By snoadmin
Ahmed’s biggest pet peeve is people who litter. He hates it when people are right next to a trash can and decide to use the floor as their private trash collector. His eyes sparkle when he talks about the little things humans can do to help keep the planet alive.
“Everyone is talking about going green but it can be expensive,” Ahmed said when asked why he chose chemical engineering as his major. “Making green technology accessible to everyone got me into the field.”
Despite his desire to give back to a country that fueled his love for education, Ahmed is a criminal in the U.S. government’s eyes.
Ahmed was born in India but has no recollection of being there. He came to this country a little over 20 years ago, when he was only a year old. A combination of bad immigration advice and a parental need to give their children a better life resulted in Ahmed’s lack of legal immigration status in the U.S.
“Something is radically different here,” Ahmed remembers thinking when he was in high school. He couldn’t do some of the most common things his classmates were doing at the time — like getting a driver’s license or a part-time job.
The point of growing up and arriving at those milestone teenage years is that you get to do things like driving and finding crappy mall jobs, but Ahmed couldn’t do any of those.
He lacked a Social Security number to get a driver’s license, and he didn’t have the proper documentation to legally work.
Instead, he threw himself into education; Ahmed takes every educational day as it comes. He tries not to think about his current immigration status, even with the constant daily reminders.
When he graduated from high school with high honors and got accepted to UC Irvine, his empty wallet was a reminder that he couldn’t possibly afford the university’s tuition. Though he had the grades and the economical need, he did not qualify for federal student aid because of his immigration status.
After three years of community college, he finally transferred to Cal State Long Beach this fall. If it wasn’t for the nearly-miraculous help of a retired relative who’d recently liquidated his assets and wrote a check for Ahmed, there was no way he was going to be able to pay for the constantly-increasing tuition.
Chances are that a miracle like that won’t happen again. Students like Ahmed, who’ve practically grown up in this country and are allowed to pay in-state tuition through Assembly Bill 540, are probably the least-talked about students affected by increasing student fees.
They were brought here at a young age and would practically be foreigners if deported back to a country they know very little about.
“It’s basically a piece of paper that is separating me from everyone else and that’s really frustrating,” he said.
I can hear that frustration in his voice, but it’s not a whiny frustration. It’s the kind of frustration you use to push yourself in order to go forward.
Ahmed, whose high spirits make up for any social skills he says he lacks, looks at the bright side of his situation. “At least I don’t have to worry about clean food, water and shelter.”
-Julio Salgado
