DREAMers Strive
for Higher Education
Undocumented Students Share Their Struggles
Thursday, February 13, 2014
By Brandon Fastman (Contact)
Every Dreamer has a story about the moment they learned the truth. For Julia, it happened when she was a student at La Cumbre Junior High School. Planning to join her 8th grade class on a trip to Washington, D.C., she went to talk to her parents about buying a plane ticket. That’s when her parents sat her down to deliver the news: She was not a U.S. citizen.
Julia was shocked. It turned out that she was born in Mexico. Her mother, fleeing an abusive relationship, crossed into the United States with her one-year-old baby. She told the immigration officials she was attending a funeral but instead came to Santa Barbara where she had relatives. Julia has no memory of living anywhere else.
These truths made Julia’s mother and stepfather afraid of allowing her to fly to D.C. Her mother and father knew this day would come. To make it up to her, they gave her a beautiful quinceañera, the ritual coming-of-age ceremony that many girls of Latin American descent celebrate on their 15th birthdays, a celebration that is planned years ahead of time and often at great expense. She had a wonderful party, but she has still never boarded a plane.
“It’s such a strange feeling,” said Julia of learning that she has no documents regarding her citizenship. “It was like getting a bucket of cold water poured over me. … It makes me feel like I’m in a state of limbo. Yeah, I was born in Mexico, but the way I grew up here is totally different. Where do I fall on the spectrum? I’m not completely American, I’m not Mexican. What’s my identity?”
The term Dreamer has become the nomenclature for undocumented students brought to the United States through no choice of their own when they were young children. It’s shorthand for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, the title of a federal bill that has been kicking around Congress since it was introduced by Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch — Democrat and Republican, respectively — in 2001. Despite Durbin and Hatch’s display of bipartisanship, Congress as a whole has not yet been able to meaningfully address immigration. As a result, California has taken steps of its own.
At the same time, the term DREAM entered the American lexicon in 2001, California passed AB 540....
http://independent.com/news/2014/feb/13/dreamers-strive-higher-education/
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