Event examines obstacles for Latinos
By Jacqueline Tabas
May 14, 2009 9:15 p.m.
At the Latino Education Summit hosted at UCLA today, faculty, current students and researchers will discuss ways to support and solve the struggles undocumented students face daily.
The event, hosted by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, will include discussion of AB 540 and recent legislation attempts to improve the opportunities of undocumented students attending higher education.
AB 540, a law that was passed in 2001, has allowed many undocumented students to seek higher education at two-year and four-year California public universities.
But many undocumented students still do not qualify for financial aid to be able to afford school.
A revised version of The California Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act was released in March to the House of Representatives and the Senate. This act allows undocumented students to apply for campus-based financial aid as well as to create a path to legalization if students meet certain qualifications.
One of the main goals of the event will be to rally support for the DREAM Act.
Carlos Haro, former assistant program director for the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA and event coordinator, said the event was founded in 2002 to bring resources together and focus on bettering the education for Latinos.
Members of the UCLA community will discuss how resources for undocumented students are limited and what can be done to change that.
Haro spent both his undergraduate and graduate years at UCLA studying education and specifically focusing the issues of undocumented students.
“Many of these students have achieved academic success and realize once they start applying to college that they cannot receive eligible support because they were brought as babies in arms to the states by their parents’ choice,” he said.
Students from the campus organization Improving Dreams Equality Access And Success will share their personal experiences.
The group is a faculty- and student-run organization that seeks to give support to undocumented students on campus as well as communities outside of UCLA.
Nancy Guarnero, a fourth-year sociology student from Improving Dreams Equality Access And Success, will speak about her struggles as an undocumented student who is about to graduate.
Guarneros said she was accepted to some of the most elite graduate schools across the country such as UCLA, Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Claremont University.
“I can speak about what happens next because in 30-something days, I will graduate, and the question still remains what can I do if the DREAM Act doesn’t pass?” Guarneros said.
She added that she is not alone because other undocumented students will finish degrees at UCLA.
“We have to work hard to educate this reality to people and discuss what needs to be done to make this dream become a reality,” she said.
UCLA graduate Cyndi Bendezu will also speak at the event about the importance of providing support for undocumented college students like her.
“Undocumented students and citizens live like everyone else, but we have barriers that are unseen. I have been offered really great jobs but cannot take them because I do not have a social security number,” Bendezu said.
Bendezu’s and other’s stories will be shared at the UCLA Faculty Center from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
