Whenever we are introduced to someone new, a label is used to describe who we are. I don’t like labels; I’ve carried one in particular that I don’t care for most of my life. I arrived in this country in 1987. Thirty-one years as an undocumented immigrant, it is a lifetime. Yet it has put me in the unique position to relate to both citizens and immigrants. I was 8 years old when I arrived; I had a typical American childhood. I assumed I would be going to college. Then reality hit, as an immigrant, I would not be allowed attend school. Thank God for Junior College, they’ll take anybody. I spend the next four years at Montgomery College; hiding feelings of shame, not asking anyone for help, not reaching out to others; feeling alone, scared, and worthless.

 

At that time people like me were called illegal aliens. Illegal alien is a powerful term, both hateful and a complete fallacy. By labeling immigrants as aliens, it made it easy to turn us into villains. Aliens are foreign, different, not from this land, easy to hate, easy to blame, and easy to discard. But we are not aliens, we are human; we are people just like you. As humans, we can still be labeled criminals, illegals, lawbreakers, bad hombres, not the deserving of sympathy. People that use these labels don’t understand our own immigration laws. I cross the border legally on a tourist visa, 6 months later my visa expired and I became something called out-of-status.  But as a minor, I could not break the law. It wasn’t until I turned 18 that I started breaking our immigration laws. My crime is similar to the crime of most DACA recipients. By overstaying our visas we commit a civil offense, not a criminal offense. Essentially my status is the equivalent of someone parking their car illegally but never getting a parking ticket. That is our terrible crime, a common civil offense.

 

Yet in my youth, the term illegal alien weighed heavily on me. The first time I considered suicide in my life was the spring of 2001. Most of my friends were preparing to graduate from college. I saw no path to a future, and I kept asking myself what am I going to do without a college degree? I stopped thinking of myself as a person, and I started thinking of myself as a number, an invalid number, just another Illegal alien. Instead of reaching out for help I decided to end my life. You know what I didn’t do? You know what never even remotely cross my mind? Move back to Mexico. This is my home and it never occurred to me to leave my home.

 

So one day I got to my car and decided to drive it into the Potomac River. When I failed to execute my plan I felt even more worthless even in that I was a failure. I don’t know how, but somehow my mother must have known. A few weeks later she drove up from Florida and dragged me to the University of Maryland admissions office. She started bothering everyone inside the Mitchell building. We were repeatedly told that we didn’t have an appointment and that we needed to come back another time. My mom refused to leave, I was humiliated, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Eventually, a kind admissions director stepped out of her office and spoke with us. My mother told her the entire truth and begged her for help. I thought this is the stupidest thing in the world. That admissions officer had no reason to help us. She handed me a Maryland application and told me to fill it out. When we got to the in-state status section, I ran into the problem that got me rejected every time I applied to a 4-year School. There were only two boxes I could check.  I either had to check a United States citizen box or an alien resident box. I qualified for neither. I needed an alien resident number to go to college. The previous summer my mom had gotten married and was now a legal alien resident. The admissions officer asked my mother for her alien resident card and told me to fill out her number on my application. Two weeks later I was admitted into the University of Maryland.

 

I was given an opportunity; I was given a chance to realize my dream. The road would be difficult I would have to overcome more challenges, but I was given a path to success. I would have to complete 70 credits and come up with $3500 in tuition every semester. I was advised that I should spread out my 70 credits over five or six semesters. However, $3500 was more money than I had ever seen in my life; I was going to find a way to do it in four semesters. Against my counselor’s advice, I got special permission to take 19 credits my first semester at Maryland. Over the next two years, I kept a full schedule of classes with no less than 17 credits per semester while working at least 40 hours a week at minimum wage. Living on my own I had a 45-minute commute to and from school. I had no access to loans, grants, or scholarships. I had to pay every dime of my tuition up front and in cash. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

 

I want to tell you about the happiest day of my life because it wasn’t graduation day. The happiest day of my life was 5 weeks before graduation. The University of Maryland has something called the Terrapin payment plan. It allowed me to break up my tuition into monthly payments. In April of 2003, my grades were good enough where I knew I would graduate. I was about to place my final $700 payment on a credit card. I still remember walking into the Lee building, the financial building; standing in line waiting for that nice Filipino man to accept my final tuition payment. And I remember thinking, I did it, I did it. Even if it takes me the rest of my life to pay off that credit card, there wasn’t anything anyone could do to take my degree away from me. I had finished the race, I had kept the faith. The next month I walked with my class completely debt free.

 

When people hear my story they told me how remarkable that accomplishment was. They think it’s even more remarkable when they learn I am an undocumented immigrant. The funny thing is while I was going through it I never considered what I was doing to be particularly remarkable. For me, I had a goal and I could only focus on completing that goal. For me, success was the only option. I share this part story with you because it taught me one of the most important lessons anyone can learn. The only thing necessary for anyone to accomplish something remarkable something outside of the scope of what they believe they can do is to make success the only option. Tony Robbins once said when people are given the choice between success and death most people will choose success. In order to realize our dreams and accomplish incredible feats, we have to go after them believing that success is the only option.

 

This can be harder for citizens than immigrants. One of the wonderful things about America is that hundreds of millions of people have access to comforts most of the rest of the world can only dream of. These comforts make it difficult the risk our dreams.  As an undocumented immigrant, I have an unfair advantage because I don’t have a choice. I have an MBA from the University of Maryland and I can’t get a job as a sales clerk at Best Buy. If I didn’t build a business I wouldn’t have a job, I wouldn’t have a life. It’s not a fluke that so many entrepreneurs are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. For people like me, success is the only option.

 

This leads me to the second lesson my journey taught me. Immigrants are the key to the fulfillment of the American dream. I had a conversation once with the brilliant professor name Michael Yahuda.  Michael is a British citizen who was raised in Israel; he spent most of his adult life in England, and now lectures around the globe. Michael knows how much I love this country and how I believe America is the greatest country in the world. He once asked me why I had this opinion. I told him this is the land of opportunity, the Constitution; our system of government makes it the best place in the world to live. He responded if the Constitution is so great how come it has never worked anywhere else?  I ignorantly responded because no one else has ever tried it. To which he corrected me, many countries have tried and failed. I felt like a fool and lost the argument.

 

A couple years later I had a meeting with another friend name Joe Moore. Joe is a brilliant attorney and successful entrepreneur. I met with Joe a week before my story was published. I wanted my friends to hear it from me that was an undocumented immigrant, not read it in a newspaper. Joe is one of the last person’s I told. Joe was a strong Mitt Romney supporter. I didn’t think Joe would understand my situation. I couldn’t even look him in the eye as I apologized for who I truly was. He responded, what are you sorry for!? The anger and his voice shocked and also woke me up. What was I sorry for!? I had done nothing wrong. And at that moment I knew that I would never again apologize or feel ashamed of who I am. I am proud of the man I became. Then Joe said something the change my perspective. Joe said to me, Uriel America it’s not the greatest country in the world because the smartest people from around the planet come here. America it’s not the greatest country in the world because the wealthiest people from around the globe come here. America it’s not even the greatest country in the world because the most beautiful people come here. America is the greatest country in the world because the bravest people from around the globe come here. Joe said, think about a mother in South or Central America, a child in hand making the journey across several nations; including the entire country of Mexico with drug lords and crime. Only to arrive in a country where she doesn’t speak the language, she doesn’t know anyone and has no way of knowing how she’s going to provide for her family, with the sole purpose of giving her children a better life. America is the greatest country in the world because those courageous mothers, like my mother, have sacrificed everything so their children to build a future for citizens and immigrants in the United States.

 

The American dream is for both citizens and immigrants, but without a constant flow of new immigrants, that dream could die. It has been my experience that the American dream works best when immigrants and citizens reach out and help one another build the country. I have a small business. It is nothing special. I am a simple man, living an average life, in my small corner of the world. But my business does serve my community of Bethesda Chevy Chase Maryland. We are located about a mile From Walter Reed hospital, where our wounded veterans go to heal. We have partnered what’s a yellow ribbon fund to invite our veterans to heal their bodies and their spirits by learning the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. A few miles further away is the San Miguel School of DC, a Catholic school for underprivileged boys. San Miguel brings these boys to our academy to learn skills that they would otherwise not be able to afford. We also provide regular women’s self-defense seminars to teach valuable skills that will help the women in our community avoid becoming a victim.

 

We do these things for free because we believe it is the right thing to do. I’ve learned that doing the right thing is the most important thing I can do with my life, no matter the cost. Over the past two years, I’ve spoken to thousands of students about immigration and following your dreams, which has made me very public. Every day I look at the door and wonder if today is the day. If ICE will walk through my door, place me in handcuffs, and rip me away from life and my home.

 

However, doing these talks have taught one simple truth. As long as this country is the land of opportunity, immigrants like me will do everything we can to make America the greatest country in the world. We will fight, we will sacrifice, and we will endure, to keep America great; because for us, success is the only option.