Lily Mesa, Concord, NH, September 2006.

Juan Evangelista

I am an organizer with Jovenes Unidos, a student organization that fights for educational justice in our schools and for immigrant rights in our community. I want to talk with you about the effects that the current immigration debate has had on students in Colorado.

Many students who don’t have social security numbers came to the United States as very young children; many have been studying here since Kindergarten. As it stands today, it’s almost impossible for those students to enroll in college. After they graduate from high school, when students go to colleges to see what they need to do to enroll, the first thing the college counselors tell them is that they need a social security number in order to continue.

Undocumented students deserve the opportunity to enroll in college because they graduated from high school in exactly the same circumstances as other students with documents. Let’s be clear — we’re talking about the future generation of doctors, lawyers, teachers, and legislators. These students have the potential to achieve great things for themselves, for their families, and for all of Colorado. But simply because of their immigrant status, many students can’t obtain college education that they deserve because they are forced to pay out-of-state tuition, regardless of the fact that they have lived here for nearly their whole lives and their families pay taxes here! Passing the Dream Act would lower dropout rates and would give all students the hope and the motivation that they need to finish high school and go on to college.

Access to college should be a right, not a privilege, and we all should have the same opportunities to achieve our goals and dreams.

Lily Mesa

When people outside the USA live in extreme poverty conditions, and there are no opportunities to better themselves or their families, they see the USA as the greatest country in the world, where they can accomplish all their goals, provide for their families, and give their children a future.

But the reality is totally different when they arrive here and get hit with it in their face. The so-called “freedom” doesn’t exist. They cannot walk on the streets without feeling fear of others looking at them differently because they think they don’t belong here. They cannot find a good job because of their legal status or because of the language. So, they end up having two or three odd jobs to support their families. They don’t have time to go to school to learn the language because they are always working.

They are always working because the wages are so low that they can hardly meet the needs of their families. The children are always home alone, and they cannot be enrolled in any after school activity either because they cannot pay or because there’s nobody to take them. And because they don’t have someone at home to help with the school chores they don’t succeed in school. The children end up doing the same thing as their parents, working at two or three jobs in order to provide for themselves from a young age so they won’t be a burden for their parents. And when they try to go to college they cannot afford it. That’s a vicious cycle that we need to break. And this is only one of the situations. There are many different situations. Every immigrant has his or her own story.

We need a comprehensive immigration reform that allows families to reunite in a matter of months, not years, that makes employers provide a safe environment for workers, and that allows migrants that want to come to work temporarily to do so without waiting two or three years and paying an extraordinary amount of money. We need a reform that respects our cultural differences and appreciates our contributions to this country.