 In spite of hard work, good grades, and several college acceptance letters, this new high school graduate's dreams are threatened by her illegal immigration status. (Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand) |
|
Posted on 06/25/2007 10:39:15 AM PDT by Incorrigible
In spite of hard work, good grades, and several college acceptance letters, this new high school graduate's dreams are threatened by her illegal immigration status. (Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand) |
|
NEWBERG, Ore. — "Angela'' has always been that girl. As in, that girl is sharp. That girl is special. That girl is going somewhere.
She excelled in Newberg High School honors courses and made the National Honor Society. She earned a work-study job that introduced her to the town's who's who. She applied for college, dreaming of going to Oregon State University and then on to become a surgeon, fighting cancer like the kind that killed her mom. College acceptance letters poured in.
Then one day this spring, while her classmates chatted about college plans, the girl we're calling Angela announced she wasn't going. Her friends and teachers were baffled and appalled.
But that girl had a secret. One that she inherited from her parents. One that had hung over her for 11 years like a cloud. And it had finally surfaced, threatening to trump everything Angela had accomplished.
At first, the secret was an exciting game. It started when she was a tiny 6-year-old with wavy hair and sable eyes. Just the day before, she had been the star of an elaborate affair marking her First Communion. As grandparents fawned, her parents spoke intensely with family members who'd come from far away.
The next morning, before the sun first streaked the sky, Angela's parents shook her and her little brother awake. They bundled a few clothes and closed the door on the two-room house without electricity.
She remembers crouching in a ditch, waiting for the trucks and helicopter to pass. They darted about a hundred yards to a waiting family. The adults smiled, expelling their tension through nervous laughter.
"It just seemed like an adventure,'' says Angela, now 17. "It didn't seem scary at all.''
Angela's parents knew they were breaking the law. But mother and father looked at their son and the daughter with the knobby knees protruding from stick legs. A worse crime, they felt, would be to raise their children in abject poverty, in a life where food often ran out before more money came in.
Neither parent had made it past the sixth grade. But Angela's father, a man we'll call Juan, says he and his wife promised that their children would never work in the fields, that they would go to college.
And so with a few steps across an invisible line, the family entered a world where they had no legal right to be and where they would exist without legal documents.
Mostly, to Angela, not having papers meant that she couldn't visit family in Mexico like other kids. Having papers meant better jobs with better pay. But sometimes, not having papers seemed frightening. And wrong. When classmates talked about how illegal immigrants were taking jobs, Angela felt like an impostor, seared by her lie.
"Sometimes, it feels bad,'' she says, lowering her voice to a whisper. "But I always felt like if I told the secret, I'd get sent back to Mexico.''
For Angela, Mexico was a dark and sinister place. It was where her mother went to die, hoping to be healed of her incurable pancreatic cancer.
The night she learned her mother would never come back from Mexico, Angela put on her black skirt and went to her homecoming dance. Some called her cold. They didn't know she was dying herself on the inside but needed to feel strong.
The diminutive child with the crescent-moon dimples had grown taller, yet she was still so thin she could fit into her frilly white communion dress. She'd also toughened to endure a life that could have been hobbled by disappointment and struggle.
The tempering began years ago, when Angela arrived in an American classroom unable to understand English. When the kids wouldn't help her with her schoolwork, Angela asked her parents for an English dictionary and translated every word of her assignments on her own.
She met a third-grader we'll call Marisa, and the mahogany-haired duo struck up a friendship. Like Angela, Marisa's parents came from Mexico seeking better wages. Both Angela and Marisa stood out as bright stars among their classmates, often finding themselves the only Latinos in advanced classes. The girls dreamed college dreams, promising to room together at Oregon State. They were two of a kind.
Almost. Marisa was born here, and that made her a citizen. But Angela passed her pen over the citizenship question when she filled out her college applications, leaving it blank. Then, she waited.
It came on Feb. 21 in a thin, white envelope. She'd gotten into Oregon State.
"Oh, I was so happy,'' Angela says. "I went to school and told everybody.''
But without a Social Security number, the government rejected Angela's financial aid application. The teen didn't falter. She would work, and her dad would help pay for school.
Then an Oregon State recruiter came to her high school to talk to a group of Latino students. Nervous, Angela dared ask: Do you admit kids who don't have papers? The recruiter answered: Students in the country illegally can't go to Oregon State University. As other students looked on in hushed silence, Angela's head dropped. She felt humiliated. She felt horrified.
The teen asked each of the colleges that had accepted her the same question. Some public Oregon colleges would allow her to enroll, but she'd have to pay out-of-state tuition with no financial aid.
The girl who mastered multiplication tables by the second grade did the math. Her family squeaks by on $32,000 a year. Out-of-state tuition would take half to two-thirds of that. Annual private-school tuition can cost more than the family makes in a year.
The colleges might as well have sent her rejection letters.
Angela's fingers tremble as she dabs at her tears.
"Sometimes I get mad because I tried so hard, and it's for nothing,'' Angela says, sniffling. "The teachers, they never really told me, 'You won't be able to go.' They told me, 'Try, try hard and you can go to college.'
"They should have told that to the kids who are U.S. citizens. Not me.''
But it's not that simple, says Sandy Otis, a Newberg teacher who works with immigrant kids. Legally, teachers can't ask whether students are undocumented; many simply don't know. And what teacher wants to crush the dreams of talented students such as Angela by telling them that they don't have the same right to college as other students? It's heart-wrenching, Otis says. Teachers should offer hope.
Still, Angela feels deceived. She's lived an American life. Mexico is something that flavors her food and colors her family traditions. Newberg, she knows like the back of her hand. From the mom-and-pop shops to the park where everything is painted a glossy blue.
Angela slides into a seat in Newberg High's cafeteria, looking like any other student. Heart-shaped rhinestone earrings. Pink lip gloss jammed in her jeans pocket.
Marisa clunks her lunch tray down on the table. The girls talk about text messages and a new slasher movie. They speak rapid English, with an accent so light it says East L.A., not new immigrant.
Marisa heaves a sigh. "I'm going to miss it,'' she says. "I'm sad.''
College won't be that different from high school, Angela tells her.
"But I'll miss you guys,'' her friend insists in a sing-song voice. "I wish you were coming ... ''
Marisa's voice trails off and she concentrates on picking the cheese from her pizza. The silence between the girls screams.
"Sometimes Marisa forgets that I'm not going to OSU with her,'' Angela says later. "I try so hard to be happy for her, but it's hard sometimes. I want to beat her over the head with my acceptance letters.'' She laughs, but her dimples dip half-heartedly. "I've got acceptance letters,'' Angela says softly. "But they aren't worth anything.''
Angela used to go months without thinking about her secret, now it seems to lurk ever nearby — taunting her with her difference, pricking her with her diminishing possibilities.
She holds herself together for a while. But one day in school, she loses it. With a husky voice, she rages about watching kids lucky enough to be born here skipping school, acting up in class, unconcerned about college. Her face is flushed and damp.
"They have something great that they can use, and they are wasting it,'' she says, twisting a tissue between her fingers until it begins to shred. "You have something I want. If you don't want it, just give to me. I'll go. I'll go.'' The last word comes out as a moan.
Angela's grades drop as she wonders, "What's the use?'' Her father tells her not to mess up her future. Angela lashes out. She asks, Daddy, why did you bring us here? Why didn't you come earlier so we could be born here?
The question still wounds her father. Juan comes home after laboring 13 hours in a vineyard near Newberg. He smells of chemicals. His skin looks like sienna leather, and he walks tentatively, as if his thigh muscles are bruised.
The decision to come was difficult, he says, and maybe they took too long to decide. But Angela and her brother didn't choose to come here. And Juan never though that in America, children would suffer for the sins of the father.
The parents wanted their children's lives to be better than theirs. And many in this country are complicit in the family's secret, Juan says. The federal government issues special numbers to noncitizens — including illegal immigrants — so that they can pay taxes regardless of immigration status. Juan uses this number to pay taxes on wages from an employer who pays him less because he's illegal. His taxes help subsidize the in-state tuition benefit that his daughter isn't allowed.
Juan shakes his head. Sometimes, he says, it seems as if it's OK for people like him to labor here. But not to strive.
Angela feels bad that she hurt her father. She knows the sacrifice he and her mother made. Yet days before her high school graduation, no signs of celebration brightened the little apartment in a working-class neighborhood on what Newberg folks consider the wrong side of Oregon Route 99W.
Outside, brown children pass the time by playing "Immigration'' — a kid shouts the word and the others scatter and hide. Inside, the blinds are pulled, casting morose shadows over worn furniture. The father worries his daughter's tiny frame has finally met a burden it cannot carry.
Angela lies on the twin bed in the room she shares with her 13-year-old brother. She looks at her laptop. She's reminded of the many times her father worked into the night so that he could buy it for her. On her dresser sits a peach-furred bear her mother bought her long ago. It sings when Angela presses its paw. She says it's like hearing her mother's voice.
In the seclusion of her room, something inside Angela shifts. A difficult life has taught Angela to adjust her plans, but guard her dreams. She decides to enroll at Portland Community College, where any high school student with an Oregon transcript pays in-state tuition. She'll take the first two years of a program that will allow her to transfer to a four-year school.
Maybe by then, she muses, lawmakers will find a way to take care of children who did not choose to come here, but have grown up here all the same. Angela knows she is counting on politicians to determine her fate. But, she shrugs, what choice does she have?
If she can't become a surgeon, she'll take classes toward a trade. Maybe dental assisting, she says with a smile.
And so, on graduation day, a slight girl emerged from a sea of blue and gold. She was unbowed and radiant as she reached for her diploma and searched the crowd for her father.
He was there, looking at his daughter with water in his eyes.
(Nikole Hannah-Jones is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. She can be contacted at nhannahjones(at)news.oregonian.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
If you read to the end, you find that she's still going to taxpayer subsidized college, just not the college of her choice.
she rages about watching kids lucky enough to be born here skipping school, acting up in class, unconcerned about college. Her face is flushed and damp.
"They have something great that they can use, and they are wasting it,'' she says
On this she is correct. But there are plenty of LEGAL immigrants who can say the same thing.
“Angela’s parents knew they were breaking the law.”
And their daughters fate is THEIR fault.
Shocker.
She has no one but her parents to blame.
She’s still a citizen of Mexico, right? Why can’t she just go to a college in that country?
Sorry, I’m not seeing the tragedy here.
Yeah, keep up the good fight...someday there will be no stigma attached to lawbreaking,,if fact lawbreaking will be rewarded and you will be in the clear. Just send us the bills honey. And thanks for coming here, we need more selfish citizens such as yourself.
Parents yet again screw over their kids, yet they want us to think it’s our fault.
"Angela's parents knew they were breaking the law."
She's going somewhere alright:
hopefully, it's back to MAY-hee-co!
Mexico has medical schools. University of Mexico is highly regarded. A great uncle of mine taught medicine there.
Good luck Angelina in applying there!
This is another one of those stories that takes the exception to the rule and tries to make it the status quo, like we are screwing each and every immigrant in the country. In the real world, illegal immigrants brought in as children drop out of high school at rates greater than 50 percent in some places, and their illegitimate birth rate equals that of any minority in this country. This article is intellectually dishonest, and deliberately deceptive, just about what you could expect from that left-wing rag. Boo. Hoo.
SHE is correct in this. I’m sure that she doesn’t deserve the kind of crap that she goes through in life, and it’s not directly her fault that she’s in her position.
It’s her dads. If not for the original dash for the border, then for sitting stagnant for years NOT making good on his original plan. He just sat there and revelled in his perceived success.
There is a plan for folks like this. Move to Sri Lanka, India, or any other “free university” country. She can make it BIG there and then return to the US under her own, hopefully correct, efforts.
Sorry Charlie.
Xacly.
Why does the hyphenated last name of the journalist give me the creeps???
But if we just create guest-criminal status, we can drop our crime rates to zero!
She just wouldn't qualify for a few things reserved for American citizens. Such as in-state tuition (in most states)-- and very little else.
So I don't see what the problem is here.
You either have law or you don’t.
You enforce the law on the sympathetic and the unsympathetic alike.
Ship her butt back to Mexico, or open the border to all.
Which will it be?
I vote to ship her butt back to Mexico, along with the rest of the family.
Doesn’t matter, she meets the requirements for a STUDENT VISA... this is just drivel bleeding heart story... nothing more.
She’ll be fine, so long as she remains focused on her goal of becoming a doctor. Will she have to overcome some obstacles? SUre.. but guess what? Everybody does. Now that you are 18 and have a student visa, start your naturalization process.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.