I am a shadow

Humanity? Do I deserve it? Am I even human? Apparently not, according to lots of people. Lou Dobbs, and Bill O’Reilly are some of the more famous people saying that. That’s their message, I’m evil and the scum of the earth.

I’ve been told that I should be shot, mauled by a tiger, and squashed like a cockroach.

I’m the biggest threat to national security it seems from most things I read now. I’m the scapegoat to all problems and the extreme has become the mainstream. Dehumanization seems to be the price of being an immigrant now.

And for those of us who took this challenge (of trying to get to college) the price is higher still. Everything is on the line. Give up a family home, a community, our sheltered homes to see a glimpse of another world. We pay more money, work harder, live in paranoia and fear because students are no different than any other immigrant. That glimpse of another world is heartbreaking, to see the freedom of others, the joy that one wants to so desperately have. To face all the obstacles all college students face plus a jealousy that is hard to comprehend, an abyss of solitude that is hard be overcome and cope with, and to know that at the end of this hard road one will probably achieve nothing. Not a job with my degree, no because we don’t deserve to use our talents for the good of the country. At the end of everything, I am a shadow pretending to be real, I am voiceless pretending to speak, I am undocumented pretending to be you. That’s what dehumanization makes me want to say, that’s what all the anti-immigrants want me to feel, but f**k that. I am a person, far more human than those inhumane men and women who assault those who can’t defend themselves. I can see that now, after all the suffering and loneliness. I am a shadow because I have to be, but I know I’m much more than that, not an alien but human.