Tahoe’s illegals struggle to find purpose of college degree
By Austin Fay
Alejandra Delgado’s journey began when she walked to this country.
She walked with her family, carrying only water in the blistering Sonora Desert sun for five days and nights when she was 12 years old.
Arturo Rangel, LTCC's HOPE Club adviser, talks to members. Photo/Austin Fay
She and her three sisters, mother and father were on their long journey from a colonia called Golondrinas southwest of Mexico City into the United States to escape the slum they lived in. The 21-year-old’s journey continues at Lake Tahoe Community College where next year she will graduate with three associate’s degrees – Spanish, psychology, and liberal arts, with a concentration in social Sciences.
(The student’s name has been changed to protect the family.)
Delgado is the first person in her family to attend college.
However, any business she might apply to work after graduating cannot legally hire her because of her immigration status.
“I could either give up on my education or look for private scholarships for college. (I have received) a lot of support through teachers and friends pushing me to not give up,” Delgado said.
In addition to private scholarships to help pay her way through college, she works at Samurai restaurant on Highway 50 in South Lake Tahoe. That’s on top of taking anywhere from 12 to 20 credit hours and being the president of two collegiate clubs.
Her dream was to attend UC Berkeley next year, then pursue a graduate degree in psychology.
“I just found out it’s impossible without the DREAM Act. It’s just not a possibility right now, so I’m settling to go to San Francisco State,” Delgado said.
The difference in tuition between the UC and CSU system is the deciding factor. She doesn’t have the money or access to financial aid that people born in this country have.
For Delgado and thousands of other students across the nation, surviving on private scholarships keeps higher education out of reach because there isn’t enough of those dollars to pay the bills.
Delgado, along with 312 other students at LTCC are Assembly Bill 540 status students. This means they do not have documentation proving their citizenship. They are able to attend public universities with no state or federal financial aid. In California they pay in-state tuition. They are not eligible for federal financial aid like the Pell Grant or FAFSA.
AB540 students are not just undocumented residents. They are students who attended a California high school and moved out of state. They are allowed to go to colleges at in-state tuition rates because of AB540. LTCC has a large number of AB540 students because many have just moved to Nevada and come back to LTCC.
AB540 benefits less than 1 percent of students attending state universities in California. At LTCC in 2008-09, 313 students were AB540 eligible, which is 10.2 percent of 3,067 (732 full-time, 2,335 part-time) students. The state average is 1 percent.
Even with a two- or four-year degree, graduates cannot legally gain employment in the United States.
“Most of them came to this country through no fault of their own. They’ve gone through the educational system, they have American values, the only country they know is this country, the only country they respect is this country. It’s punishing students for something their parents did. They’re the future of the country,” Arturo Rangel said.
Rangel is the adviser of LTCC’s Hispanicos Orgullosos Preparándose para la Excellencia – Proud Hispanics Preparing for Excellence (HOPE) Club.
Delgado is a member of the HOPE Club. It consists of 17 LTCC students, with the mission of community service as well as providing financial and educational support to LTCC students. The group has raised about $1,000 since its inception a year ago.
The HOPE Club’s priority is passage of the 2009 Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which would create a path to citizenship using secondary education as leverage. Members of the HOPE Club traveled to Sacramento in February to lobby, network and collaborate with students, legislators, and community leaders from around the state.
Because the DREAM Act will likely be considered along with a comprehensive immigration reform bill, AB540, as well as the federal and California DREAM Acts will dictate the future of undocumented students. Each year it’s estimated 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools, with 20,000 of them in California. About 5-10 percent go on to higher education.
The DREAM Act
The idea behind the DREAM Act is relatively simple, but for 10 years, the bill has hit a wall in the California Legislature and Congress.
A central tenet of the bill is granting students who came to the United States years ago the tools of a college degree and steady employment. Currently, the options for a college graduate who is here illegally are minimal. The DREAM Act will open the door to the American Dream for the undocumented college graduate. Through a six-year post-graduation process students will also have the opportunity for U.S. citizenship.
If the DREAM Act passes, criteria to be part of it includes a student must have entered the country before the age of 16, have been in the United States for five years prior to the passage of the bill, and the student must graduate from high school or obtain a GED. Also, the student must have good moral character, meaning no criminal record.
Rangel believes the passage of the DREAM Act will also lower rates of gang violence, teen pregnancy and delinquency in California communities “because people will have a hope, a sense of belonging, a sense of future.”
Last month, the latest congressional version of the bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness, according to OpenCongress. It is not known when the bill will come out of subcommittee. Democrats will reportedly take up larger immigration reform later this year.
According to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate, of the 309.5 million people in the country, 11.9 million are undocumented immigrants. Although most undocumented migrants are young adults, there is also a sizeable population of children. About one-sixth of the population — 1.7 million people — are under 18.
Looking forward
Students who have gone through the public higher education system in California fall through the cracks. They either continue on the employment path they’re on, are hired illegally or they go back to where they have residency.
Enrique Caro, a member of the HOPE Club, graduates with 64 of his classmates at LTCC tonight. Caro wants to be a clinical technologist and now has his associate’s degree in business.
Caro’s prospects look as good as any college graduate new to the job market. He is a U.S. citizen.
But still, as immigration reform fervor escalates, many students continue to fall into the opportunity gap.
“It seems like it’s getting harder and harder with what’s happening in Arizona. It seems like it’s going to get better, but before that I think it’s going to get a lot worse,” Caro said. “I sometimes think the U.S. has ‘cool-kid syndrome’ where the cool kids choose who can sit at their table and who can’t, we think we’re better than we actually are.”
While they attend school and work to make ends meet, Delgado and Karina Morales, another member of the HOPE Club, plan to live together in San Francisco in a year, envisioning a bachelor’s degree in their future.
Seeing her sister make sacrifices for her education, Delgado has inspired her younger sister to pursue higher education and will be attending LTCC this fall.
Personalizing this situation does not change the fact that these people are breaking out laws and using breaking our economy using our social programs to the fullest. For every Alejandra Delgado who achieves, there is a murdering drug smuggler who scoffs at our laws and wreaks havoc. First we need to enforce our immigration laws, then we can work to integrate the worthy into our system. But allowing law breakers to continue to do so doesn’t benefit this country or its people.
Excellent way to put it dw and I couldn’t aggree more. Become a citizen and legal American. I am tired of the bleeding heart stories for lawbreakers who laugh at us regardless of the situation.
If these students are illegal, how are they even admitted to our schools? Taking the place of citizens who wish to attend. And working at the Samurai? Should we send ICE to the college and the Samurai?
I’m really torn on the question of illegal immigration. Without exception, every illegal immigrant I have met has been a hardworking person looking only to better his and his family’s lives. I have never met the murdering drug smugglers that dogwoman knows.
However I also think that illegal immigration supresses wages for US workers.
Two points are always missed in these debates:
1. The “Come here legally” argument: The US issues only 5000 green cards annually for unskilled persons. It is virtually impossible for an unskilled person to come here legally.
2. It is idiotic for the US to put smart kids through school and then waste that investment by not permitting them to work here. The Wall Street Journal argues that when a foreigner with a student visa graduates from college we should give him a diploma and a green card, to entice him to stay rather than take those skills back home. I agree, and we should do the same for children of illegal immigrants when they graduate. We need as many smart people as we can get; they are the ones who come up with ideas that create jobs for the rest of us.
Great article Austin. In some cases, becoming a citizen can take over ten years. If it were shorter, it might help. My grandfather was born in Italy and came to this country through Canada in the early nineteen hundreds. It did not take him ten years to become a citizen.
He settled in San Francisco as a violin player and work at a silent movie theater in the orchestra. My dad was born in Canada and came to this country as a child. Alejandra is like my dad. My dad’s education was paid for through the G. I. Bill because he served in the U. S. Army in World War II in North Africa chasing Rommel the Desert Fox.
I went to Sacramento with the H.O.P.E. Club earlier this year to a DREAM Act presentation by some of our Senators and Assemblymen. One of there concerns as the a factor called, “The Brain Drain”; students with degrees who are forced to practice their professions in other countries because they cannot legally work in this country. One case involves and young Chinese student with a Ph.D. in engineering and not qualified to work in the U.S.
I think a lot has to do with supply and demand. I remember learning about the German scientists we brought to this country after the fall of Nazi Germany. It did not take them ten years to become legal citizens.
My great grandfather was an illegal alien from Sweden. He was a conscripted sailor (a small step above “slave”) who jumped ship off the east coast, didn’t speak English, had no money, and walked to Minnesota where he became a farmer in the mid-1800’s.
I’ll bet that a lot of our ancestors came to America anyway they could. How much responsibility can we take for getting born here?
Having lived near the Hoopa Reservation in No. CA, I can assure everyone that there are many Native Americans who consider the rest of us illegal aliens.
People who work hard to improve their lives & community should be respected and welcomed.
This country has all the smart people we need as examplified by all the engineers, scientists, and other technically trained people who work as real estate agents, managers, sales people, amd small business owners all outside of their technical edcation.
Our country has 309 million people and terrible crowding and congestion, so why can’t we do well with our native born and legal immigrants like Japan, China,
Germany, and other countries?
To legalize illegals will only increase the desire of other foreigners to come here illegally hoping to be granted a go free card. When will it stop if not now, then probably never. That result means goodby America as we know it.
Steven; In 1994 California tried to pass a bill that would not allow immigrants to have access to any public service, such as schools, doctors,being able to rent or pay bills to survive, pretty much they were trying to discourage immigrants to come to the U.S. Since that bill was inhumane and went against the values of what the U.S. stands for they allowed immigrants to have certain benefits such as going to the public school system, k-12, but they are not to apply for any benefit while pursuing higher education,they are doing this through completely giving up any benefit that any regular student would get getting into college, such as working, financial aid, being able to attend any college of their choice…
In regard to skibum and doubleblack, well you are right people are breaking the law but they are not laughing at you and they are definitely not overcrowding, these students, these immigrants have grown up with you, been your friends, and sometimes they don’t even know about their situation themselves, in fact if we aid these students were to be aided they would stimulate our economy, if you don’t believe me do some research please there are many studies out there that show they will be an asset to this economy.
Lastly,for Steven again, well yes you can call ICE and you could get them deported, but how do you benefit from it? I doubt that the UCs and other colleges will stop raisin their tuition because of deporting these immigrants, have you thought that maybe they have a family and once you get them deported they will not be able to help their families, kind of sad that there is some belief that by deporting a few people the problems in this country will be fixed, and if you still believe that, please educate yourself about the many benefits that this will bring us, do some research and see that they are smart educated people that are now immigrating to European countries to stimulate their economies, which by the way seem to be doing a lot better lately.
So yeah.
I been reading some hateful comments and some legit ones. Ones that say do it legally I agree with BUT 10 years to become a citizen is NOT american. That is the worst garbage I have ever heard!! Why not just finger print and “tag” them like they do the rest of us call up Mexico or wherever they came from and see if they known terrorist or gang member, and if not HAVE A GOOD DAY. I do understand we do need to know everyone that is in our country but that is just insane.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
The argument about the economy is garbage!
More people = More product being sold = More Workers = More jobs
I have taken many courses in economy and I can tell you that it really is that simple to blow that argument out of the water. China is a perfect example of that. Americas problem is there living outside there means.
……………………………………………………………………………………
For all the close minded people that already wrote and will write. If you want to get technical you all need to get out of our country because i am half native american and the other half irish.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
And to end this let me just say. I have an “illegal” immigrant friend that once told me about the irish + mexican battle in texas. Where a hole Irish battalion left the united states to join mexico because what they thought they was doing was wrong. They all died. Are they not Americans for what they believed in. Either side you are on just realize that there are good people here legally and illegally but there needs to be a better way of doing things!
I think that smart or not, illegal is illegal. It is not my fault that other countries to not have the same educational and vocational opportunites and yet I am expected to educate and in some cases support the youth of those countries through tax dollars. The bottom line is that they do not have the legal right to work here so why should how hard they worked in school matter. I paid for them to go to school, Meanwhile my children lost art, and music programs in schools. Illegal children benefit from tax dollars that could be used to improve education for the legal citizens of our country. I will not support a bill that allows for this. They need to apply for citizenship like everyone else.
I liked to move to their country and get the same benefits as they do here.
Don’t ever think Mexico,Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ecuador are poor,they got tons of resources and there is work there.
My wife and I have dicussed moving there in retirement,if you do have some cash the health care in a lot cases are better ,cheaper.
To Commonsense: on your point number 1–Of course it’s difficult to immigrate legally if you have no skills. Check and see how many other countries will take unskilled immigrants. Canada won’t. Mexico won’t. Australia won’t. New Zealand won’t. Do I need to go on? They want productive citizens, not drains on their systems either.
You are right dog.They want smart people who can teach or make money for their country,I see this a lot in Copenhagen when I go there.
You would be amazed ,the European countries have the same problem but it’s with muslins and other Russian type emigrants,they too are like the people of the u.s.a. they want them to leave cause they put a load on their system just like here.
California Nonresident Tuition Exemption
For Eligible California High School Graduates (The law passed by the Legislature in 2001 as “AB 540”)
GENERAL INFORMATION
Any student, other than a nonimmigrant alien, who meets all of the following requirements, shall be exempt from paying nonresident tuition at the California Community Colleges, the University of California, and the California State University (all public colleges and universities in California).
Requirements:
-The student must have attended a high school (public or private) in California for three or more years.
-The student must have graduated from a California high school or attained the equivalent prior to the start of the term (for example, passing the GED or California High School Proficiency exam).
-An alien student who is without lawful immigration status must file an affidavit with the college or university stating
that he or she has filed an application to legalize his or her immigration status, or will file an application as soon as he
or she is eligible to do so.
-Students who are nonimmigrants [for example, those who hold F (student) visas, B (visitor) visas, etc.] are not
eligible for this exemption.
-The student must file an exemption request including a signed affidavit with the college that indicates the student
has met all applicable conditions described above. Student information obtained in this process is strictly
confidential unless disclosure is required under law.
– Students eligible for this exemption who are transferring to another California public college or university must
submit a new request (and documentation if required) to each college under consideration. • Nonresident students meeting the criteria will be exempted from the payment of nonresident tuition, but they will not be classified as California residents. They continue to be “nonresidents.”
– AB540 does not provide student financial aid eligibility for undocumented alien students. These students remain
ineligible for state and federal financial aid.
In closing, LTCC due to its proximity to Nevada has a larger percentage of AB 540 students. The majority of these students are legal residents of the U.S. who graduated from a California High School and then moved to another state. For example, South Tahoe High School graduates whose families moved to Nevada after their graduation. Just because a student qualifies for AB 540 in no way automatically implies they are illegal, or undocumented students.
Sincerely,
Christina Proctor
LTCC public information officer
lol. You guys are crazy and no nothing about economy. United States economy sucks because we use credit cards not because of illegal immigrants. Any idiot with basic knowledge on economy 101 would know that. If you want me to prove it.. CHINA…. All the countries you guys are talking about have horrible economies. Not that I like China but at least they take them in with a speedy process and they benefit from it to. Same with Japan.
I fully support the Dream Act. Allowing students who work hard to graduate and be citizens of this country should be granted citizenship. There are many students who were brought here by their parents, grew up here, and only know life as part of the US population. Just like our ancestors, they worked hard and form the ‘recipe’ that is the United States.
If you take care of your country’s youth, the economy will fix itself. The school system should be the last place we are making cuts. Janet, it is unfortunate that the arts programs have been cut, regardless of us spending to educate children without US citizenship. Education cuts should not be an option in our country. If we spend our money in educating the future generations, we will contribute to the strength of our country as proactive advocates for education. By granting citizenship to students who are already fundamentally US citizens, but without the documentation, we will contribute to the strength of our communities and provide our youth with the tools to possibly succeed in their lives and in turn benefit those communities.
To StopHating: I see by your screen name that you are judging others without knowing anything about their motivations.
Do you think it would be easy to immigrate into China? I think not. Live there and find out what real racism is all about.
StopHating should realize China has a one child per family policy with attendent abortion of female babies(male babies are more prized.) China takes essentially no immigrants. You don’t need any with about 1.3 billion people already there. India is the problem child with their population going to 1.8 billion or so. Japan also has an extremely restrictive immigration policy.
Stop Hating,I’ve been to china twice in the last two years,you would be blown away,cause they want to appear democratic ,even the Christmas trees at the Olympians were a stunt for the world to see.
People who work in the factories, stay in prison camps on the factories grounds for years,when you get old, worn out, they just put you out in the streets.They crap in holes they dig ,they turn the lights off in the country at 9.00 o]clock every night.
Economy 101 doesn’t mean a rats butt in today world.
It’s a global wall street,all they are doing is playing the nobodies for you to invest,the market got so many ups, downs, that not one person knows what will happen next.(they are playing on our borrowed money)Banks are evil,they can get away with things nobody else can..
The things business ,the world at large are seeing is a well planned out take over from a very few old families that have owned the financial market since they pillaged the poor, centuries ago.
We are broke cause money and power don’t mix.
Our congress has never been so corrupt ,we are a war country on the verge of tipping the scales so much that god can’t help what’s destiny to happen.
There’s more things going on in the bigger picture than people don’t want to talk about ,till it’s upon us like the economy fall out.
People all over the planet are migrating to different lands cause of all the changes that are going on.
We all can ***** but you can’t stop what’s happening.
The only thing about being a american in china is,you are the tallest person in the crowd.They really check you out there,believe me,there’s people buried out there no one will ever find.When you leave the cities on your own ,you are consider ‘fair game”.
People are people,no matter what skin color they have ,what words they speak,we all have feeling,needs and want love ,compassion.Our color of our skin does not make our hearts any different than one another.People need to use lots tolerance with one another,if you become what you hate ,you will never know the true meaning of compassion.
I don’t have a problem with immigration, I just have a problem with illeagal immigration.
To dogwomen: I picked stophating because this of your first post and the one after you. Just because there is Mexican drug smugglers doesn’t mean that it is a 1v1 ratio. You are stereo typing. I know at least 10 hard working illegals that work hard and do not know a single drug smuggler.
I defiantly get your points about china. I do see that china is a inhuman country and i do know about the one child per family and about the Christmas trees etc. However you missed my point.
More people = more products to sale = more money = more jobs
I am not talking about there psychology of that silly country i am talking economy. Its a crappy argument especially if you don’t know how economy works.
Basically all i am saying is that before you guys start ranting on stuff you watched on TV you should seriously consider looking at all sides. I agree they need to follow our laws and be tagged like the rest of us but 10 years is silly. Why not fight that problem first!
opps
TO H:
I agree with everything you said
WHAT PART OF ILLEGAL DO YOU FOLKS NOT UNDERSTAND.