http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/educat ... d1763.html

Most high school teachers support their students' college aspirations by helping them find scholarships or fill out applications.
Robert Negley, a teacher at Brackenridge High School in the San Antonio Independent School District, took good intentions to new heights. He adopted his student, a Mexican immigrant, and her younger brother 21/2 years ago. Robert and Barb Negley, both 65, had already raised four children and seen them all through college when they decided to take in Maria and Jorge Blanco.

"We decided that we would go ahead and adopt them to give them a chance to continue their education and to have a good home here," said Robert Negley, who met Maria, now 20, when she enrolled at Brackenridge in 2003.

Maria and Jorge know they are fortunate. Every year, 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school with little chance of going to college because they are ineligible for federal financial aid and can't legally work without a permanent resident card.

With the Negleys as their adoptive parents, Maria and Jorge became eligible to apply for a permanent resident card. Their application is being reviewed.

If Congress adopts the DREAM Actother students will have a chance, too. It would give undocumented immigrants who grew up and graduated from high school in the United States a path to citizenship if they pursue at least two years of college or military. It's tied up in the immigration reform debate on Capitol Hill.

Maria just completed her freshman year at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is studying to be a math teacher. In the fall, Jorge will be a senior at Brackenridge, where he's a member of the National Honor Society and a varsity tennis player. They haven't lost touch with their mother, Leticia Regalado, who makes tortillas at a taqueria back in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. She visits them at their suburban San Antonio home every few months.

The fact that they have found benefactors who are helping them build a better life isn't lost on the siblings.

"It changed my whole life because now I actually have a future here," said Maria Blanco Negley, who entered the country on a non-immigrant visa.

Maria and Jorge's journey to the United States began in 2003, when Maria came to San Antonio with an older brother to visit relatives. She decided to stay and enroll at Brackenridge High School, figuring she'd get some schooling in the United States before having to return to Nuevo Laredo.

Her status as a visitor to this country wasn't a barrier because SAISD requires only that foreign students show their visas, and, that, within 90 days of enrolling, they present their birth certificates, district spokeswoman Carmen Vázquez-González said. Their state-assigned identification number is used in place of a Social Security number.

Despite the language barrier, it was evident early on, Maria's teachers say, that she was sharp. Her first year at Brackenridge, she landed in Walter Brown's algebra I class. He saw her potential and referred her to Robert Negley, whose classroom was computer-based, with students taking online courses either to catch up to their peers or get ahead.

"She came in, and we could see she was very bright," Negley said. "By the second year she was here, it was obvious she would be able to go to college, and so we tried to look into ways" for her to do so.

Robert Negley and other teachers worked long hours to prepare Maria her for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which students must pass to earn a diploma. She passed the standardized test on her first try and received special recognition for her performance on the social studies portion. She earned a diploma in three years.

But it became evident before Maria graduated that she would have to return to Nuevo Laredo and likely wouldn't be able to go to college, Robert Negley said.

"It just didn't look good," he said. "She was doing real well, but it seemed like she has to go back to Mexico eventually because she won't be eligible to work here."

That's when he and his wife began to consider adoption. But, at 17, Maria was too old to be eligible since immigration law states that a foreign child must be adopted before age 16. If that child has a sibling who is under 16, however, then both children are eligible, according to an exception in the law.

By also taking in Jorge, then 14 and in Nuevo Laredo, the Begleys cleared the way for Maria's adoption in January 2005.

The decision to leave their mother wasn't easy, the siblings say. And neither was the decision to let them go, says Regalado, who gave up her parental rights when the Negleys adopted her children.

Regalado, a single mother of five children, said she cried about the adoption but came to terms with it over time and realized it was best for Maria and Jorge. Both were good students back in Mexico and wanted the kind of education she couldn't afford to give them.

"I didn't think of me in that moment," Regalado, who doesn't speak English, said. "I thought of them. By myself, I couldn't give them what they wanted, which was to study."

As they await their permanent resident card, neither Maria nor Jorge has been back to Mexico to visit, though Regalado comes to San Antonio regularly. Jorge said he was reluctant at first to leave his mother but has become accustomed to his new family and living in the fast-growing suburb just north of Loop 1604 and U.S. 281.

"At first, I was like, well, it's just a paper," Jorge, 16, said. "But I started looking how my new family helps me a lot. They're real cool with me. We all talk like a family. And it's real nice because now I don't just have my sister. I have my dad and mom, brother and sisters, nephew and niece, and it's all going good."

Jorge has proved to be as studious as his sister. He learned English eight months after arriving in 2005, has taken some of the school's toughest science and math courses and has landed a paid summer internship with CPS Energy. He recently started working with an engineer, a gig that fits into his plans to become an environmental engineer.

"Jorge, he's going to do whatever he wants to do," said Jamie McKenzie-Davis, Jorge's chemistry teacher last year. "He's one of those future's-so-bright-you've-got-to-wear-shades kind of people."