Word: jaramillo
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...Laura Jaramillo ’10-’11, this anxiety came sooner. Jaramillo’s family left Colombia when she was 12 years old. As an employee of a national telephone company, her father worked to cut off the communications of imprisoned officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. He began receiving phone threats from the rebel group. They heard of people they knew getting kidnapped. The family fled to the U.S. to apply for political asylum, a process that was drawn out over eight years...
During this time, Jaramillo had gone to high school, applied to college, and spent two years at Harvard. Finally, during her sophomore spring, Jaramillo’s family had their final court hearing. Their case was denied...
...qualifications for asylum were strict and he did not see their particular situation as a perfect fit. The family was issued an order of withdrawal and given 60 days to leave the country. “It felt like my life was crumbling around me,” Jaramillo says...
Jaramillo’s only legal option to complete her Harvard education was to go back to Colombia and apply for a student visa. Even though Jaramillo was uncertain about her chances of obtaining such a visa—it would be difficult to prove the required intent to return to her home country after having done most of her growing up in the U.S.—it was worth the risk...
...Jaramillo took a leave of absence, returned to Colombia, and secured her return as an international student. Because of this experience, Jaramillo sypathizes with those students who unlike her did not have a choice in their immigration status. “You can’t punish children for the sins of their fathers,” she says. “In any other circumstance that would seem so absurd, to make someone pay with their entire life...