Julianna Warner
4-19-11
All
Peoples of the Earth
It
is against great odds that undocumented students from low-income families are
ever able to receive higher education, for they are faced with impenetrable
structural barriers once they finish the available public schooling, which ends
with high school (Abrego & Gonzales 147).
Without access to federal financial aid, many of these students find
themselves lacking the means for continuing their education beyond high school
(Perez 21). Many of them share the
dreams and aspirations held by their documented peers, and have “internalized
American values and expectations”, including “academic success with economic
rewards and stability” (Abrego & Gonzales 147). One school which has the potential for giving
these students such an opportunity is Berea College. The school was founded in 1858 on the noble
principle that the opportunity for education should not be revoked based on
race, gender, or family income (Carlberg, Carlberg, & Stephens 7, Nelson 64). The College is at present educating two
undocumented students (DeRosett). Because
Berea College is mostly privately supported and funded, and because of its
highly admired values of integration and equality which were established by the
institution’s founders, a portion of the private grant money could potentially
be used towards the funding of a larger group of those undocumented students
who fit with the College’s standards of academic excellence (“Support”, Abrego
& Gonzales 147).
The
growth and development of low-income undocumented families are often hindered
by many different factors. When it comes
to higher education, the children of such families find themselves at a severe
disadvantage to their documented peers (Gandara). According to structural theorists who have
been researching education over the past fifty years, the United States has created a
“caste” educational system which works to exclude ethnic minority groups from
participating in equal educational opportunities (Conchas & Vigil 54). One such minority group is that of
undocumented Latino immigrants who have either come to the United States by
crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, using “stolen or fraudulent visas”,
or by simply over-staying their legal visas (Drachman 91). Most come to the U.S. in search of
better-paying jobs than those available in their home countries (Germano). Upon arrival, children of these immigrants
have legal access to the public school system, but when they finish high school
they face many “legal restrictions and economic barriers” to higher education
and the workforce (Abrego & Golzales 144).
Although some of these undocumented students have a desire to pursue
higher education and are “exceptional scholars”, their legal status hinders
their pursuit of higher education (Perez 21).
It is usually only with private scholarships that do not require
citizenship or residency and private sponsors willing to give financial support
that children of low-income undocumented families can obtain higher education
(Gin 20).
The
right to equal education should be a fundamental right of all children in the
United States, regardless of income, nationality, or language skills. However, it can seem as though some students
have the prerogative to seek higher education while others do not (Perez
22). Some of the latter students hit an
academic roadblock after finishing high school.
Every year, approximately 65,000 college-eligible students graduate from
high school who are unqualified to receive government financial aid because of
their immigration status (Palacios 2).
This number is increasing every year (Abrego & Gonzales 144). At the same time, the nation is suffering
through a time of minimized state budgets, and growing ambivalence towards
undocumented immigrants, which is
detrimental to the potential for equal educational opportunities (Romero,
92).
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, there was a
“wave” of immigrants coming to the United States that nearly topped record
numbers (Drachman 91). Between 1970 and
2008, the number of immigrants from Mexico rose from 760,000 to 12.7 million
(Germano). These immigrants were much
different from those who were arriving at the beginning of the previous
century, most of whom were European immigrants (Drachman 91). Most of the immigrants entering the United
States today enter via the U.S.-Mexico border and most of them are from Mexico
and the Central American countries (Drachman 91). Others come from South Asia and the Caribbean
(Drachman 91). Many of these immigrants
are undocumented and illegally in residence in the United States (Drachman
92). In 2008, seven percent of the
Latino students in public schools were undocumented immigrants (Perez 21). Although the majority of Latino children are
born in the United States, many were brought here by their parents at a young
age and thus have been given the title of “undocumented” and “illegal” (Perez
21). These titles are detrimental to
their options for future education and opportunities in the work force and in
general (Abrego & Gonzales 144). To
illustrate the effect the lack of educational opportunity has on these
students, only five to ten percent of undocumented students who graduate high
school proceed to attend colleges and universities (Perez 21).
Many
of the young Latinos who come to the United States illegally with their parents
come before the age of sixteen, and many more come even before schooling age
(Abrego &
Gonzales 145). These students are given public education
opportunities from kindergarten until high school. Of the approximate 65,000 undocumented
students to graduate from high school every year
(approximately 37,000 of whom are Latinos), only about 3,250 of them find a way
to higher education (Abrego & Gonzales 144, Drachman 94). Those who do not, find themselves following
their parents’ footsteps into mundane jobs, constantly facing the fear of
deportation to a country they hardly know (Drachman 95). It is not illegal for colleges and
universities to admit these students, but undocumented immigrant students are
not eligible for federal and state financial aid, which inevitably “[ensures] their
continued occupancy of the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder” (Romero 93). In addition, undocumented immigrants cannot
effectively compete for post graduation jobs for which they have been trained
because employers can be prosecuted and charged with criminal liability for
knowingly hiring such persons (Romero 95, Shihab & Associates).
After
a Supreme Court decision in 1982 (Plyer
v. Doe), it was decided that undocumented students would receive free
public education (Drachman 91). In this case, it was to be decided whether
the Fourteenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution
should apply to undocumented students and whether it should allow for these
students to receive free public education (Drachman 92). It was decided that since these students are
“not accountable for their disabling status” and that the “stigma of
illiteracy” enforced upon them would hinder their opportunities for the rest of
their lives (among other reasons), that they should not be denied free public
education (Drachman 93). Chief Justice
Warren Burger, who wrote the dissent, stated that although “by definition,
illegal aliens have no right whatever to be here”, it is “senseless…to deprive
any children…of an elementary education” (Drachman 93).
He also wrote that he
believed it would be “wrong” to create a “segment of society made up of
illiterate persons” (Drachman 93).
Having
established that undocumented students would be given equal opportunity to
receive free public education from kindergarten until twelfth grade, questions
were and have been raised about a possible broader appliance of the decision
(Drachman 94). For the next couple of
decades following the 1982 Supreme Court decision, the answer from has mostly
been “no” to the applicability of the decision in a broader sense (Drachman
91). Two examples of successful attempts
to obstruct the opportunities of undocumented youth arose during a period of
strong anti-immigrant sentiment in 1996(Drachman
92). The Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform
and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) were enforces (Drachman 92). Both Acts were enacted in order to prevent
undocumented students from receiving state or local benefits for post-secondary
education (Drachman 92). These two Acts
have been very controversial.
Undocumented students face opposition from Americans who believe that
the said students receive public benefits that they do not deserve, that they
endanger national security, and that they “adversely affect the nation’s
identity” (Drachman 99). However, there
are many Americans who believe quite the opposite, and who would argue that
educated undocumented immigrants are a valuable national resource and should be
embraced rather than rejected (Drachman 99).
Many
individuals and organizations are working towards allowing higher education
access to undocumented students. Many
believe that denying hard-working undocumented students this access is an
injustice that should be undone (Abrego & Gonzales 147). There have
been strong attempts in
the past decade to offer a process for undocumented immigrants to receive the
status of “citizen” (Palacios 2). These
attempts have been made by civil rights, labor, and political organizations,
such as People for the American Way, the National Council of La Raza, the American
Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the Mexican American Legal Defense and
Education Fund (MALDEF), the AFL-CIO, and the “I Have a Dream” Foundation
(Drachman 97). High school and college
counselors are also working to provide information on the possibilities for
undocumented students to receive higher education and there are attempts being
made to encourage private scholarships to give permission for undocumented
students to apply to these scholarships (Gin 20).
One
well-known attempt at providing educational opportunities to undocumented
students is the Development and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which
was first proposed in 2001 (Palacios 2, Drachman 97). The DREAM Act would give undocumented
students the opportunity to seek citizenship through either serving in the
armed forces or attending college (Palacios 2).
The Act would give states permission to choose whether they would grant
in-state tuition to undocumented students (Palacios 2). The Act is facing a lot of criticism by
people who think that these students should not be given more federal aid than
documented students attending college from out-of-sate (Romero 94). The Act would grant conditional permanent
resident status for six years to undocumented students if they arrived in the
United States before the age of sixteen, have “good moral character”, have no
criminal record, have lived in the United States for at least five years in a
row preceding the law’s enactment, have graduated from high school and have
been accepted to a two- or four-year college program (Drachman 97).
Those
undocumented students who are able to attend college without the DREAM Act or
something similar (such as the Student Adjustment Act) can do so only by paying
their own way, or by receiving private or non-governmental scholarships (Perez
21, Drachman 97). Having to pay out-of-state
tuition is often difficult or even impossible even for documented students
searching for post-secondary educational options. However, many undocumented students
graduating from high school realize that even if they were able to get a
college degree, it would not give them equal opportunities to those enjoyed by
their fellow graduates (Abrego & Gonzales 144). Without something like the DREAM Act, those
students would continue to be undocumented non-citizens and would still have
little or no access to careers (Abrego & Gonzales 144). For this reason, many undocumented students
give up after receiving the readily-available public education which ends with
high school (Abrego & Gonzales 144).
Many of the students who give up are students who have shown exceptional
hard work and commendable civic engagement; yet, with the lack of private funds
and non-governmental scholarships, many see no option other than to discontinue
their quest for personal success (Agrego & Gonzales 146).
Berea
College is a place which is, according to its website, a school looking to
accept students who show evidence of passion and the potential for success (“Interracial
Education”). The website advertises that the college is “still firmly rooted”
to its “historical [purposes]” which were to give equal education opportunities
to those least likely to be given such opportunities otherwise (such as blacks,
women, and students coming from poor, rural Appalachian areas) and to uphold
Christian values such as “love over hate, human dignity and equality, and peace with justice” (Nelson
63, “Mission”). As John
Gregg Fee, the founder of the institution, wrote, “A
law confessedly
contrary to the law of God ought not by human courts be enforced” (Fee
88). With this statement, he was
referring to segregation in schools and communities and to slavery, both of which
he believed are “contrary to the word of God” (Nelson 63).
Just
as the college was founded during a time of heightening antagonism towards
blacks, we now live in a time of heightening antagonism towards undocumented
immigrants. The founders of Berea
College felt passionate enough about their beliefs to persevere and to find a
way to create a place where those beliefs could be upheld (Neslon 63, Fee
91). Today, the school’s values are
regarded as noble and heroic, and it is in the present administration’s hands
to fulfill its historical purpose and to replicate its radical and honorable
dreams. The College has the potential to
adapt those values to the present circumstances in American education. It is clear to anyone merely glancing at the
information produced by the college that it is promoting a continuation of
specific dreams of the past which were at one time radical and honorable
(“Mission”). Now that those dreams have
been established and are easily recognized, the current administration has the
power to recognize current restrictions on education and to use the status the
institution has already established to evolve its purpose and advance its
dreams.
One
main discouragement felt by the undocumented students which is much like the
setbacks found by African Americans during the time of the college’s foundation
is the concept of “nativism” (Galindo & Vigil 422). The manner with which Americans speak about
illegal immigration has changed over the past few decades and many Americans
believe that undocumented immigrants, including the children brought by these
workers should not be given equal opportunities and should be deported (Galindo
& Vigil 421). Americans’
anti-immigrant sentiment often stems from this American nativism. The term “nativism” refers to “the favoring
of native-born citizens over immigrants” (Galindo & Vigil 422). Nativism is not only anti-immigrant, but also
suggests opposition to any socio-cultural differences among people, targeting
“foreigners” and “minorities” as the victims of most of the contempt. “More than just xenophobic attitudes of
a few isolated individuals”, nativism has been one of the “most sustained
social movements” in the United States, spanning over 150 years (Galindo &
Vigil 422). Undocumented immigrants are
often viewed as un-American and unwanted (Galindo & Vigil 423).
It
is evident that the “nativist” view is not held by Berea College (“Interracial
Education”). The College celebrates the
ideals of the founders of the institution, which were to give equal educational
opportunity to those whose race, gender, or area of residence hindered their
opportunities for seeking higher education (Fee 88). Berea College has an honorable history, and
it is recognized nation-wide for its astounding virtues (Rogers 143). It is clear that the College’s administration
and its student body wish to continue its purpose, and to do so, they must
acknowledge the current situation in American education and find ways to adapt
the school’s historical purpose to our present situation (“Mission”).
The
College promotes its history, yet it is no longer uncommon or radical for
African Americans and women to pursue higher education. We idolize the example the founders set, so
we should uphold their principle approach, which was to provide equal education
access to those whose education is withheld by laws laden in discrimination and
prejudice. As Clara Barton (founder of
the American Red Cross) wrote, “I defy the tyranny of precedent…I go for
anything new that might improve the past” (Church, 41). The College is famous for its founding
principles, and they are proudly boasted about during freshman orientation and
on tours of the town, yet the question remains: what can we do to fulfill the
ideals and standards set by our founders? Currently, it is undocumented
students whose educational opportunities falter before reaching college
(Abrego & Gonzales 147). It is in
our institution’s administration’s power to seek private funds and scholarships
to support these students (DeRosset).
At
Berea College, there are currently two undocumented students who are facing the
challenges caused by their undocumented status.
When asked whether one of them felt as though he has been treated
equally here, his answers clearly suggest that to a certain degree, he has not
(anonymous). He is originally from
Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico (anonymous).
He began by saying that he is grateful that he has been given the
opportunity to attend the College, and that coming here was the only
opportunity for higher education that he had after graduating from high school
in Decatur, Alabama where he and his family have been in residence since their
legal visa expired (anonymous). Having
obtained a legal six month visa to visit family in the United States, he and
his family arrived in Alabama in 1998 “with the intent of staying in the
country” (anonymous). Then he concluded
that though he feels he and his fellow undocumented student have been treated
differently here, it is because they are “different
kinds of students [and] not because of some inherent hatred towards
undocumented students” (anonymous).
It is also clear from his interview that
he believes nearly every experience he has had in the United States would have
been different if he were a documented citizen (anonymous). He remembers coming to the realization that “most internship scholarships and also
paid internships are not available to [him]” and that he has “to some degree
accepted that [he is] not allowed to do certain things, but there is a part of
[him] that is in constant struggle with U.S. policy towards irregular migrants”
(anonymous). He also stated that because
of his status, he “cannot study abroad, find paid
internships, or other luxuries residents and citizens can enjoy” (anonymous). He first heard about Berea College from a
Junior Reserves Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) (anonymous). He was intrigued by the school because he
knew a girl who attended the College who was working on gaining residency, and
who had been admitted to the school before having completed the process
(anonymous).
Because some of the funding
distributed to the College is federal money, accepting undocumented students is
a complicated issue (anonymous, DeRosset).
The College has a work-study program in which every student is required
to participate. This work allows
students to attend the school free of tuition costs, while at the same time
paying them a small hourly salary (“Goals and Purposes”). The labor grant is awarded to each student
equally, regardless of need of the individuals (“Goals and Purposes”). The undocumented student mentioned above
spoke of the differences he faces including the concept in his conclusion that
he is a “different [kind] of student” (anonymous). Because some of the funding for the labor
program is federal money, the student does not get paid in the same way as all
other students (anonymous). Instead of
being able to receive his pay through direct deposit like his peers, he must
personally go to retrieve his pay every pay period (anonymous). This is because he gets paid through a
separate fund and he is not in the system in the same way as are his fellow
classmates (anonymous).
In
most communities in the United States, there are many environmental,
socioeconomic, racial, and cultural forces that influence the dynamics of the society
and the environment in general. The
undocumented immigrant population is vulnerable to poverty and hardship because
of the laws put into place regarding their debilitating status (Abrego &
Gonzales 144). Those undocumented
immigrants who currently have the potential for gaining citizenship and equal
rights and opportunities are those who were brought here at a young age by
their parents (Palacios 2). Though there
are undocumented immigrants from many parts of the world, current restrictive immigration
policies “disproportionately affect Latin American immigrants” (Abrego &
Gonzales 145). It is clear that there
are current policies and laws being put into place which are giving
undocumented students more opportunities equal to their documented peers, but
it is also evident that undocumented students are still facing many challenges
in the education system (Drachman 97, anonymous).
Given
the current barriers met by undocumented students seeking to achieve higher
education and given the founding principles of Berea College, it seems as
though the College could adapt the institution’s founding principles to the educational
situation at present. The institution
has already decided to admit several undocumented students, but doing so is
complicated and risky (DeRosset). Some
of the first words of the College’s Constitution are “This college shall be
under an influence strictly Christian, and as such opposed to sectarianism,
slaveholding, caste and every other wrong institution or practice” (Rogers
73). It also states that the “object” of
the College “shall be to furnish the facilities for a thorough education to all
persons of good moral character” (Rogers 73).
Because of the inspiration and hope held by the school’s founders, the
“difficulties [of that time] were almost disregarded” (Rogers 137). The obstacles the College faced “were not
mourned over”, but were instead overcome (Rogers 137). Berea College, as a place “where none [are]
excluded” seems like the perfect school to accept and promote the higher
education of undocumented students who show evidence of high academic
achievement and potential (Rogers 143).
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