I was born in Guanajuato, Mexico; my father was a farmer who owned no land and my mother was a traditional Mexican stay at home mom. Both of my parents did not finish high school, my mother didn't even finish middle school, not because they did not want to but because in the small town/ranch where we lived education was not seen as important as working, since over there they had to pay to attend public school and they're families where very poor since the the small town/ranch had, at their time, experienced a civil revolution (The government was not very organized at that time and some really powerful men owned the ranch and had "slaves" (I say slaves because they were people that no where else to go that only got paid with small amounts of food and the ability to live at the small town) to work the land for farming profit until they rose up and stood against the men and took the land for themselves, my grandparents being part of the slaves.) My father grew up farming and learned how to fix cars at and early age from my grandpa but his true passion is farming. Some time after my dad married my mom and after i was born a man tried pick a fight with father (at that time my father was young and very temperamental, my mother help him grow as a person and he is an absolutely great dad now) and my father shot him in the arm with a gun. Before the local police came to arrest my father ( i was around one at the time) my mother, him and I moved to a different town near some family friends. My dad build our house out of concrete it was very small and was made of two rooms one kitchen and one bedroom with a tin roof we a "bathroom" built outside. About a year of him farming for other people and receiving little to no pay he decided to go to America, in hopes of finding a job. He had no money, no diploma and a "criminal" record, so of course he went to America illegally. My mother had two more children before he left us, i had a younger sister and a brother. he left us for about 2 1/2 years to work at a factory for minimal wage which he would send to my mom every month. during the time he was gone my mother suffered depression ( since my father had was the only person she had, her family had all moved to America, so she was alone with three kids in "new" town were she didn't know anybody and no mode of transportation). My father came back and eventually together they resolved on taking all of us to America (they method that we came here and how they decided is a whole other very long story) Here, my father took on many hard manual jobs before he settled on roofing (What happened in between us getting to America and finally settling down is also another very long story), this job allowed him to pay of a house that my mother's family had arranged for us. i was 7 years old at the time. Today I am 18 years old and a lot has changed, I graduated from high school last Saturday, i was in the highest top ten percent ranking, and i received the most honors out of my class. My father no longer is young and he could not continue climbing on top of hot roofs, he now uses what he learned from his father as a mechanic to fix cars, which is still a very hard job for one man. I plan on going to college and becoming a teacher except for me there are many hurdles.

1. i cannot received any federal aid as i am an "illegal immigrant"
2. I cannot own ANYTHING in America (eg: Library card, automobile, apartment, etc.
3. I cannot apply for a state ID
4. I cannot apply for a job
5. I cannot receive any money in check format
6. I cannot get a credit card
7. I cannot get apply for insurance
8. I cannot get social security
9. I do exist according to the U.S.
10. I risk deportation everyday
11. I cannot get anything that requires any of the above

Through many great people that i have met i found some loop holes to things and found a way to attend college legally, however now I'm faced with finding a way to pay for it all. I have bigger dreams of attending a private institution and going to law school and all that but right now i just want to get bachelors degree which would be enough to get a decent job to support my parents, so please any donations to my college fund are appreciated

First of all i want to thank all the support i received from the community (and the negativity, because in a way it challenged me to succeed). Secondly i hope this can be view as an example of a situation that has gone through a dramatic change in a good way, a situation that can inspire at least someone else who can relate to my story, and keep on going even though every thing looks grim. I am happy to say that I am still here and I am in college and well. When it all looked like it was going downhill, i thought about moving to Mexico on my own and seeing what life had for me over there, hopefully i would be able to find a job with the english that i learned here in America. However by a chance meeting, I got to know a certain professor who is head of the Honors College in my proposed community college and, well, I went from applying for the program to winning the "Honor's College scholarship" which would pay for all of my tuition for 2 years (just not my textbooks, but that is a small price to pay compared to my out of state tuition) as long as i kept an average of a A- or higher in my studies. The best thing about this is that it is funded by private groups therefore I am fully able to accept it. So far I'm in my second semester and i passed my 1st with a 4.0 (Woo!); I'm also well on my way to getting my Pre Education certificate which would allowed me to became a teacher's assistant (Of course i still wouldn't be able to work in America but having a certificate in any way will help me where ever i am. If after my 2 years are over i still do not have documentation, I plan to move to my home country, and try to find a job with what I've got, surely then I will at least go, not empty handed but with proof of my accomplishment. This may be just for 2 years and it may only be community college, but to me it's more than enough, and i have nothing to lose, thank you osu!