'Dream Act' kids are like all other American kids, with the exception that they have to work harder to excel in school, they live in fear of deportation, and they worry about their future.
I will carry with me always the deep sense of what it feels like to be an outsider and how tough it was, how hard it was to adapt to this country.
Throughout my childhood, I watched my parents try to become legal but to no avail. They lost their money to people they believed to be attorneys but who ultimately never helped. That meant my childhood was haunted by the fear that they would be deported.
When my father died, I was nine or 10, and my mother was like a dad and a mom to me. She raised me and supported me when I came to the U.S.
Mum used to hide love letters from my boyfriends and put me down. Now I understand that she was a Polish immigrant forced to settle in Chicago. She was jealous of the freedom life gave me.
The first time I applied for a U.S. visa, I was rejected. I continued to apply again and again over the course of two years and finally received my visa on the ninth try.
When I came to the U.S., I tried to take shortcuts to make money - but everything crashed.
My parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.
On the surface, I've created a good life. I've lived the American dream. But I am still an undocumented immigrant.
I found out that I was illegal when I was 16. I'm gay. I'm Filipino.
Far from protecting children, the abuse of Article 8 risks making them pawns - subject to coercion or worse - as part of a criminal's desperate struggle to stay in Britain.
The fact of leaving one's country, one's family, one's roots, can be painful. My father had already found his place, but for us, for my mother, it was very difficult to get our bearings.
