Your spend 6 years as a legal alien and what do you get?

....six years older and a kid about to enroll at a college that you can't afford (oh yeah, and deeper in debt). Poor planning? Not so much. Red tape? Lots of it. Okay, so we've played by the rules. We've been living just over 6 years in the US after moving the family from Canada in the hopes of furthering my husband's academic career. We dotted the "i's and crossed the "t's" and got the stamps in our passports. All on the up and up.

So, at the risk of sounding existential: What am I? What are we? We are legal non-immigrants (with the uber-expensive paperwork now filed in the hopes that we'll become legal immigrants soon-ish).

Major downside? I can't work (and I haven't since we arrived **6 YEARS and 2 MONTHS AGO!!!**) because my Canadian post-graduate degree didn't cut the mustard here. No H1B Visa for me.

Super major downside? Our daughter had to apply to colleges as an "International Student" which means no financial aid and no scholarships. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No green card? No loans. Period.

Worse than that is what the colleges want. N.O.W.

Our gal is smart, motivated, kicked a$$ on her SAT's and has a 4.0+ GPA. She was accepted to Boston College, Northeastern, NYU, &c....but with a 45-60K per year price tag ("Dear Intl. Student, Please provide evidence of funds to pay for 1 year of college before enrolling..."), things are looking incredibly bleak.

How do you tell your kid, "Great job, honey! You worked your butt off but we can't afford to send you to college!!"

I figure we can't possibly be the only people in this uncomfortable position so I'm putting it out there. Anyone else have a story to share? And okay, I admit it. Desperate times call for desperate measures (hence the "donation" button that you see before you.) It's a long shot, but at this point we can only go up.