One spontaneous evening, a friend of mine invited me out to a casual night out with some of his friends. The night was cool and good vibes were flying all around the room as we were all enjoying the conversations. Time started flying by and unexpectedly, one of the girls moms called her and asked if she would be home soon. I say “unexpectedly” because I was under the assumption that we were all college kids who could stay out as long as we wanted, so I was curious to find out more. It so happens that she had class the following day, on a Sunday. You can imagine that raised even more questions in my head and so she, Jacqueline, told me about how she is an “Undocumented Citizen,” which meant that she was not allowed to attend an accredited university in Georgia.
This was the first time that I had ever heard of something like that even though I am an immigrant myself, but am granted higher education with the “proper documents.” When I got home that night, I started thinking that I needed to raise awareness for this. I started asking my friends and family if they knew about this, and it turned out that they also knew some people who were in Jacqueline’s shoes. I heard several versions of the same story about how our peers who grew up with us, went to elementary, middle, and high school with us, had to stop their learning experience all because they were missing the “proper documents.” My awareness did not stop there.
A few weeks later after I spoke to Jacqueline, as I was walking to class, I ran into a group of undocumented students who were protesting in plaza to have that law pulled from the books. It stunned my brain once again to see just how many people were affected by this. So I reached out to Jacqueline again just to try to get a better understanding of the issue at hand and a general idea of how they felt. This is Her Story…
“At the age of three, you don’t have a concept of borders. So when I arrived to the U.S. with my mom and my brother, it didn’t automatically register to me that we were in a different country. All I knew was that we had struggled to get here to be reunited with my dad. I was enrolled in school pretty quickly and because of that I became exposed to the English language at a very young age. So it wasn’t hard for me to assimilate in that sense. I always knew I was undocumented, I just never knew what all it entailed. It wasn’t until high school that I began to realize how my status alienated me from the rest of my peers. During my sophomore year, all of my friends began receiving their driver’s permits. I couldn’t join in on the excitement, so I sat by quietly. Whenever my friends invited me to go see rated R movies I had to keep making up excuses as to why I couldn’t go, when really I just didn’t have an ID to show at the ticket booth. My senior year was the hardest year of my entire high school career. This was the year I found out about the policies 4.1.6 and 4.3.4 that ban undocumented students from higher education in Georgia.
Everybody was applying to colleges and scholarships while I was struggling to find what options I had. When I built the courage to open up to my counselor about my situation he told me that I might not be able to go to college. All of the hard work I had put into my classes, my homework, and my exams came crashing down. I became depressed and I began to struggle with my classes. What’s the point? I thought. However, around this time, I began to get more involved with Freedom University. Freedom University is a modern-day freedom school that is based in Atlanta. My mom found it on the internet in 2012 after my brother had just graduated high school. He graduated when DACA had not yet been introduced so he wasnt able to work, drive, or go to school. He then started attending classes and he would come home and tell me that I should go and he was so excited and releived to know that other students were in our situation as well.
Freedom U provides college-level classes, scholarship assistance, and leadership development for undocumented students in Georgia. It was found in 2011 after Policy 4.1.6, which bans undocumented students from attending Georgia’s top five universities, and policy 4.3.4, which prohibits undocumented students from qualifying for in-state tuition, went into effect. What these policies have done by excluding undocumented students from higher education is that it has brought a modern era of educational segregation in the South. However, it Freedom U, I found individuals who were in my same situation. I found undocumented students who were eager to learn, passionate teachers who were willing to teach us college-level classes despite the ban, and I found a voice. I still continue to apply to college, but in addition, through Freedom University, I have become an empowered student activist within my community and a proud undocumented Latina.”