Actor Bambadjan Bamba revealed his illegal immigration status in an interview Tuesday and outlined his efforts to push powerful Hollywood figures to fight for the kind of amnesty program currently being debated in Congress.

“I’m going public first and foremost because I’m sick and tired of living in fear and hiding about this issue,” Bamba told Variety.

The 35-year-old actor was 10-years-old when he moved to the United States with his parents from the West African country of Ivory Coast. Bamba realized his illegal status while applying for college. Barred from receiving financial aid, the then-budding actor drove a cab to help pay for drama school. Now he’s organizing for himself and the estimated 800,000 people who illegally entered the U.S. with their parents as children and who had beenants eat the eggs of the parasitic queen. In other words, they may contribute to defending the nest against parasitic ants that threaten the future of the entire nest."

Six ant species from the Formica genus were selected for the study, with Formica fusca, a common parasite host in Finland, ending up as the host species. The researchers collected queens of several species from nature, growing their eggs and larvae in laboratory conditions. The experiments focused on finding out which eggs the host larvae had an appetite for, the size of the eggs and the gender of the larvae eating the eggs.

"We also wanted to find out what the eggs smell like, as this specific characteristic is most likely what larvae use to distinguish the origin of the eggs.