My Name is Daniela and I am Undocumented

This week's guest Dreamer is Daniela.  Visit Dreamactivist.org to learn how you can help pass the DREAM Act.

My name is Daniela, I am 18 years old and I was born in Colombia. My mother and I came to the US when I was nearly one. We had to leave Colombia because my mother was not in a good situation with my father and she feared for our lives. When we arrived in the US my mother immediately began the process to legalize us. She did whatever little work she could to help us survive and we lived with her sister who was married and had been here for many years. Over time my mother met a man who seemed perfect; he treated her well and saw me as his own daughter. They got married had my two little brothers and were in love (or at least that’s what I thought). But after two years of being married, my mother’s husband got into heavy drugs and began to abuse her. I remember seeing this happen when I was very young. My mother finally left him a few months after the abuse began and we were on our own.

Since I was very young, I couldn’t say exactly how our paperwork process was going but I know that she got to the point of getting a worker's permit. Things got tough for my mother since she was single with three kids and a low paying job, so we had to move back in with her sister. In 2001 my mother became very ill with brain cancer; she had a tumor the size of a golf ball in her right frontal lobe. She went through two surgeries in the span of four years. After her first surgery she came out fine and her cancer went into remission. She continued her life of raising three kids and working harder that anyone I have ever met. In the middle of 2003, the tumor came back in the same spot, but this time it was the size of an apple. She went into her second surgery and did not come back the same. My mom was a vegetable; she could not talk, walk, or eat. My aunt refused to put her into a nursing home and instead we took her home and we took care of her with the help of hospice. For seven months our house was a hospital, we tube fed her, changed her diapers, gave her medication, bathed her, and spent every minute of the day with her. I remember my aunt telling me something about there being one interview she had with immigration that would settle everything with our papers, but it was impossible for us to transport her to the office and they did not give us the option of having them come to her. On January 3rd, 2004, she passed away.

This left me up in the air with my paperwork status. A few weeks later my aunt went to the immigration office and to see what this would make of my paperwork. We were told that because my case was attached to my mom, it had died with hers. We started my process over from the beginning and here I am 5 years later with nothing.

I have lived here all my life, I  know nothing of Colombia, and I graduate in two weeks. I will be going to college, but I have no job and I am not allowed to drive. I have been a great student ALL my life despite my obstacles and I have NEVER gotten into trouble with the law.  All I want to do is continue my studies and become someone who can put forth good efforts into the community and make changes. Unfortunately that is hard to do with such restraints. I am fully Americanized; I know so much more of American history and the land we live in here than anything of Colombia. As cheesy as it may sound, it is my dream to one day be able to say, “I AM PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN”.