Carlos L.

Harvard College, Class of 2009
Chemical and Physical Biology
California

I always dreamed of knowing what lay beyond the mountains. They were my backdrop growing up in Silicon Valley, and I always longed to learn what was on the other side.

I arrived in the valley when I was four years old; after my parents told me we would board a plane for the first time and fly to America. I was delighted to undertake what was from my perspective, simply a big adventure. In contrast to my fantasy, the reality was that my parents had decided to leave our home in Guadalajara, Mexico, and move to San Jose, California. This decision to uproot the family could not have been easy, but they decided to pursue the American Dream and try their luck in a country that promised a better life.

Our assimilation into American society was far from seamless. My parents had few financial resources, only a grade school education, and could not speak English. Six months after our arrival, our tourist visas expired and we joined the ranks of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the shadows of this country. We left our homeland to escape economic hardship, but now the previously green valley felt more like an inescapable pit and the mountains felt like the limits of our cage. Determined to give their children a better life, my parents worked multiple labor-intensive jobs for minimum wage. They made innumerable sacrifices so their children would not have to, finding solace in the hope that the next generation would take advantage of the educational opportunities this country offers. To my parents, education was the vehicle for upward mobility, and it was through education that we would lift ourselves out of the shadows.

Aware of the sacrifices my parents made to ensure my access to a proper education, I looked to the mountains seeking the treasure we all hoped awaited me on the other side. My curiosity towards the mountains’ mysteries typified my inquisitiveness and my yearning to understand the world. Motivated by a desire to penetrate the unknown, I developed an affinity for the natural sciences. By adolescence my thirst for knowledge led me to consider a career in science. But science alone was not enough for me. How could I justify spending my days contemplating abstract ideas when my family and community of immigrants were weighed down by the brutal reality of their daily lives? I sought a career as a physician so I could apply my intellectual passion for science, but also work directly with my community to lighten their burdens.

Driven by a profound appreciation for the opportunities this country had provided for my family, I began fulfilling that sense of responsibility to my community by eighth grade. I volunteered hundreds of hours at a local food bank that provided food and social services to the HIV-positive, low-income community of the valley. Meanwhile, motivation and focused effort led me to academic success in high school and eventually earned me a fully funded spot at Harvard College. My education prepared me to serve as a counselor at a reproductive health community clinic in the valley, as a peer contraception counselor in the Harvard student health center, as a sexual health educator in Boston public schools, and as a researcher searching for a cure for future generations by investigating HIV vaccination strategies in pre-clinical studies and clinical trials. Using HIV as a lens, my experiences prepared me for a career as a physician-scientist spanning both the clinical and scientific arenas. However, despite my fervor to become a physician, during college I was painfully aware that my status as an illegal alien threatened to impede my ingress into an American medical school after graduation.

Yet, my story is also one of love. In my first-year dormitory at Harvard, I met and fell in love with another aspiring physician, and she and I were married in the summer of 2008. Through my marriage I have recently become a Permanent Resident of the United States. I grew up at the intersection of two countries and cultures yet feeling as if I did not fully belong to either, so for me, permanent residency represented a turning point where I was finally embraced by the only place I ever knew as home. Furthermore, a career in medicine is finally within my reach, and my wife and I will be attending medical school beginning this year.

Unfortunately, there are millions of immigrants who are still waiting for a path to overcome their own barriers and hardships. My education has and will continue to provide me with the tools to transform the valleys of adversity I encounter into lush lands of health and opportunity, and I know that other undocumented immigrants who call this country home are just as eager to contribute to our American community if given the chance. I left the valley undocumented and with optimistic dreams, and now I return ready to embark on the next stage of my education, legalized and with renewed hope: hope that I can learn to share these tools with others as a physician, and hope that those still in the valleys can be free to dream.