• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

UCLA student Lucia Mendes has realized her dream of attending a university. But for her, it comes at a price that many others do not have to pay.

Because her parents, who make little more than minimum wage – her father as a mechanic and her mother as a housekeeper – are unable to financially support her education, the third-year political science student is a part-time student working full-time.

She lives with the very real possibility of not being able to afford her next quarter in school.

But unlike many other students in a similar financial situation, she is not eligible for financial aid because she is not a U.S. citizen.

Mendes shared her story at the Immigration Reform Forum on Tuesday night, hosted by the Immigration Rights Coalition, whose goal is to address the current immigration problem and discuss relevant legislation proposed to resolve it. She recounted numerous barriers in the way of her higher education, including the fact that college was never considered an option for her until middle school.

A lack of public awareness and a need for more student involvement, problems that plague immigration reform, were discernible at the forum Tuesday night.

Though guest speakers and coalition members had many points they wanted to discuss and get across to the student population, few were there to listen, with barely a dozen students present.

The forum focused on two pieces of legislation that were specifically relevant to college students and residents of California, the state with the highest percentage of immigrants in the country: the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act and the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security Act.

The DREAM Act, which was reintroduced to the U.S. Senate on Nov. 18, would allow immigrant students who have graduated from high school and lived in the United States for at least five years to gain conditional legal status for six years to pursue higher education.

The forum came a day after President Bush visited Tucson, Ariz., pushing to strengthen security at the border, increase the number of holding cells for detained immigrants, and create a new temporary worker program that would match workers with American employers “to fill jobs that Americans will not do.” But Bush would not offer a pathway for citizenship.

Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, Bush said, would encourage more people to break the law and allow them to be rewarded for it.

But several members of the coalition expressed an increased urgency prompted by Bush’s new policies on illegal immigration and emphasized the importance of debating the efficacy of these policies.

“We feel that when we talk about immigration, all people want is deportation, deportation, deportation and enforcement of laws,” said Jorge Rios, a third-year economics student and coalition member. “Very little is being done to address the problems of the people who are here already.”

Diana Tellefson, United Farm Workers national immigration reform field director, said comprehensive immigration reform should include a path to citizenship, protection of workers’ rights regardless of citizenship, and a way to keep families together.

She also spoke about AgJOBS, which would provide the opportunity for immigrants to gain citizenship after working a certain number of days per year at a job in the agricultural industry.