When I came to the United States at 8 years old, from Ecuador, I thought I was coming for a vacation and to meet my parents for the first time. A month passed by and I found out I was never going back home. I cried for months.
Being undocumented is hard, especially in today's society where we are seen as intruders and criminals instead of human beings looking for a better life.
What is most alarming to many undocumented students such as myself, is the push many Republicans want to end the federal program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
DACA offers relief from deportation to many young individuals like myself who came to the United States without the proper authorization as children. After filing paperwork and paying a fee of $495 every two years, it allows us to have a working permit and a Social Security number.
After being legible for DACA, I learned how to drive, bought my own car and obtained a New York State license. I was also encouraged to go to college which it was something I never dreamt of being able to do.
Yet, according to a Kansas newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has joined nine other states in asking the Trump administration to stop DACA.
It scares me to know that at any moment my life could be over. Through DACA, I’ve handed over all my confidential information to Homeland Security. They know where I live, what college I’m attending and have my fingerprints. I would be an easy catch for deportation.
The United States has been my home for the past 14 years of my life; here is where I learned who I am and who I wanted to be, where I learned English, where I graduated high school and where soon, I will graduate college.
I know more about the U.S. than I do of Ecuador. I can barely remember the street that I lived in or the friends I once had.
If I was to go back, I would be lost in a country that in reality is where I belong, but I’m unfamiliar with. I don't know who the president is, their political situation, I don't have any friends and most importantly, my family is already here. So what would I do?
I can probably get a good paying job because I'm bilingual but that's not the point. The point is that although I never expected to live in the U.S., it has become part of me and of who I am.
Being deported would probably be the most awful, traumatic and depressing moment in my life. Just thinking about it makes me feel anxious because Ecuador is where I was born but the United States is where I grew up. My life is here.
I know that although I have not committed any crime and I am in college, to others I am a considered a criminal. Yet, what many don't understand is that I didn't choose this life and first and foremost, I didn't choose to be undocumented.
