Undocumented Pebblebrook Grad Has Hope

There wasn’t a face in the van that looked familiar. He was riding to a place he’d never heard of surrounded by people he’d never seen before, and Rolando Zenteno began to panic.

He was 7 and he began to cry.

“Where’s my mom?” he asked in Spanish.

It was 2001, and Rolando’s mother had been told to return to Mexico at one point during the nine-hour trip by border officials, Rolando said. He was asleep when she slipped away.

“Imagine you’re 7 years old, and your mom’s not there, and you don’t know what’s going on,” Rolando said. “It was hell. I was practically traumatized. I didn’t know what was going on.”

A woman in the van tried to soothe Rolando, telling him that his mother was at the store and would return in a couple of hours. After going to a hotel and then to a house along the journey, Rolando could not hold back his tears. He was finally able to speak on the phone to his father, who already had moved to Georgia.

His father assured him that they'd be together soon.

Rolando learned English in eight months, and during that time, his mother joined him and his father in their small apartment in Fulton County.

“That’s how the American Dream is supposed to start,” he said.

It cost Rolando's father $5,000 to bring him and his mother to Georgia. His father worked and saved nearly everything he made to bring them to the U.S.

Rolando did not choose to come to Georgia or even know what it was, for that matter, he explained.

“Being undocumented, it’s just, you feel like you’re stuck,” Rolando said. “You consider yourself an American.”

“You want to drive to school. You want to get a credit card. You want to do things like vote,” he said. “They put so many obstacles. They make life so hard.”

Rolando is used to challenges. He took five Advanced Placement classes during his senior year of high school and graduated from Pebblebrook High on Saturday. He plans to attend Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, major in English and eventually become a journalist.

One of the first obstacles he'll face in reaching this dream is even getting to school.

Rolando will need to drive to Savannah without a Georgia driver’s license. In Georgia, only legal residents are able to obtain driver’s licenses.

Just driving to college will be a risk because if he is pulled over, he could face deportation. Additionally, paying for college will certainly be a hardship. Because he is not a legal resident, there are not many scholarships or loans available to him. He was recently awarded a Colored Rocks scholarship, however.

“All I want is an education. I love this country as much as they do. I just want to better myself,” he said.

He tells his mother, who moved back to Mexico with his two younger siblings five years ago, that the sacrifice will pay off one day.

“I used to believe if I worked hard enough, I would get citizenship.”

Rolando, like many other undocumented students, slowly learned that currently there is no legal path to citizenship for them. Children brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents cannot obtain legal citizenship without being deported, waiting out a 10-year ban and then applying for citizenship if they have a U.S. citizen willing to sponsor them.

If deported, Rolando said, “I would be devastated. I don’t remember what Mexico looks like. It would be like me asking you that question…I’d be living to survive there. I’d be living to be successful here.”

What do you think of Rolando's story? Should students like Rolando be granted amnesty? Should a path to citizenship be created for Rolando and others like him? Tell us in the comments below.