By Greg Lehman

Daily Titan Staff Writer

Undocumented students in Cal State Universities face many challenges: lack of identification, anxiety about being found and deported, and financial concerns.

A graduate of Cal State Fullerton, who chose to remain anonymous, said that his family came to Los Angeles when he was 16 years old as his father looked for better job opportunities in the United States.

“I didn’t have the language,” the graduate said. “My parents were looking for a better life for their son, you know, it was three of us. And they made that big decision (to move to LA) … At that point, I was going to start high school in Mexico, and when I got here I went to high school, and I said, ‘Wait a minute, I want to go to college, and I don’t have the language, and I need to know this stuff.’ Well, you learn the language, but then, guess what? You don’t have your papers.”

The stress can he hard to deal with. “You try to be on the side,” the graduate said. “You try to be like (in) the dark. You don’t want people to know you’re undocumented because you don’t know who to trust.”

“(For) me, it took me a long time to get my degree because I had to pay for it; I have to pay for my education. My week was go to work four days and go to school three, and that’s seven days for eight years. So there was no weekends; there was a point where I said, ‘OK, should I buy my jeans or should I buy my book?’ And I said, ‘Well I have to buy my book and not jeans.’ I still remember people making fun of me like, you haven’t graduated from college? It’s been already how many years? I said, ‘I don’t care, I know there’s going to be a point that I say, you know what, I did it. I did it.’”

The graduate said that his degree is something he will always hold in high regard. “There is no way for me to lose my degree. See, that is something that I am going to be able to keep for the rest of my life. It’s something that no one, no one is going to be able to take away from me.”

The Alliance of Students for an Equal Education exists on campus as a support group for undocumented students struggling to get their degrees. The graduate became one of the original members when he discovered that he was not alone in his situation.

“I thought maybe there’s going to be like five (undocumented students),” the graduate said. He took a Chicano/a studies class and began talking to a girl in the class about his situation, telling her that he was undocumented. “She said, ‘Oh, guess what? I know some other students that are in the same situation as you.’ And I said, ‘What? Are there more like me? It is true; I’m not the only one?’”

She said there were others, and these two others told him there were even more. “I was like, wait a minute, there is more? So that’s how ASEE is started,” the graduate said.

The ASEE is an immigration advocacy group on campus, according to the group’s secretary Diego Gutierrez. Gutierrez said the alliance is “dedicated to support both academically and emotionally students that are disenfranchised because of their legal status in the country. Our goal is to help out and motivate AB 540 students (to) do well in school through a support group. We provide a safe zone so that students can express themselves, their fears, their worries, without worrying about anyone judging their identity or fear or anyone trying to subjugate or threaten them.”

Another undocumented student who graduated in 2001, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that the pressures and fears of not having legal citizenship weighed on every aspect of her life. “Not many undocumented students know that they have anxiety,” the graduate said. “But we do to an extent. Not many are aware that they go through it because maybe it seems normal now, but I still get it, and I’m sure some undocumented students feel that way too.” She said that she is still put in situations where she might have to show identification, and this makes her very afraid.

“I was just so unsure and so scared of them asking me for my social security number,” the graduate said. “When someone asks you for your social security number it becomes a wall; it became a dead end. And I’m like, ‘OK, where do I go from here? There’s no other place I can go. This is the class I want to take, and this is what I want, but I cannot get it because there’s not even a bridge. There’s not even a pathway for it other than that nine-digit number.’”

“Any undocumented student needs support,” she said.

She added that school counselors should refer any undocumented students they come across to the clubs that have been set up for support. They need it, she said, as their situation is much different than any other student’s. “An undocumented student does not go through the same things as a native-born student.”

The graduate wanted to come back to CSUF and help out other undocumented students. “Let’s say you didn’t know anything about AB 540. That’s OK because it’s not part of your problem right now. To me, what worries me is that people who are AB 540, they don’t know that they are AB 540.”

“This club helps out students that are extremely talented and dedicated in pursuing their education and American Dream,” Gutierrez said. “The majority of these students have a minimum GPA of 3.50 and include math majors, engineer students, biology, political science, business, and computer science majors as well as majors in other fields. These are not your average ‘immigrant’ students. Many of them worked really hard through their high school and college careers to receive as many scholarships and other opportunities to complete their education.”

The graduate student said that while people may see him as a law-breaker, he feels as much a part of the U.S. as anyone who was born within its borders. “This country, that’s how we were built, with immigrants,” the graduate said. “I’m not a criminal. Now, people might see it that I’m a criminal because I came from a different country illegally, right? Well, that’s what I said at the beginning, if you don’t know the history of this country, you know, what are you doing here?”

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