My dad assured me, as his lawyer told him, that once I apply for college, I could obtain a student visa. A year later, my dad’s case was dismissed by the court and my dad decided voluntarily departure was better than trying to appeal.

It was my senior year when things became chaotic. I started applying to schools and that’s when I found out that I couldn’t transfer to a student visa from a tourist visa without going back to Bangladesh. If I went back and applied, there was a good chance I would be denied the visa since I was undocumented and my tourist visa was long expired.

I was accepted into Rutgers but I was charged out-of-state tuition even though I’d been living in New Jersey for more than eight years and graduated from a New Jersey public high school. I couldn’t apply for Financial aid or any loans because I was undocumented. I didn’t qualify for any scholarships from Rutgers for the same reason. I decided to enroll in Rutgers for one semester and then transfer or take a semester off if my parents couldn’t afford to pay anymore. I wanted to study and graduate even if it took me more than four years.

I was depressed. I felt betrayed. I worked hard in school. I graduated in the top 10% of my class with a 3.8 GPA. Should I be angry at my dad for not hiring a more competent lawyer or at the broken immigration system that is ridiculously slow and ridden with loopholes? I was an American in every way except where it really mattered: documents. I never told my friends because I didn’t know how they would react. After all, it was high school.

In 2007, I found out that I wasn’t alone in my struggle. I learned of a bill in congress that was designed to help American students like us who lost legal status or were brought to this country illegally by their parents. We can’t drive or work legally. We can’t further our education or join the workforce and pay taxes to contribute to the economy. Over 65,000 undocumented students graduate each year.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, also known as the DREAM act, is a bipartisan legislation that would permit these students conditional legal status and eventual citizenship granted they meet certain requirements.

In 2007, the Dream Act came up in congress as a stand alone bill and was narrowly defeated in amidst cries from Anti-immigration groups that it was an amnesty for illegal aliens. Dictionary.com defines Amnesty as “a general pardon for offenses, esp. political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction.”

How can this bill be an Amnesty when the only crime that we have committed is obeying our parents? It is not an amnesty but rather, our only chance at living the American Dream.

It was very disheartening when the Dream Act failed in 2007. I felt rejected and I had two options. The first was to leave my friends and family to go back to Bangladesh, though most of my family lives in US legally and my father was in Malaysia at the time. I would have to start over in a country that I no longer considered my home. I would be as lost as I was when I came to United States 8 years earlier.

Instead, I’ve decided to stand up for what I believe and fight for my rights. In 1776, Americans declared that [They]“hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Dream Act is my fight for my life, liberty and pursuit of Happiness.

In 2009, Americans, both legal and undocumented, are uniting. Our goal is to raise awareness of this civil rights and immigration issue that should be solved as soon as possible. American taxpayers, including my parents, have already been invested into students like me during our twelve years of public schooling. It would be wasted completely if we couldn’t pay taxes and become contributing Americans.

The Dream Act will return again in the 111th congress and it’s up to us to prevent the misinformation that plagued this bill in the past. Together, we can react as human beings and as Americans and help children achieve their dreams.

If you are an undocumented American who would like to share your story here, please email me at verve at dreamactivist dot org. If we stand united and share our stories, we can drown out the angry howling of nativists and xenophobes.

Let there be comments. I would also be very grateful if you could take one minute of your time to vote for this at change.org. It only takes like five seconds to sign up. Thank you so much.