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Struggles of undocumented students in higher education
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On my seventeenth birthday, my mother asked me to sit down with her to discuss some very important things. She told me I was undocumented. My heart sank and I felt the urge to cry. At that moment, I thought that the future I had envisioned for myself would turn to fantasy. A lot of things started to make sense like how I have never actually seen my social security card, why my parents didn’t let me work, or why I couldn’t get my licence. I believed that my undocumented status would remove all possible chances of getting into college. Without a social security number, I am not eligible for federally funded financial aid including loans, grants, scholarships, or work-study. Why should I be penalized for something I had no control of? The undocumented student stereotype is that we don’t make it into college, that we aren’t successful, that we have no future. It is hard to go through obstacles that my fellow …show more content…
This wasn’t just a problem for me health wise. The sad reality was that my weight got in the way of my social life too, and I didn’t talk to people as much as I would today. It also affected my judgement, and I didn’t go out anywhere nor did I participate in anything at all. I decided to take a stand and do something about it. I made it my goal to lose weight, therefore, soon enough I did lose weight. I joined the Cross Country team and started running. Running is a mental sport. It takes dedication, motivation, and a lot of self-discipline to be able to constantly run. I managed to create great relationships with the people I ran with during my journey. After Cross Country, I also joined the Track Team. I am currently still running and I have lost roughly about fifty pounds. It is impossible to say how proud I am of this, and it shows how with the right amount of dedication, anything is
Part Three of the book “Just Like Us” written by Helen Thorpe is comprised of illegal undocumented individuals residing in Denver Colorado. The individuals consist of a group of four Mexican young adults all with the dream of one day attending college and finally obtaining a legal status within the United States. In this portion of the readings, Yadira, Marisela, Clara, and Elissa are entering their senior year at their University and have defined the odds of successfully completing college while maintaining an illegal status. Helen Thorpe clearly demonstrates a passion in tracking individuals that are determined to become legal citizens within society; however, lack the proper advocacy and documentation to do so. Part Three of the book envelops the complexity of maintaining a legal status among society members through the lives of these four influential young ladies striving to achieve higher education in the
In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales dissects the disastrous effects of US immigration policy on young Latina/os struggling in the often untouched, unnoticed, uncared for, American underbelly. Through a striking ethnography, Gonzalez examines 150 illuminating case-studies of young undocumented Latina/os, shedding light on their shared experience in the struggle for legitimacy in the United States - their lives, effectively, in limbo. He develops two major groups with which to classify the struggling youth: the college-goers, like Cesar, who received strong marks in high school and was able to land himself a spot within the UC system, and the early-exiters, like Silvia, who was unable to attend college, resigned to a paranoid life plagued
Today and in recent history of the film industry, masculinity is often shown as stereotypes and examples of alpha males who are powerful and dominant who seek adventure and are always quick to show their opinion and strength. In the film School Ties (1992) directed by Robert Mandel, Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon) is a young man in his last year at high school who has to live up to his family’s superior(?) expectations and high standards that his older brother has left before him. Charlie Dillon is portrayed as an alpha male. While on the journey to manhood and through his final year of school he finds that though it may be impossible to live up to his family’s name, he will do anything to achieve his goal. The director
You happily attend school and pick up English as a second language and then you slowly begin to learn all the negatives of your status. You first notice that you are trapped in America, you can 't return to your old country due to the fact that you have already been naturalized and all your culture stems from America. You see your friends go on vacation all around the world while you sit at home and look at Google images of the places you wish to travel too. You 're forced into poverty due to the fact that obtaining a job means you have to settle for work that is cash based and not pursuing a career of your interest. You try to escape the downward spiral by applying yourself in education but you soon realize that even if you do apply yourself you 're competing with students who have the luxury to get help from various places while you 're forced to rely on the Department of Education to give you tools to make yourself a better student. Once you do reach senior year and attempt to apply for college you realize that everything boils down to being paid out-of-pocket. Asking for financial support is near next to impossible since you are barred from student loans, federal aid, and a lot of scholarships. Much like the Native American you didn 't win the birth lottery and you 're forced to have to find means to be successful in life by your own merit and
1.)Stereotypes and racism have always been an issue in this and many other societies.Teenagers are commonly the most impacted by stereotypes, not unlike most teens at Point Loma High School. To further analyze this, my class read “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance” by Shankar Vedantam, a science correspondent for NPR. In his informative article, Vedantam discusses how research proves that self-fulfilling stereotypes can drag down many individuals’ performance. He supports his claim by presenting statistics such as “When black people and white people answered 10 vocabulary questions posed by a white interviewer, blacks on average answered 5.49 questions correctly and whites answered 6.33 correctly”, and talking about how black students tend to score better on tests that are administered by other blacks, and finally explaining how all students’ performance increases when they are not reminded of their race/gender before beginning a test. Vedantam’s purpose is to inform the audience about the negatives of reminding students of their race before a test in an effort to prevent poor performance and boost test scores. Upon reading this, my class has decided to carry out a research project about the stereotypes at our school, and how they affect a variety of students.
A time that I did something that I thought I couldn't do, was to stick up for others. When I was in sixth grade, during recess, I saw a girl named Melissa crying. I went up to her and asked what was wrong. She said that people were talking about her behind her back, and that she felt awkward around them. I consoled her by letting her know that friends don't talk behind friends backs and that you have other people that you can talk to during recess. It bothered me how Melissa was sad. She felt a little better after we talked and then we played games.
As an immigrant, my father worked multiple hours, starting his morning in the field work picking fruits, vegetables, etc. and evening at a restaurant. The little money collected, with time, my father was able to pay for the loaned money he used for a ?Coyote? that transported him from the border to a near city with family and to cross my mother. Both parents working morning and evening jobs were granted a residency card from their field job because of their extended years of working with the company. The residency card is to be renewed every ten years and as a resident, they are to obey the laws and stay out of trouble. Therefore, allowing my parents to have better opportunities such as; minimum wage jobs, Driver?s License and renting their own home. Although my mother had the opportunity to minimize her working hours and stay home with her children she continued to work and pay a nanny because she learned to work at a very young age and has been self- sufficient since then. The Immigration and Nationality Act is also known as the Hart-Cellar Act and other immigration groups have shaped my families past by being a diverse community. The different languages used in the U.S. is an advantage for those who are bilingual and there is a high demand for bilingual speakers. Also, the work and wage opportunities there are now available for those with their
There is a phenomenon happening in most schools throughout the country. Asian students as young as seven years olds are labeled as gifted and enrolled in various accelerate programs to further develop their talents. Certainly, most of these students are deserving of the honorable recognition. However, many skeptics do question how many of them are viewed as exceptional students based upon the stereotype: they are genetically smarter than their non-Asian peers.
In the primary years, I frustratingly assimilated and forced myself to learn English and American culture like many other immigrant children. I missed my home in Mexico; but, unfortunately, returning voluntarily was not an option, because it is this country that gave mami the medical care she needed. The toughest years in my academic journey were in high school when I began to comprehend the significance of being an illegal immigrant. First, there was the stress caused by high expectations and the difficulty of earning outstanding grades 100% of the time. Secondly, there was the complication of not having a social security number and the barriers this posed when pursuing a higher education. Lastly, there were insensitive and threatening comments from educators who, instead of inspiring me to go against the odds, imposed fear and anxiety after confiding in them my immigration status. High school is where I learned to hate myself for being an
It is estimated that 65,000 undocumented students graduate from High School each year, and out of these students, only less than 10 percent attend a higher education (Ibarra & Sherman, 2012). Under the Supreme Court Decision known as Plyler v. Doe, undocumented young immigrants are entitled to receive free education from Kindergarten to secondary institutions (Yates, 2004). However, as young undocumented immigrants transition from high school to college, the challenges that come with being illegal begins. Prior to 2001, college institutions classified undocumented students as international students even if they have lived in California a majority of lives (Abrego, 2008). Undocumented students were required to pay out of state tuition of approximately
The world of today is a relatively primitive one, even with every advancement that humanity has accomplished we remain primitive in this aspect. There has been progress, even as slow in comparison to that of todays, it is progress.The ignorances and other human flaws are still very existent within every society, regardless of the boundaries between them be it geographical or cultural. Stereotypes and misconceptions exist in the modern society. Stereotypes arise when there is a single radical group who are accepted as the representation of their apparent subculture. Then the ignorant and misinformed take these “representatives’” behavior as a generalization of the entire group. While the less common misconception is made by some incomprehensible anomaly where an entire assumption is based around a single social group, that has never even proved to be true. There is a stereotype that is attached with the College educated community, they are believed to be almost guaranteed success. The fact that they have a degree in their respective field has built a stereotype of the “successful ones.”
At a young age, my teachers and parents taught me to believe that I could do and accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I grew up thinking that I was unstoppable and that the only limit to my achievements was the sky. However, during my second year in high school, I began to realize that I was not as unstoppable as I had thought. I began to experience the consequences of my parent’s decision of bringing me to the United States illegally. Among those consequences were, not being able to apply for a job, obtain a driver’s license or take advantage of the dual enrollment program at my high school, simply because I did not possess a social security number. I remember thinking that all of my hard work was in vain and that I was not going to
Larissa Martinez, a high school graduate, revealed she was an undocumented immigrant in her high school valedictorian speech. She talked about how many undocumented immigrants will not have the chance to attend education beyond secondary school. Martinez mentions that “school became her safe haven because… that might be the only way to help [her] family” (The Dallas Morning News, 2016, 4:28). Not only do Americans look for social mobility through education, but immigrants do as well. Fortunately, Martinez can attend college through college funds, but many students in her situation do not have the means to get a college education because they do not have the money to afford it. People like Larissa struggle daily to achieve the “American Dream,” but fall short when pursuing a college education which they cannot afford or
In word and deed, today’s society wanes in respect. Respecting your elders and honoring your father and mother are no longer a given. We talk back, miss curfews, overlook presidential addresses and the states comprising this union are divided. In previous generations, respect for one’s neighbors, family, country and values was ingrained in the daily fold. One may counteract this stance with the example of discrimination; however, while prejudice extends from society to the armed forces all are not prejudice. Conditioned to the view the world through one lens restrains the landscape. Stereotypes are meant to act as scripts to protect us, but to what extent do they hinder our horizons? As many of the previous generation exemplify, there is always a sense of hope; never get below the horizon such that you lose sight of the coming brighter days.
My parents were really sad I was not going to be able to go to college and my dad told me to start working and to save money for it, and that’s exactly what I started doing. Since 2008 to 2013 I worked at much as I could, working in the fields in the morning with my mom and working in the afternoons at Jack in the Box. Me and my older sister were able to help my mom and dad buy a house and a family car, we tend to be really united and help each other as much as we can. Then the E-verify came in and as much as my area coach try to keep me at Jack in the box, she couldn’t. It was June of 2012 when me and my mom were getting back from work, something inside me told me to turn on the TV, and there was President Barack Obama talking about DACA. I turn the TV volume all the way up and my mom run all the way from the kitchen to the living room. We both looked at each other and I started crying, she told me really exited “you and your sister qualify”! Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was signed up by the Obama administration on 2012 that allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered to the U.S as minors, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a working permit. To be eligible, an undocumented immigrant must