Illegal alien Laura Veira Ramirez has column in The Harvard Crimson :
One of my earliest memories after immigrating to the United States consists of me sitting at the kitchen table when I was around five years old. As my mom washed the dishes, she gave me multiplication problems to solve. Math was its own language. It was comforting that I could understand it―even when my English was sub-par in elementary school.Is there anything Donald Trump can't do? He's now blamed for illegals changing majors! Attention Jeff Sessions is Harvard engaged in a mail and wire fraud scheme to violate federal immigration laws???
My love for math, therefore, began early and continued for years to come. It was always my favorite subject and the one I was constantly praised for as I surprised myself and my teachers with how well I was performing. As my English improved, my love spread to all of STEM since I could now understand it all. My love for STEM centered on Chemistry as I started learning about gas laws during my sophomore year of high school and took AP Chemistry my junior year. More importantly, it was something that I was good at. My mom had always told me to find something that I could do well to make a lot of money because my parents didn’t have the same opportunities.
With this in mind, I entered Harvard with the full intention of studying Chemistry. My first semester, I took math and science classes along with the requirements of Expos and French. I was on the road to success that I thought I wanted and that my parents had always wanted for me—the immigrant dream often recognizes only STEM as a valid field of study.
Then November 9 happened. I remembered how fragile my future became as I watched votes go up for a man who held the fate of my undocumented community in his hands. I suddenly remembered that I had more to worry about than academics. At Harvard, I had almost started to forget that I was undocumented, but my first panic attack that day reminded me.
My mental health interfered with my plans to complete another practice midterm and paper. When I emailed my French professor for an extension, she told me to turn it in whenever I could. In Expos, we spent most of the time discussing what had happened. Meanwhile, there was no mention of the election in my math or science classes. When I asked the head Teaching Fellow for my math class if there was an option to have more time to study for the midterm, I was met with a “just do your best”.
