Carlos Saavedra: keeping the dream alive for undocumented people in the US Inside a meeting room in the House of Commons, Carlos Saavedra is telling the story of the DREAMers - the undocumented Latino students who helped win Barack Obama a second term in office. "Until I first said the words 'I am undocumented' out loud in public, I didn't understand the shame that we carried," says 26-year-old Saavedra, who is from one of the millions of families who live invisibly and illegally in America. It was as if hundreds of pounds had been lifted off my shoulders. The weight of that shame that we had carried for so long. Saavedra has since been granted US citizenship, but the words "undocumented and unafraid" continue to be the slogan of a larger group of young people who take their name from the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The act - which would create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented young people - was first proposed to the US senate in 2001, but in November it became a key issue in the presidential elections. "We made it the single most important issue for the Latino electorate," explains Saavedra, the former national coordinator of United We Dream. In a closely fought campaign, where Latinos represented 23.7 million votes, Obama listened, signing an administrative order, the first step toward changing existing laws on citizenship and deportations. Latinos rewarded him with 71% of their vote. "It was the biggest moment in immigrant rights in 26 years," Saavedra says. Last week, at the president's State of the Union address, five undocumented student leaders were among the invited audience, one of them a personal guest of the first lady. "The president does not meet with undocumented people, but we said to his advisers, 'Unless you make progress on this we are going to be all over the streets,'" Saavedra explains. We gave them a deadline. We told Obama, 'You need to deliver on past promises to the Latino community.' This month Saavedra is visiting the UK on a nationwide tour hosted by the anti-racism campaign Hope not Hate. "As young activists we learned from other countries," he says. We want to share what we have learned. British immigrant-rights activists have watched the US story unfold with interest. "It shows it may be possible to change the terms of the immigration debate in the UK," says Nick Lowles, Hope not Hate's director. Saavedra was born in Lima, Peru, in 1987, the son of a security guard and an accountant. His family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in search of work when Carlos was 12 and his brother Rodrigo was four. "Our parents told us it would be hard but that we were doing it to make a better life for our family," Saavedra says. We had tourist visas, then we overstayed them and became undocumented six months later. Growing up, Saavedra began to see the problems facing his family. "Although undocumented children have been allowed to attend high school since 1987, you have few other rights," he says. You cannot drive, are not eligible for legal aid, you cannot travel. When he came to apply for university to study classical piano, Saavedra discovered that undocumented students were also not eligible for the reduced tuition fees that apply to students attending state-run colleges within their home state. "If you are undocumented you have to pay the out-of-state fees - so $18,ooo to $20,000 instead of $3,000 to $5,000," he says. My father was a janitor and my mum a domestic worker. I realised I wasn't going to university. As many as half of the students in his class were Latinos who had overstayed tourist visas or whose families had simply slipped over the US border. Yet the subject was never discussed. We had a history teacher, Mr Ortega, who encouraged us to speak up and start campaigning for access to in-state tuition fees. Within three years we were in 80 high schools across the state and we had targeted every member of our local legislature. We actually changed the law. Still, the governor of Massachusetts vetoed any change in legislation. "You might have heard of him," Saavedra says. He's called Mitt Romney. Saavedra and his family managed to afford the fees for him to study a single term of music at the Boston Conservatory. "Then I was forced to drop out and become a waiter," he says. In the evenings Saavedra attended community college to study political science. Then, one night in 2009 his younger brother, Rodrigo, walked into his bedroom. He had been invited on a school trip to China. The school were going to pay for it. He says 'Carlos, can I go?' Like many immigrant children with their siblings, it was like I was his parent. I had to tell him the truth - I couldn't magically get him in and out of the country. It broke Rodrigo's heart and it broke my heart. When Saavedra addresses the House of Commons meeting, he comes back to his own story time and again. This is part of the DREAMers' strategy to humanise the immigration debate. "I decided I was going to do it for my brother," he tells the gathered union members, activists and MPs. By the time he was 18, I promised he was going to have a document in his hand, so he could go to college. Saavedra and his friends raised money to set up a seed project, United We Dream. I moved to Washington DC, travelling 20 days a month, organising. We trained thousands of people. In 2010 we pushed the US legislation all the way to the senate, but we lost by just five votes. Then in 2012 as the election drew closer, the DREAMers seized their opportunity. "We told Obama's right-hand man, we can't wait," Saavedra says. There are people in this room with families in detention centres who are being deported. People were always saying take it easy, take it slow. We said, we can't wait. We just wanted to go to college. Our parents had made this huge sacrifice for our generation, but we were blocked from bettering ourselves. Four years ago Saavedra won his own battle for legal status and he remains unafraid, fighting on for his younger brother, and for the children of undocumented immigrants everywhere. In Britain, he hopes to inspire young people to take action. When he heard that Obama had signed the administrative order, opening up a possible door to legal status for undocumented young people, he went to his brother's bedroom and woke him. Saavedra recalled that it was nearly seven years since he had promised Rodrigo that he would be able to go to college. He also remembers his brother's response: "He said, 'Thank you - that took a while'."