Undocumented status blocks even fully qualified people from opportunities

Evidence

And so she told me, “If there’s anything that I’ve discovered out of this whole thing, it’s that people take for granted being a citizen of this country. They don’t see the importance of having a privilege like that. I’ve been in this country for eighteen years, and I’m working hard, and I’m qualified, but I’ve missed all these opportunities. I feel like it should be a lot easier than this. It’s not fun. It’s not fun at all.” — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 146

Categorization

• SEED: This direct quote is a strong anchor for an essay on how citizenship functions as an invisible privilege—how being ‘fully qualified’ is meaningless without legal status.
• QUESTION: Worth noting how rarely mainstream political discourse centers the ‘qualified but excluded’ dimension of undocumented life—this could fuel investigation of comparable testimonies.