HOW "unDOCUMENTED GRADUATES FIGHT HURDLES TO HIGHER EDUCATION"... (4778 hits)
For Immediate Release!
For Ximena, a high school senior in California, college applications were a breeze. The straight-A student takes college-level courses and is meticulous with her schedule, so she didn’t have difficulty turning in applications on time to nearly two dozen colleges.
What was harder for the 18-year-old was deciding where to apply — and finding universities that had resources and scholarships for undocumented students like her.
Ximena's parents brought her to the US from Mexico without documentation when she was 9. As an undocumented student who is not a beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, she does not qualify for federal student aid.
“I worked hard to have straight A's and a lot of extracurricular activities … but the only requirement I wasn't meeting for the scholarships was citizenship or DACA." Ximena, undocumented teen, California “I worked hard to have straight A's and a lot of extracurricular activities … but the only requirement I wasn't meeting for the scholarships was citizenship or DACA,” says Ximena, who requested to be identified by only her first name due to her legal status.
When Ximena got her diploma Friday at her high school commencement, she became one of the nearly 100,000 undocumented students who graduate from US high schools each year. That’s an increase from 65,000 in the early 2000s, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Advocates say increasing numbers of undocumented teens find themselves in Ximena’s position: They don’t have legal protections such as DACA, which offers beneficiaries two-year reprieves from deportation, along with work permits. The Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era program in 2017. And while court rulings have kept DACA alive, the program is no longer accepting new applicants — giving rise to a new generation of “un-DACAmented” teens who were educated in US primary and secondary schools.
Without DACA, they can’t access most financial aid or scholarships, can’t work after they obtain degrees, and don’t have any protection from deportation. Advocates say the situation hearkens to the time prior to DACA when fear was high among undocumented students and information about how they might attend college was scarce.
