DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Chih Tsung Kao

America's Voice Blog

Posted 09/08/10 at 01:37pm

The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act.

Dear President Obama,

My name is Chih Tsung Kao. I am 24 years old and am now currently living in Taipei, Taiwan awaiting military service. This is not what I had planned for my life as I entered high school, but it was drastically altered when I found out that I was undocumented at 17.

I arrived in the US on a visitor's visa when I was about 4 years old. My mother had obtained a student visa for me shortly afterwards and moved me to Boulder, Co to live with my grandparents. By the age of 13 my grandparents decided they wanted to retire and move to California. Being raised in Boulder, the only city I've ever known, I decided I wanted to stay and found a friend's parents who would take me in.

I've learned a lot about what it is to be American and to grow up being American from this family. They have been more family to me than my own biological family. I had not lived with my biological parents since I was brought to the US. When I found out about my expired student visa status in high school, I was both ashamed and embarrassed that I couldn't call myself an American. I had felt every bit American as my peers in school, but was not allowed to call myself one due to my lack of papers. My grandparents aren't to blame. They are older and don't know how the system works.

Actually, I'm not too sure a lot of the American citizens know how the system works, how intricate, and how complicated it is to become a citizen and have the freedom that is granted them for just being who they are. My life had two faces then, an American kid doing what kids do, and a depressed individual, feeling alone and unwanted by the country he felt was home. I had never let any of my friends know of my situation until a month before I left for Taiwan.

I graduated from The Colorado School of Mines with a Civil Engineering degree in the spring of '09, and have since decided that I can no longer wait for my life to take a turn for the better by becoming a citizen. I wanted more than anything to be a productive member of society, paying back my debt to society as a working member of the engineering sector. I don't know if I will ever get a chance to fulfill that now.

Currently, I am living in Taipei, and awaiting mandatory military service for all male Taiwanese citizens. Though I know I must fulfill my duties, I feel that this is yet another year of my life delayed, both personally and professionally. I am currently looking for ways back into the United States, but I fear the ten-year bar for overstaying my "welcome" in the US. Due to this bar, I have also considered immigrating to Canada to start a new life in a country as close to the US as possible. Though it may be too late for me, there are still tens of thousands of students and young adults that can benefit greatly from the passing of the DREAM Act. They, if anything like me, simply wish to be contributing, upstanding citizens of the country they know as "home".

Sincerely,

Chih Tsung Kao

Cross-Posted at Citizen Orange.