Living the green card dream

It hasn’t quite been a year yet since Mariana Zamboni received her green card in the mail, but her life has already changed drastically.

“My life turned upside down,” she said. “Well, upside up actually.”

Last April, Zamboni’s life suddenly fell into place.

She was graduating with a psychology degree from UCLA, a school she had dreamed of attending since grade school, she was accepted into a graduate program in education at Harvard, and she had finally received her green card.

Without legal residency, which she had lacked until then, Zamboni knew going to graduate school at Harvard would not be possible.

“I felt so blessed,” she said. “It was a great feeling. It means so much to me. It’s just a card, but it’s a card that opens so many doors, privileges, so many rights.”

With that card, she could receive financial aid and attend graduate school without being plagued by the financial worries that dominated her undergraduate years.

That experience was not one she wanted to repeat.

Undocumented students cannot receive financial aid, so finding a way to pay for college is one of the biggest challenges facing these students.

“It is so difficult, you become creative with your resources,” Zamboni said.

Zamboni would find herself getting milk from Kerckhoff to use for her cereal.

“You just don’t buy milk anymore. … You’re bumming it, and its kind of embarrassing when people see you stealing milk for your cereal.”

Zamboni befriended campus janitors, who would save her food left over from faculty lunches or give her rides home when she would have to stay on campus late.

“It became a community. It was definitely a collective effort that I was able to graduate from UCLA,” she said.

Sometimes she felt like the struggle didn’t seem worth it.

Many undocumented students, even those who graduate from good schools, are forced to work menial jobs if they can’t secure legal residency. Zamboni had always figured she would go back to dry cleaning, her job as an undergraduate.

“I remember lonely nights, walking out of Powell and wondering if this fight is worthwhile,” she said. “Am I actually going to achieve something? Because after I graduate, what am I doing to do? Who is going to hire me?”

She saw friends with degrees going back to waiting tables or working at construction sites or volunteering.

“It depressed me a lot. … You wonder if you should keep on fighting.”

It was almost too good to be true when Zamboni received her green card in the mail.

Despite her happiness, she knew the news would be difficult to share with her friends who were still undocumented.

“It was just me. … What was going to happen to them?” she said. “Who was I to deserve all this and not them?”

Since then, Zamboni has increased her advocacy work for undocumented students.

“It’s a huge sense of responsibility to give back to them.”

At Harvard, Zamboni created a social justice group on campus this year to promote legislation that would allow undocumented students in Massachusetts to pay in-state tuition.

In California, undocumented students do pay in-state tuition at public schools.

Zamboni is also working with immigrant families at a Boston middle school.

She says she is able to understand them deeply and uses her own story to instill hope in them.

She quotes “Spider-Man”: “With great powers comes great responsibility. … And it’s so true.

“It’s a beautiful privilege that you have, having privileges means that you have power. And you do have this responsibility to break down stereotypes and myths that have been constructed, and instill hope in the hopeless created by undocumented status.

“Being undocumented made me cry a lot. But at the same time, it made me into the person I am now. I’m grateful in the end, but I’m glad that it’s over,” she said.

“I feel like a walking dream.”