When Stephanie Solis turned 18, she learned from her parents something she could hardly fathom: She was an undocumented immigrant. That meant she couldn't vote or get a driver's license. But, most of all, she probably wouldn't be able to go to UCLA, where she had been accepted after working hard in high school to earn stellar grades.
Instead of feeling a sense of elation and independence, she felt isolated with all her future plans seemingly down the drain. As a result, her budding sense of identity suffered a deep psychic blow. The teenager couldn't help thinking that instead of entering adulthood, she would remain a permanent child never realizing her career goals and life dreams.
"When most teenagers have their 18th birthday, they think about how they're an adult now," recalled Solis, who is now 22. "But instead of having a sense of adulthood, I usually had a feeling of permanent childhood because, well, 'I can't drive, I can't vote, I can't travel, I can't work.' I didn't have an ID, so I couldn't even prove my age."
But the driven coed from a low-income family decided to go ahead and try UCLA anyway, even though she wasn't eligible for financial aid, student loans or most scholarships. And once there, she met other undocumented students in the same boat. It was going to be harder - a lot harder - but at least she wasn't the only struggling student in Westwood.
Solis took on multiple jobs, cleaning houses, making cardboard boxes - whatever she could physically do to earn money. Another coping strategy was taking quarters off school to work fulltime. Today she's a senior with a major in creative writing, and one of the 11 student and faulty editors of "Underground Undergrads," a new UCLA-produced publication unveiled at an April 30 press conference.
"I wish that I had this book as a resource on my 18th birthday, knowing about the possibilities and that I wasn't alone," she said. "This book is so important. This is the only real way that we can bring about change on this issue. Because we are afraid to speak out. We feel powerless.
"Also, we can't vote, so we can't really speak for ourselves politically," she added. "So the only thing that we have the power to do is speak out."
First class on undocumented
"Underground Undergrads," an 84-page glossy paperback, is the product of UCLA's first class on undocumented students: Immigrant Rights, Labor and Higher Education. Through in-depth interviews, firsthand accounts, personal histories, testimonies, poems and newspaper articles, "Underground Undergrads" puts a human face on the lives of undocumented high school and college students.
The student publication of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education features a timeline of immigration legislation plus a breakdown of Assembly Bill 540, the 2001 California law granting in-state tuition fees for community college, state university and UC campuses. It profiles the proposed California Dream Act, which would allow undocumented students to apply for state and institutional financial aid, as well as the federal Dream Act, which would provide a path to legalization for certain undocumented students.
In addition, the publication also features "action" strategies plus a resource guide for undocumented students.
Ken Wong, director of the labor center, co-taught the first course at UCLA on undocumented students with Janna Shadduck-Hernández in the winter quarter of 2007. He called it a "huge issue" facing the nation today, with 65,000 undocumented students graduating from high school every year.
"I've taught at UCLA for the past 20 years, and the undocumented students in my classes have been among the most exemplary, the hardest-working, the most brilliant and talented students in my teaching career," he reported. "For not only have they gone against all odds and gotten admitted to one of the finest public institutions of higher education in the country, but they've also done it with even more barriers and difficulties than other students."
Wong pointed out that most undocumented students don't live on campus because of the prohibitive cost of staying in dorms. Many commute two hours and longer to Westwood. During finals week some even stay overnight in the library and shower in the gym to have more hours to cram.
"And in spite of their hard work and perseverance, even upon graduation from UCLA they are not legally eligible to work," he declared. "So most of them instead are forced to take jobs in the underground economy."
The purpose of "Underground Undergrads" is to highlight the stories of these local students, who represent thousands of others like themselves across the United States, and to bring greater awareness to the public about their plight, Wong said. He stressed this was a crucial time with California's Dream Act pending in Sacramento along with members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, pledging to support the reintroduction of the federal Dream Act.
"It takes tremendous courage for these undocumented students to step forward because they do not have legal status in this country," he said. "And it's also painful because we are punishing these students for something that they had absolutely no control over. They were brought here as young children by their parents, by relatives. It was not their decision to be here in this country.
"Yet, for many of them this is the only country they know," he noted. "Many who were brought here as young children only speak English. Many only know this society and this culture. So this is their country as well."
From Long Beach to Westwood
Ernesto Rocha, a junior political science-Chicano studies major, was a member of the Immigrant Rights, Labor and Higher Education class and also helped bring the book to completion as a summer intern at the UCLA Labor Center. He told his story of being an eight-year-old boy who crossed the border with his mom and two brothers.
"I knew that my job, my task as a student, was to get an education and just to continue to work as hard as possible in order for me to graduate," he said at the UCLA Downtown Center press conference.
His mother never wanted to discuss the whole issue of immigration because she thought it would affect him negatively and discourage him from going to college. So when he arrived at UCLA, Rocha was "truly excited" that he was attending one of the best universities in California.
But he didn't know what to do or who to talk to about his status until he found the group IDEAS (Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, and Success), which showed him step by step how to apply for a private scholarship for undocumented students.
Every weekday he took buses back and forth from Long Beach to Westwood, studied hours in the evening and slowly began to feel that he was progressing at UCLA. "With the determination that I have and the support of my family, I was able to do it," he said.
Rocha also began to realize, from talking to other undocumented students and watching May Day marches on TV, that the whole immigration issue was much bigger than his own particular story. So he took the new class at the labor center and worked as a summer intern to research and put together stories that make up "Underground Undergrads."
"I think that the subtitle is extremely clever: 'UCLA Undocumented Immigrant Students Speak Out,'" he said. "That's something that I've wanted to do my whole life was to speak out about the issue. But I never really found the strength to do it.
"And now at least I have something that I can rely on and say, 'This is a human rights issue.' And it's something that I would fight for until I can become legal." |