My name is Zeenat and I am currently a fourth year Undergraduate at UCLA.  I hope to complete a BA in Sociology and Spanish Minor by the end of this year.  Arriving in the US from Karachi, Pakistan when I was six months old and the eldest of four children, my dream is to attend Law School in the near future.

In 2004, my family felt the bittersweet wrath of post 9-11 discrimination.  My father was interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security for ten hours which in turn resulted in three court hearings.  He was granted his permanent residency a year later as a court order.  After living in Los Angeles for over 21 years, my mother and I have yet to gain residency, much less citizenship.

Currently an intern at the Legal Aid Foundation’s Self-Help Center, my plan is to create innovative ways to further incorporate pluralism into American society.  In addition to striving alongside my undocumented peers in the United States to reform immigration laws to accommodate talented, educated youth, my scope of reform has a twist: I wish to increase awareness in the public eye to the point where other South Asians can speak about immigration comfortably in any given setting.  As undocumented students, we are the under-the-table-working-tax-paying-cum-laude pioneers of immigration reform.

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