Thread: Can't go to college

Here is a piece that was in the Chicago Tribune magazine insert. Another sympathy piece. It just made me mad...


http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/ ... 0807.story
"I'M STILL CROSSING THE BORDER"
HER RESUME AND 4.7 GRADE-POINT AVERAGE SHOULD GIVE ANGIE ENOUGH FINANCIAL AID FOR COLLEGE. BUT SHE LACKS ONE CRUCIAL 9-DIGIT NUMBER


By Don Terry

July 23, 2006

Everybody remembers Angie. Maybe her name was Maureen or Deborah or Sandra where you come from. But you remember her. She was the best student in your high school. She was pretty, but not in an intimidating way. She was the girl-next-door-with-braces pretty.

The teachers loved her and so did your parents. Why can't you be more like Angie?

It didn't bother you, though, because Angie was nice, down to earth. She didn't get big-headed about being smart.

She was into everything: band; the environmental club; the tennis team; sophomore council; junior council; vice president of senior council; yearbook; National Honor Society. An aspiring journalist and prolific writer, she had so many of her stories featured in an anthology published by the school's creative-writing department that the other student authors suggested calling it "Angie and Friends."

Years from now, that's the Angie the students and staff of Benito Juarez Community Academy will remember. Valedictorian of the class of 2006, she's been the top student, numero uno, since the day she walked into the Pilsen neighborhood high school four years ago.

Her classmates voted her most likely to succeed and, along with her boyfriend, Edgar Barron, the school's cutest couple. While keeping up with all her extracurricular activities, she managed to amass a 4.7 grade-point average.

And she managed one more thing, keeping a profound secret from even her closest friends: She is an illegal immigrant.

"I don't have papers," she says.

Neither does Maria, another student at Juarez. (Angie's and Maria's last names are withheld at their request). And neither do 97 of the 289 graduating seniors. Next year, school officials say, the number of undocumented seniors at the predominately Latino school will be closer to 150.

For most undocumented students across the country, high school is the last stop, the summit of their educational mountain. College is out of the question because paying for it is out of the question. For poor and working-class kids-almost all the 1,500 students at Juarez are one or the other-college is too expensive without government help, and you have to be a citizen to get it. No Social Security number equals no financial aid equals no future beyond the farm fields, day-labor jobs and restaurant kitchens of America.
This brutal equation keeps Angie up at night. "This country got me addicted to education, but has all of a sudden cut off the main sources I need to receive a higher education," she wrote in a searing college application essay. "I feel like I'm still crossing the border."

An estimated 12 million illegal immigrants from all over the world are living and working and going to school in the United States. The debate about their fate has heated up in recent months: Declare them felons and kick them out. Give them a way to become citizens. Build a longer fence on the Mexican border.

Dueling immigration-reform bills in Congress-an enforcement-only House bill and a less harsh Senate bill that lays out a path to citizenship-have not yet been reconciled.

Angie didn't pay much attention to the immigration debate until it the time came to start applying for college or a driver's license. The controversy over her legal status was out there in the distance, like war or world hunger, far removed from her daily life of school and adolescent angst. Now, at age 18, she follows the issue closely. "My future depends on it," she says.

She watches the coverage on TV, reads about it in the newspaper, writes about it in her journal. "I am tired of having to find ways around what normal teenager citizens do. I can't drive. I can't travel. I can't work. I can't apply to thousands of scholarships that are perfect for me."

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that about 400,000 undocumented immigrants live in Illinois. This is the story of one of them and her American dream.

This is the story of Angie and friends.

Angie came across the border when she was 6 with her mother, her brother, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a family friend and several people she didn't know.

On the eve of the crossing, she was scared and excited, reluctant to leave yet eager to get going so she could be reunited with her father in a place called Chicago. The last time she saw him was three years before. "I don't think I really knew him," Angie says. "I would forget him when he wasn't there."

For the border crossing, she wore a black dress with a flowered print and frilly white sleeves. "I felt like a princess in it," she says. The outfit was her mother's idea. She thought it would look less suspicious if they were stopped by the authorities and little Angelica was dressed for a festival or a wedding instead of a perilous trek across the desert.

A smuggler led the group across the border. They didn't get far before they were caught and returned to Mexico. Several hours later, they crossed again.

They were walking through a rugged patch of ground when they heard helicopters coming. They broke for a stand of trees. The family friend grabbed Angie's wrist and half-dragged and half-carried her into hiding. One of the helicopters dropped out of the sky and hovered just a few yards from the ground. The noise rattled her bones. But they were well hidden and managed to escape.

They made it to a quiet, pre-arranged stretch of Arizona highway where they were soon picked up by a white van with the back seats taken out. The only windows were in front. Angie estimates at least 20 people were in the van; they were lying on top of each other. Angie rode on the floor of the front seat, under her mother's legs.

The van overheated in Tucson. White smoke poured from under the hood. The smuggler told his human cargo to get out in pairs to avoid attracting attention. Angie and her family sought shelter and food in a nearby McDonald's. They never saw anyone from the van again. When two police officers walked into the restaurant, the family quickly walked out.

In the parking lot they met a man, and Angie's brother, who spoke a little English, pleaded for help. The man was nervous but took them to his home where his wife "was nice and gave us candy."

For $500 the man agreed to drive the family to the bus station in Phoenix. There they caught a bus to Oklahoma City, where Angie's father and another sister were waiting to take them on to Chicago. In her college essay, Angie recalled that reunion with her father: "I remember grinding my face to his, the scent of the fabrica [factory] on his shirt, and I feared letting go."

Growing up in Mexico, the only thing Angie knew about Chicago was that it was north and that the few times her father came home to visit he was loaded down with toys, candy, clothes and ketchup. "I love ketchup," she says.

But when he wasn't home, the family struggled. "Sometimes we didn't have gas for cooking," Angie says. "We'd cook over a fire in the back yard."

It's a common immigrant's tale. Mom stays behind with the children while Dad travels across the river or the sea, searching for a better life that he can fit into an envelope and send to his family in Mexico or Ireland or Poland or Kenya.

After she got to Chicago, Angie's parents enrolled her in the 1st grade and she learned her new language. Today, she says, she speaks Spanish only at home.

By the 6th grade, the quiet, studious little girl was placed in gifted classes, where a year later she met an outgoing fellow 7th grader, a Mexican-American boy named Edgar Barron. "I was made in Mexico," Barron says. "Born in the USA."

He is almost as good a student as Angie and is ranked 5th in the class with a 4.2 grade-point average. He was also in the gifted class, but he masked his brightness with wisecracks. While Angie hung out with the smart-kids clique, Barron associated with a rougher crowd. "I was the one who did the homework and we passed it around," he says.

But there was something about Angie. Her smile, her brains, he wasn't sure. To find out, he started going with her and her friends to study at the Rudy Lozano Library. "That's when I knew I had a crush on her," he says.

They have been going out ever since. Yet it wasn't until last year that Barron learned Angie's coming-to-America story. "I didn't even know you were illegal for a long time," he says.

"Nobody really knows who is undocumented," she says. "We don't wear a sign."

Angie says she knows she shouldn't feel ashamed about not having "papers," but she does. "A lot of kids at school make fun of illegals," she says, "like this guy." She gives her boyfriend a playful slap on the wrist.

Barron says he's only joking, trying to keep things light, trying to make fun of an absurd situation. For example, a couple of times when the halls at school were crowded he shouted, "Immigration's coming!"

"I'm Mexican," he says. "I can make fun of it." He squeezes Angie's hand and then turns serious. "As a last resort," he says, "we could always get married."

Then Angie would be on the fast track to getting her papers, married to a U.S. citizen. He's brought up marriage before. Why not do it? He figures people get married for all sorts of reasons: love, money, justice. "Even if it didn't work out," Barron says, "I'd know I did it for a good reason. I just don't like to see her suffer. She has so much potential."

Angie smiles wistfully. She's happy Barron is in her life, by her side. But she doesn't want to get married for papers. She wants to go to college, start a career. "I want to get married when I'm ready," she says, "and for the right reasons."

There's a simple fact of life at Juarez that any senior can tell you: There's no escaping the raven-haired woman they call Ms. C. If you don't seek her out at her desk in room 218, Tanya Cabrera eventually will track you down. She's the post-secondary education coach, which means her job is to help students find scholarships and financial aid for college. She is obsessed with her work.

Cabrera will corner you at your locker or catch you in mid-bite in the lunchroom. She might even swipe one of your fries. Thanks, bro. She'll pull you out of physics class or hover over your table at the Cafe Jumping Bean on 18th Street after school. She'll call you mija (daughter) or mijo (son) and then hit you with her spiel.

Did you fill out that application, mija?

Come on, mijo, you can do it.

You can be the first in your family to go college. There are still scholarships available.

That's good, because dreams are free, but making them come true costs money.

"It breaks my heart," says Cabrera, 30. "The only thing the undocumented kids are missing is that nine-digit [Social Security] number. They have to deal with things I never had to deal with at their age. It's a daily hustle."

A month before graduation, she put on what she hopes will become an annual event at the school, a dinner that raised $9,000 for undocumented college-bound students. There was a raffle and music and a few tears from Cabrera as she thanked everyone for coming out and helping her kids. Angie, Maria and seven other undocumented Juarez students each received $1,000 from the dinner, a small down payment on a future.

"She's more than a counselor," says Barron, Angie's boyfriend. "She's always there for you. She really wants us to succeed."

Cabrera has been at Juarez for two years and brings to work every day her own memories of being a Latino teenager trying to get ahead. She graduated from Bogan High School, where a counselor once told her she couldn't apply for financial aid. Why not? Cabrera asked.

"You're Mexican, right?" the counselor confirmed.

"Yes."

"So you weren't born here."

"I was born in St. Luke's hospital," Cabrera replied.

On any given day, Cabrera's desk is surrounded by teenagers speaking Spanish, Chinese and English. One needs a form to waive the $30 fee for the ACT exam. Another announces he just got into college, another says she's going to have her second baby any time now and might miss graduation.

One day recently, Cabrera's desk is surrounded by a group of girls dressed in white. They are enrolled in the school's pre-med program and want to be nurses and doctors. But at the moment they are getting a crash course in death. Overnight, the 24-year-old brother of one of the girls died of gunshot wounds from a gang-related confrontation two weeks earlier. The day he was shot, his girlfriend gave birth to his first child.

Now, his sister and her friends have come to room 218 trying to raise money to pay for Pampers and a funeral. Cabrera writes a $100 check from her personal account for the family.

"Thanks, Tanya," one of the girls says.

"You're welcome, mija."

After the girls leave, Cabrera picks up her phone and punches in the number for a scholarship program operated by the Illinois General Assembly.

"I'm looking for funds for an undocumented student," she says into the phone. "Our valedictorian is undocumented."

Last spring, Cabrera asked Angie to speak at a program honoring U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois for his support of pending legislation that would grant temporary residency status to students with a high school diploma who enroll in college. The students would achieve permanent residency once they graduated or served two years in the military. The act, however, does not help students pay for school.

That night at home, Angie was angry with herself. She hadn't told the senator what was in her heart, only that she was undocumented and wanted to continue her education. To make herself feel better, she opened her journal and began to write what she wished she had said.

I wanted to say that this was my country; that this is all I know and I have been a good student for such a long time without having any problems, but now that I want to get ahead through college I am no longer welcome in this country.

I wanted to say that it's been hard to pay for college. I can't apply for financial aid, I can't apply for many scholarships because they require a SS#.

I wanted to say that I don't want to end up cleaning tables with a perfectly good degree hanging on my wall.

. . . I don't understand why this is happening in a country built on the basis of freedom and justice but above all built on immigrants.

"What wrong have I done to be labeled a criminal?

The Juarez salutatorian for 2006, HZlne Maldonado, found out that her best friend was undocumented last year when she asked Angie why she hadn't applied for a scholarship that was worth thousands of dollars. It had Angie's name written all over it. "I can't," Angie told her. "I don't have a Social Security number."

Maldonado was shocked.

"We did everything together," she says. "Same classes, same teams, same everything. We had worked so hard. Now I find out she has to work double hard. We're going against the grain to get out of here. The grain is thicker for Angie."

Angie was the first person Maldonado met at Juarez. They were a couple of scared freshman on the first day of school. Maldonado didn't know a soul. She had gone to grade school and junior high outside of the neighborhood. Now that she was older, she wanted to be around "my people."

She is the 17-year-old daughter of a white American mother and a Mexican father, who was an illegal immigrant when he first came to Chicago in 1979.

"I've never met anyone like me," Maldonado says. "Everyone around here has Mexican parents. I used to be real embarrassed to go outside the house with my mother." She says people would give them curious looks, as if saying with their eyes, "What are these white people doing here?" When she was out with her father, no one noticed. "There's a lot of racism within my own people," she says.

Her father is now a citizen, but she doesn't see him as much as she'd like to; her parents split up when she was 3. Father and daughter are planning to take trip to Mexico together this summer to visit relatives.

Maldonado's 20-year-old boyfriend, Adrian, is undocumented. Despite not having papers, he has managed to find work as a computer troubleshooter downtown. "Getting the job was easy," he says. "I don't look Mexican. Everybody thinks I'm Puerto Rican." Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship.

Maldonado and Adrian plan on getting married someday. "But not for papers," he says. Love, marriage and papers are a sensitive subject. Maldonado says that if you see a Mexican man walking down the street with a white woman, other Mexicans say, "Good for you, you're going to get papers out of it."

Maldonado and Angie had a sleepover the night before their prom. They did their nails and talked for hours. They talked about God and their boyfriends. They talked about the future. Maldonado is confident; Angie is worried. Maldonado has amassed plenty of scholarship money for college. She has a 4.5 grade-point average and was in most of the same clubs and other extracurricular activities as Angie. She knows the only difference is that Angie doesn't have papers.

"It makes me angry at my own government," Maldonado says. "But Angie is going to rock it. Her determination exceeds any problem that will come up."

A few days before the massive march for immigrant rights through the Loop on May 1, Angie and Maldonado are on their knees in a hallway in Juarez, painting a banner to carry along the route. "Educate Don't Incarcerate," it says.

Also working on the sign is Maria, who is 20. While Angie and Maldonado banter back and forth in English, Maria is quiet. She is much more comfortable speaking Spanish. She just started learning English three years ago when she crossed the border to join her parents and siblings in Chicago. She was 17 and didn't want to come, "but my entire family was here."

It was her fourth try. The first time she was 12 and crossed over with her mother, a sister and her two little brothers. They were caught and sent back to Mexico.

Her father has lived in the U.S. off and on since 1984. One time he crossed over to work construction in order to pay off rising medical bills for his wife and two of his children who had been badly burned when a propane cooking tank exploded.

In 2001, he returned to Mexico and brought back to Chicago Maria's mother and younger brothers. Maria and a sister stayed behind because the family didn't have enough money to pay the smuggler to take them all. But Maria's father wanted all of his children in the U.S. where they could get a decent education. "They have always done the best they can for us," Maria says of her parents. "I am very proud of them."

So Maria and her sister tried to cross without their parents. They were caught and returned to Mexico two more times before finally making it, pulling into Chicago on a winter day in 2003 in a van loaded with other illegal immigrants. The streets were covered in snow, and Maria was homesick almost immediately. But that fall, she enrolled at Juarez as a sophomore. "I liked seeing so many Latino people," she says.

In April, Maria joined Angie to tell Sen. Durbin their stories. Angie was impressed by Maria's passion and courage.

"I don't know why I can't open up like Maria did," Angie wrote in her journal. "She gave a great speech with tears and everything."

AS PROM NIGHT APPROACHED, Maria didn't have a dress to wear. Even if she had the money, she wouldn't think of buying one. She'd give the money to her mother to help care for the family. Then Cabrera told her about the Glass Slipper Project, a program that provides used and refurbished dresses, shoes and accessories to the city's Cinderellas who can't afford them.

Just after midnight on a cold spring morning, Maria and six friends arrived at the Sojourner Truth School on the Near North Side where the dresses would be given away eight hours later. Maria and her friends were the first in line, waiting outside the door. By sunrise, there would be hundreds of girls in line behind them.

Maria arranged a blanket on the cold cement. "This reminds me of the desert," she said.

Two of her classmates, twin 18-year-olds, got into a heated discussion about immigration with their 16 year-old sister as they waited. The twins were born in Mexico and brought to Chicago by their mother when they were 15 months old. The twins' younger sister was born in Chicago, a citizen. Her sisters think she's just another privileged American.

"You're always going to throw it in my face because I have papers," the younger sister said.

"No, we're not," one of the twins replied. "But you don't understand how hard it is, how hard it is to succeed if you're an immigrant."

Maria was silent as the sisters argued, listening and trying to stay warm. But finally she spoke up, addressing the twins: "You guys don't act like you have the hope to go forward."

"It's just so frustrating," one of them said softly. "You're busting your butt to work, and someone can come and take it away just like that."

Maria wrapped the blanket around her. "I'm not going to let anything stop my dreams," she said. Behind her in the distance, the red lights on the antenna atop the John Hancock Building twinkled like stars.

THE GATES TO THE Charter One Pavilion at Northerly Island open 20 minutes before the big event and hundreds of men, women and children pour in and dash to grab seats closest to the front.

Big-name bands like Earth Wind and Fire, Chicago and Jack Johnson perform on the stage next to Lake Michigan, but on this chilly June evening, the music will be handled by the Juarez student band. Their first number is "Pomp and Circumstance." The graduation of the class of 2006 has begun.

Angie, HZlne Maldonado and Edgar Barron have a place of honor on the stage as members of the school's top 10. The three are nervous; each has a speech to deliver.

Sitting with the rest of the graduating seniors, facing the stage, is Maria, who wears a white cap and gown to designate membership in the National Honor Society. Most of the graduates are dressed in either black or yellow, the school colors.

Parents hush their children when the color guard marches in and the band strikes up the national anthem. The audience rises. Backs straighten. Hats are removed. Hands placed over hearts. When the last notes float toward the forest of sailboat masts bobbing in Burnham Harbor, they are followed into the sky by cheers, applause and a couple of balloons that say "Congratulations."

Then the band plays the national anthem of Mexico and the ritual of respect is repeated.

From the stage, Barron tells his classmates: "Don't become a statistic. Continue your education and prove to everyone that minorities are not destined to be nobodies."

Fighting back tears, Maldonado thanks her mother, Michelle. "You are my friend and my mother."

Angie looks out at her classmates and their families. "I embody all those students who consider this country their own and have a great desire to succeed in it," she says.

"I am one of the many undocumented seniors at Juarez, and I am hopeful that our government will do justice and allow the many students in my situation along with the thousands of other hardworking people to become citizens of the country that we love."

MARIA PLANS TO enroll at Harold Washington College in the fall to study nursing, using $2,000 in scholarships Cabrera helped her win. Before leaving Northerly Island with her joyous family, Maria seeks out the counselor she says "is like a second mother."

She weeps in Cabrera's arms. "I'm so proud of you, mija," Cabrera says.

Maldonado and Barron are headed for the University of Illinois at Chicago, she to study engineering, he business.

As for the valedictorian, she too, has been accepted to UIC. But for most of her senior year, Angie had no idea how she would pay for it. She saw her dreams slipping away.

"God, please help me to keep going," she wrote in her journal. "I just don't know what will become of my future . . . I want to keep going but my heart feels so heavy."

At the time of that journal entry, she had $2,500 in scholarships, about $6,000 short of what she needed for her first year, not including books. But by the time she climbed into her parent's car three months later to go celebrate her graduation at a Pilsen restaurant, Angie and Cabrera had cobbled together just enough to pay for her freshman year.

Angie will worry about finding the money for her second year later. At least for now, her American dream is coming true. She's going to college.

"I feel that if I had not lived through all of this, I wouldn't appreciate my education as much," she says. "I know I wouldn't be the same person."

----------

dterry@tribune.com
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

You know - I feel truly sorry for the kids that have grown up here with illegal parents.

BUT, it's not our government who is at fault here, IT IS THE CHILD'S PARENTS.

That's why these kids have to "live in the shadows" and are now facing expulsion.

Not to sound softhearted here, but these kids are victims of what their parents did by coming here illegally. Having said that, I believe that the kids should go back with their parents, as hard as that may be.

I too feel bad for them for their parents mistake. But, if they are talking about college and such and are of legal age........there's no reason they can't make it right now. Every deserving American doesn't get help and scholarships and grants to go to college. Many do it the old fashion way....they work and go. That's how I did it. That's how my daughters doing it. Making it too easy is probably why so many make it party time instead of appreciating the oppertunity to learn. Having it handed to you isn't the only way to go. I didn't go till I was older. I wasn't swayed by the name the college.....I just wanted to learn. They can too.

My crying towel is wringing wet. OK, while we're at it, here's another tear-jerker from the Immigration Portal (the bad guys) website:

Originally Posted by its bakar

Hello All,
I was charged with the retail theft case. The worth of the merchandise is $140. So they booked a charge – Misdemeanor. I will be going to India next year and have to get my stamped while coming back. I have no criminal record and this is my first.
I spoke with criminal attorneys here. Unfortunately in my area there are no immigration attorneys available.
As per my criminal attorney, now there are 2 options.
1. We can get deferred prosecution (without pleading guilty/No contest) nad dismiss the case finally.
2. We can try for charges getting reduced to “disorderly conduct”.
I consulted few immigration attorneys over phone. Some prefer first option (they say that you should not plead guilty/no contest in deferred prosecution) and some prefer second (they say like “disorderly conduct” will always come under petty theft exception).
Now I am really confused.
Please advice me.

http://www.immigrationportal.com/showth ... p?t=175506

Here's the Immigration Portal in action, helping an illegal with his speeding ticket (sort of).
http://www.immigrationportal.com/showth ... p?t=198575

Originally Posted by crazybird

I too feel bad for them for their parents mistake. But, if they are talking about college and such and are of legal age........there's no reason they can't make it right now. Every deserving American doesn't get help and scholarships and grants to go to college. Many do it the old fashion way....they work and go. That's how I did it. That's how my daughters doing it. Making it too easy is probably why so many make it party time instead of appreciating the oppertunity to learn. Having it handed to you isn't the only way to go. I didn't go till I was older. I wasn't swayed by the name the college.....I just wanted to learn. They can too.

Same for me crazybird....worked my butt off and went part time a couple of semesters because I had to work longer hours to make more money. These students may have been put in a challenged situation due to their parents, but if they really want their college education they can go back to their homeland and do it, or work like many American citizens have and will continue to do.

Let the Mexican government pay their tuition. IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY!

The reaserches are showing that within these sons and daughters of the illegals are the members of the most dangerous criminal gangs in our cities

No need to worry a minute over this.

If the PENCE PLAN GETS PUSHED THROUGH

They ALL have TUITION BREAKS!!

Pence Plan is in the works as we type

why or why can't I get my 'disclaimer' sig to work? Have a feeling I'm really gonna need it this week