My story begins when my path was chosen for me by my mother when she bought me here at the age of 11 for a summer visit and never returned me to my native country of Barbados. At the time I had no idea about status or anything of the sort so that was obviously left up to my guardian, but unfortunately that was not the case. By the time I turned 18 I was pushed out in the world on my own left to fend for myself and was told to take care of my own status. So I decided to go see a lawyer and figure out what I could do to fix my situation and was told that their was absolutely nothing that they could do and I was devastated. I would not give up and went to see more lawyers in hopes that maybe I could find at least one that could help me. But to no avail I had no luck. I have been here for 17 years now and this is basically all I know. The thought sometimes of people knowing my status is frighting because you never know what their reaction may be, so because of that very limited people are aware of it.

Me and my mother are not very close because of this. I ask her why she did this to me? Her answer is I don’t know or her lawyer didn’t tell her what she was supposed to do about me. How could you as a mom see your child in this situation and so nonchalantly act like its not a big deal. That makes me sad whenever I think about it.

In conclusion, what I want to gain from telling my story is (1) I could maybe reach out to someone who is in the same situation and feels alone to know that you are never truly alone and (2) I wish that the government would think about us the DREAMERS and know that we DID NOT do this to ourselves and would appreciate a chance just like all who went through the system legally. We want an opportunity  to stop living in the shadows, to go to school and do something positive with our lives. This is supposedly The Land of Opportunity where is our OPPORTUNITY?