Close your eyes for a moment and bring to mind the image of an illegal immigrant.

What did you picture?

Someone with white skin and blue eyes?  Someone who dresses, speaks, and acts American? Someone like me? I doubt it.

I was brought to the United States at a young age by my parents. We arrived on a tourist visa, which we later overstayed. Any memories of my birth country are disjointed and meaningless.

Throw me into a crowd of American born students, and you wouldn't be able to pick me out. I do not look the part of immigrant. I speak English without an accent. In fact, I only speak English. I follow the latest fashions and rarely go anywhere without my iPod. I'm an avid fan of the Harry Potter books, and television shows LOST and Dancing with the Stars.

I may appear to you a normal college student, but I'm not. I do not have legal status in the United States. I cannot drive or legally work here.

I have dreams of working in a research laboratory, traveling around the world and publishing a novel one day. The one dream that I have no control over and that cannot wait is the passage of the DREAM Act. Through the DREAM Act I can obtain legal residence, and without it, all my other aspirations and goals will forever be blocked in this country.