Saad's Story

Saad Nabeel doesn't get much sleep these days. Holed up in an undisclosed location in Malaysia, the lanky 20-year-old spends his nights furtively working to bring himself back to America, the only home he's ever known.

Born in Bangladesh, Nabeel moved to California with his parents at age three, and then to Texas at age 11. It was there that he developed a southern drawl and a love for fast food and Taylor Swift (whom he refers to, only semi-jokingly, as his wife). He also began charting his path to an electrical engineering degree at the University of Texas-Arlington, from which he received a full scholarship.

But that all changed in late 2009. Nabeel's father was deported and he and his mother followed. After being denied refuge in Canada, the younger Nabeel was sent to jail for 42 days in Buffalo, N.Y., where he says he was forced to sign papers barring him from returning to the United States. He and his family were sent back to Bangladesh in January 2010.

Less than one month earlier, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which would allow students like Saad -- who came to America illegally at young ages but graduated from U.S. high schools and attended U.S. colleges -- to obtain conditional permanent residency, failed to pass the Senate despite a dramatic last-minute push. For Saad Nabeel, its failure meant that he would have to work that much harder to come home.

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Nabeel was miserable in Bangladesh. He missed school, his friends, his home in Texas. He didn't know the language. After a policeman attacked him for speaking English on the streets of Dhaka, his father thought it best that he relocate to Malaysia to attend school. "We thought it was going to be an escape plan, but it turned out not to be," the younger Nabeel says.

At the International Islamic University of Malaysia, Nabeel, who calls himself "the most liberal Muslim guy you could probably find," was thrown into intense religious orientation. The environment was hostile and got worse when he told a group of Palestinian students that he had Jewish friends back in Texas. Feeling unsafe, he retreated to his room, only to discover online that the rumors he heard about suspected al Qaeda trainees having been enrolled at the university were true. He never unpacked.

Friends at home did what they could for Nabeel. He kept everyone abreast of his situation via Facebook updates and the website meltice.net. UT-Arlington's student paper, the Shorthorn, ran story after story on his plight. Another friend, Shawna McNary, wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for help and tried to organize students in protest, but found it difficult to mobilize. She's never met Nabeel -- they're online friends -- but hopes she will soon. Nabeel, McNary said, "is very strong-willed. He doesn't take no for an answer."

If anyone can help him get back to America, it's Dallas businessman Ralph Isenberg. Isenberg, 59, has become Nabeel's de facto advocate since he first read about the student's struggle in a Dallas Morning News article last spring. The two are an odd couple -- an old Jew and a young Muslim, a man who barely uses email and one who lives and breathes the Internet. (When they're not poring over immigration policy, Isenberg reaches out to Nabeel for Facebook help. "Hi Saad, still do not understand Facebook," he recently commented on one of the younger man's status updates. "Need you home to teach me.") Nabeel says they exchange an average of 30 emails and talk on the phone three or four times daily.

more here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0...?ref=fb&src=sp

I am scared these stories are going to be increasing this year unless someone steps in to stop it.

^ Me too