On the surface, Juana Calderon seems no different than any other 19-year-old college student. She has a pleasant smile, loves athletics and juggles her classes with an after-school job and extracurricular activities.
Look deeper, though, and it’s clear that Calderon is anything but average.
She’s had to overcome challenges that many of her peers haven’t: She’s an undocumented Mexican immigrant, one of the few who has reached higher education despite not having a Social Security number to put on a college application.
Calderon is one of thousands of undocumented students who stand to benefit from a proposed federal law, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act introduced in February by U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
The law aims to legalize the status of “young people who were brought to the U.S. years ago as undocumented immigrant children but who have since grown up here, stayed in school and kept out of trouble,” according to the National Immigration Law Center.
Qualified students would be given a six-year period to graduate from a two-year college, complete two years toward a four-year degree or serve two years in the military. Then, they would be granted full citizenship. They would also be helped with tuition through scholarships.
Calderon came to the United States as a 13-year-old with her mother and two brothers. Her father had already been working in the fields in Santa Rosa, saving money to bring his family to the United States.
When she moved to San Jose, Calderon began classes at Overfelt High School, where about 70 percent of the students are Latino.
“During high school, I had a lot of Hispanic friends,” Calderon said. “But I started speaking English when I went out for sports, like volleyball and soccer, because there were Samoans and Filipinos who didn’t speak Spanish. I got all my English practice there.”
To grasp English, Calderon studied during the school year, at after-school programs and in summer courses. For this reason, she said that she was able to handle most of the classes she took at her high school. She found classes such as English and history to be more difficult because she was required to give presentations and write papers in English.
She accomplished all this while playing after-school sports and even managed to work at a local restaurant to help her family pay rent for their apartment.
Despite these odds, Calderon graduated from high school. She was accepted to San Jose City College. It took hard work and determination, and a little help from her teachers.
“I had close relationships with my teachers,” she said, “especially my volleyball coach. They helped me apply to college and helped me with my papers.”
Calderon’s story, however, is rare. Many undocumented immigrant students do not have the means or outside support to get as far as she has. There aren’t many programs to help immigrants get acquainted with the higher education system.
In California, undocumented immigrants can attend college but don’t qualify for state or federal scholarships. And after an undocumented immigrant graduates, he or she still doesn’t qualify for legal residency or citizenship.
The National Immigration Law Center estimates that 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school each year and are unable to continue on to college, simply because they lack the Social Security number necessary to apply for many schools and scholarships.
“A lot of the kids won’t even want to apply,” said Xavier Compos, who is head of the education department at Mexican American Community Services Agency. “There’s a fear of the immigration system. They’re worried that the minute they start the documentation process, they’ll get caught.”
Problems may begin much sooner than that. With few outlets to learn English, students can find themselves lagging far behind their peers in an English-speaking classroom.
“Our present education system doesn’t know how to accelerate their learning,” Compos said.
“They’re English-language learners, and our education system is not set up to bring them up to a level of education proficiency so they can learn. With English as the only language spoken in the schools, it’s even harder for them. The students can lose hope because they’re so far behind. They just don’t see any avenue to finish school.”
That’s one reason why Latinos have a higher dropout rate than any other ethnic group in the country. The Latino dropout rate averages 25.7 percent, while the dropout rate for whites is 6.5 percent, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
For students who do manage to finish high school, many find themselves faced with new problems. The undocumented students can include valedictorians, star athletes and talented musicians.
Aubuerto Centeno, who works at MACSA as a case manager, advocates for the 35 teenagers he works with at the program.
“Many of them speak perfect English, have adjusted to the lifestyle, and I’m sure the majority of them would give a lot back to their communities,” Centeno said.
“But they don’t have their papers,’’ she said, “so it’s difficult for them to reach their goals. They work hard. But in the end they give up because they don’t have the documents.”
Calderon knows how hard it can be.
“Out of all of my friends, only three of them went to college,” Calderon said. “It’s really sad.”