Immigrants often face higher education obstacles

  Illustration by JASON CHEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff

By Cecily Clements

When my dad was a senior in high school, all his parents could
give him in the way of college savings was $100. At age 18 my dad
was virtually on his own, and if it hadn’t been for the cheap
tuition at San Bernardino Valley College, he may have never
received a college education at all. Community college offered my
dad an opportunity, which served as a stepping-stone to towards a
degree at UCLA.

Based on my father’s experience, I came to see the
community college system as an agency of opportunity for
individuals who might need an alternative to the four-year
university. For this reason I became a recruiter for West LA
College, a job in which I make regular trips to four different high
schools in and around Los Angeles. I help high school students to
make decisions about their college opportunities for the
future.

In my experience working for a community college, I have found
that many high school students around Los Angeles face financial
and/or social obstacles to receiving a college education.
What’s more, it is increasingly the case in this country that
students who face these obstacles are not only students of low
socioeconomic background, but are also primarily students of color.
Dissidents of programs such as affirmative action claim that such
policies would practice “reverse racism” and are unfair
to the white population.

But, this argument overlooks the fact that there are still laws
in place within our educational system that methodologically place
students of color at a disadvantage.

One such example is an issue decreed by the state that all
students applying to schools in California, who do not have legal
permanent resident status, will be subject to pay out of state
tuition fees. For children of recent immigrants without citizenship
status, this hike may jeopardize their chances of attending college
all together.

At UCLA the out of state tuition is roughly $14,000 a year. That
is nearly triple the $5,000 California residents pay annually. Even
worse are the rate hikes at the California State University and
community college levels: at Cal State Universities, California
residents pay about $1,600 a year, and out of state tuition is
increased fivefold to $8,000 annually.

The logic behind the out of state tuition increase is that
students who are using the CSU and UC school systems, but have not
lived in California, are reaping the benefits of a system to which
they have not contributed. This logic however, does not resonate
when applied to students who currently are, and have been for many
years, living in the state of California, but who do not have legal
permanent residency in the United States. In other words, this law
can be applied to students who come from immigrant families that
have lived in, and paid taxes to, the state of California but have
been unable to obtain green cards or citizenship status.

What is more, these are not necessarily undocumented families;
many immigrants have visas to live legally in the United States,
but do not have the status of legal permanent resident.

Yet this statewide policy ignores such situations and forces
immigrant families to pay exorbitant fees simply because they are a
highly vulnerable population, and easily targeted for such
xenophobic policies. The social feasibility for this type of racist
litigation is based on several serious misconceptions about the
nature of immigration into the United States.

Many Americans swallow much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric,
which paints a negative image of immigrants as common criminals who
become nothing more than a “public charge” to society.
This shallow analysis of immigration ignores the reasons why
immigrants come to this country in the first place.

A common explanation for high levels of immigration is that
immigrants leave their countries of origin because the living
conditions there have become so intolerable that flight to the
United States is necessary for survival. This ignores the
historical role played by our government.

The U.S. government has a long history of recruiting and
encouraging immigration, explicitly for the purpose of creating a
cheap and exploitable labor force. Furthermore, much of
contemporary U.S. foreign policy works to enhance and exacerbate
existing social problems developing nations, thus creating a social
climate for immigration.

A frequently cited example of this type of foreign policy is the
North American Free Trade Agreement, which has displaced thousands
of inhabitants of rural areas in Latin America. U.S. laws are then
able to effectively siphon immigrants off into the lowest class in
our standing social order: that of “illegal alien.”
This type of classification severely limits the possibilities
immigrant populations will have to improve their life in this
country, and allows the United States to exploit these immigrant
populations as a cheap and expendable source of labor.

Also, research has been conducted which disputes the widely held
belief that immigrant populations drain our state resources. It has
been shown that the majority of undocumented immigrants get taxed
from their paychecks at both the federal and state levels,
debunking the myth that unauthorized immigrants come here to
“live for free.”

Nonetheless, we still have policies such as out of state tuition
fees for non-residents, which erect barriers blocking young
immigrants from progressing up the social ladder.

I met a young immigrant high school student just two weeks ago
who came to speak to me about the possibility of attending West LA
College for two years, and then transferring to a four-year
university. He had a 4.137 GPA, excellent SAT scores, and a history
of extra-curricular activities, but wanted to go to a community
college first because he knew that he could save his family a great
deal of money. Much to my chagrin, it fell on me to explore his
legal status in the U.S. so as to determine if he would be subject
to the out of state tuition fees.

He explained to me that he was living legally in the United
States on a visa, but that he was unable at this time to secure the
status of legal permanent resident. He was devastated when I told
him that he would have to pay out of state tuition, and that it
didn’t matter if he had been living in California for the
past five years because without proper citizenship status, he would
not be considered a California resident in the eyes of the law.

Here I was explaining to him that although he had worked so
hard, and done so much, he was still inevitably going to face
serious obstacles to improving his own life, and the life of his
family.

My father was able to take advantage of an educational system
that allowed him to propel himself up the socioeconomic ladder, and
it is an absolute obscenity that this high school student will not
be afforded the same opportunity that was extended to my
father.

This is not a nation built for the benefit of one race, one
class, or one gender. This is a country built on the ideals that
all walks of life can come here and succeed. I challenge each and
every one of you to rise up and demand that our government act on
the ideals they claim to hold so true. This arbitrary roadblock to
education for immigrant children should be repealed, and this
country should stand by the right for all human beings to obtain an
affordable college education.

This week the external vice president’s office is hosting
a national week of action to “build education and end
criminalization,” please come out and join us in the fight to
protect our education rights.