For Student Immigrants, A Secret Life

Elena lives a double life.

Her admission to Harvard gave her a sense of success and elitism that most only dream of. After graduation, she had her eyes set on reforming the American educational system. There was just one hitch: as a seven-year-old, Elena had crossed the border between the United States and Mexico illegally.

Elena, who asked that her real name not be disclosed because of her status, is one of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

She came to Harvard with a secret she would only tell to University officials, her closest friends, and a few professors. Now, in the years after she received her undergraduate degree, Elena watches as a heated national debate ensues over whether people like her should be granted a pathway to citizenship.

“You can’t just keep blaming these people,” says Elena, who graduated within the past five years. “If you want to protect these human beings, you have to give them some rights.”

At Harvard, administrators say they know of at least 10 undocumented students who, like Elena, hide their backgrounds throughout their undergraduate years.
Ineligible for federal financial aid, they rely on the support of Harvard’s private money for their education. Unable to work legally in the country, they depend on under-the-table money to subsist.

And in their transition to college, many reluctantly leave behind low-income immigrant families that had depended on their labor to survive.

After college, the future of this undocumented class is even more uncertain. They are dogged by their documentation—or lack thereof—and in many cases are unable to make use of their undergraduate degrees because their employment is prohibited.

Elena, who recently completed a master’s degree at a private American university, says her status has impeded her ability to set professional goals.

“Technically, what I committed was fraud or felony,” she says. “They’re holding children accountable for the mistakes of their parents.”

Thousands of miles from their home countries, Harvard students like Elena carry on dual lives as students of America’s oldest college and fugitives of the United States government. With a debate over the legalization of undocumented immigrants raging in the nation’s capital, some wonder whether their days in the shadows will end.

CROSSING THE BORDER

Raised in a rural town in central Mexico, Elena describes her family as “farm folk” struggling to make a living. She attended local Catholic schools with her two brothers, but at age seven, her parents decided it was time for a radical change.

The Mexican school system only provided free education for children through age 16, and Elena’s family did not have the resources necessary to afford “la prepa”—the Mexican equivalent of high school.

In the late 1980s, Elena’s parents arrived in the United States alone. It was the second trip to the country for her father, who had managed to sneak in for a short time in the 1970s for work. Her parents settled into a large American city with the support of a few family members already in the area. Her father took a job as a meatpacker.

As her parents worked to establish a home in America, Elena stayed in Mexico with an aunt. It would be months before she would immigrate to America, and the time apart from her parents was deeply troubling for Elena.

“It was a really trying period when we weren’t together,” she says. “I think that left a deep impression in our lives, because we’re just a tight family.”

Nine months after her parents’ departure, Elena crossed the border.

MOVING ON UP

In a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood, Elena’s family gently eased into American life. In October, a few weeks after she had crossed over herself,

Elena’s two brothers made it over the border and reunited with the family. A few months later, her mother gave birth to a girl—the first person in the family to become a U.S. citizen.

For two years, Elena attended a bilingual public school in her city, but the risk of enrolling in government-sponsored schools made private institutions an increasingly attractive option.

She applied and was given a scholarship to a private Catholic school in the third grade, and soon hit the ground running. She quickly overcame the English barrier, learning much of the language by watching old sitcoms, including “The Cosby Show” and “Small Wonder.” By the end of the third grade, she was nearly fluent.

“Language is such a marker of culture and class,” she says. “My parents spoke very good Spanish, and because of that they thought it would have been a disservice to not encourage us in English.”

She and her brothers would spend hours on end perusing the shelves of the local public library. Elena’s parents were strong believers in education, but they believed a secondary school degree was a pragmatic endpoint for their children.

“They thought that if you graduated with a high school degree, you could get a job working as a laborer and move up to be a manager sometime,” she says. “A high school degree was all that was needed, possible, and affordable.”

Elena and her siblings were stars at their private  high school, and higher education seemed like the natural step. But they feared their illegal status might limit their educational options.

Elena’s older brother, for instance, was accepted to some of the nation’s most competitive schools. But unlike Harvard, several of the universities to which he had been admitted rescinded their offers of financial aid after they learned he was an undocumented immigrant.

With the challenges of her brother fresh in her mind, Elena decided to apply to two nationally ranked universities, and at the encouragement of her high school counselors, she submitted an application to Harvard.

“At the time, I was just a really optimistic person,” she says. “You roll some dice and hope something will happen, even for an immigrant from Mexico.”

When she got in, she was in disbelief. The idea that the daughter of a farm family from a rural Mexican village would be offered a spot at America’s oldest college was incomprehensible to her.

“It was the conflict of dissonance—the fact that I was getting into Harvard was so unreal,” she says. “I was reading the letter and expecting to read ‘We hope you can apply again next year.’”

For Elena, admission to Harvard vindicated her American identity.

“I thought, this is cool, things like this could actually happen,” she says. “There are schools that will overlook everything and offer free tuition and admission despite your background.”

BLENDING IN

As freshmen and their parents rushed into Harvard Yard during move-in week, Elena casually strolled onto campus sans entourage.

Her parents stayed at home to work, but she was familiar with the campus from her visit over pre-frosh weekend. She had spoken with her four freshman-year roommates, and on that day, her nervousness prompted her to be more outgoing than usual.

By all indications, however, Elena’s assimilation to Harvard life was rapid.

“I had been kind of mentally preparing to come for a while,” she says.

To cover her expenses, Elena found babysitting jobs that left no record on the payroll, while her friends could participate in the Federal Work-Study Program or find off-campus jobs.

Today, she looks back on the experience with humor.

“I thought to myself, this is great. I’m a Mexican nanny—that’s what a Harvard degree does for me,” she says.

An active student leader, Elena held top positions in several clubs and organizations, including one large campus group and a non-profit on-campus service organization.

Throughout her undergraduate years, Elena remained mum about her citizenship status: she only disclosed the secret to her roommates and a few close friends and professors.

In her junior year, however, she began to panic—she was still unsure what she would do when she was forced to reenter the real world.

Her options were limited: she could marry a citizen, specialize in highly sought-after professions like biochemistry or nursing, or, if she had the athletic skills of an Olympian, she could be granted naturalization for outstanding ability.

“There was really no category for gosh-darn smart kids who happened to be illegal,” she says. “I can get married or become a nurse—I thought, what are we, Jane Austen? Where are our options? This is America, right?”

In a sea of middle- and upper-class Harvard students, Elena says the socioeconomic divide and her working class roots never influenced her educational experience. She made ample money from her babysitting wages, she says.

“I was always aware of the class difference, but I never made it a bitter issue that my friends had a lot more money,” she says. “It was actually a pretty leisurely experience.”

‘DEPORTATION CITY’?

At least 10 Harvard students are currently undocumented immigrants, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67. Fitzsimmons acknowledges, however, that the actual number may be higher because the citizenship status of students is only verified if they apply for financial aid.

“There may well be some people who we admit who we don’t know about,” he says.

Elena came to Harvard in the pre-Sept. 11 world—before the fortification of national security policy made it harder for undocumented immigrants to enter the country illegally.

In 2003, the U.S. government introduced the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) that required universities to establish an attendance record for their foreign students.

When SEVIS was introduced, Elena recalls thinking, “Oh my goodness, this is going to be deportation city.”

Despite the criticism that some groups have leveled at educational institutions that knowingly enroll illegal immigrants, Fitzsimmons defends the College’s policy of admitting undocumented students. He says that the College is more concerned with merit over circumstances when it admits applicants.

“We’re actually interested in talented people, broadly talented people, from every kind of background and from every place in the world,” he says. “When we’re looking at possible students for Harvard, we’re really focusing on their academic, their extracurricular, and their personal talents—not on what a person’s citizenship is.”

Fitzsimmons notes that while the Harvard application does ask students about their citizenship status, “students often leave things blank.”

“The only way we’re going to know is if students tell us and apply for financial aid,” he says.

Because undocumented immigrants are not legally permitted to work in the U.S., they often take out loans to pay for portions of their education. The rest of their financial package is made up of aid from Harvard, Fitzsimmons says.

DELAYED DREAMS

Graduating Harvard seniors hitting the job market are often seen as hot commodities, but for undocumented immigrants, the days after Commencement can be disappointing.

“While friends thought about potential jobs, I always knew I had to take myself out of the running and not be too attached to a concrete ‘dream job,’” Elena says. “Instead, I focused on what I could do with my life and my time that approximated a job I would have anyway.”

For Elena, those life goals include working on urban social issues and efforts to improve education in the United States.

“I don’t think a person with my perspective could just get the ‘green light’ and not care about what happens to others whose opportunities are limited by reasons beyond their control,” she says.

Now that she has two degrees under her belt, Elena says she plans to start yet another master’s degree program next year to “kill more time.” At one point, she says, she even considered returning to her native land of Mexico as a “repatriated expatriate.”

“On the one hand I have a duty to my family, and on the other hand I have a duty to myself to get as much education as possible,” she says. “I’m kind of shackled to my little random life in the shadows here.”

—Staff writer Javier C. Hernandez can be reached at jhernand@fas.harvard.edu.