Star Students: 2 DREAM ACT Kids and Their Parents

It probably will be more than a decade of waiting in line


The article below is informative, but I'm not sure I would want to be interviewed if someone could call ICE at any moment.

Either way, at the very end the author notes:

"As for college for the children, that’s iffy. While 10 states, including New York (but not Connecticut or New Jersey), allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates, these students are ineligible for many types of financial support, including federal aid, which often becomes the real barrier."

I guess the reporter doesn't know about the DREAM ACT. Is he aware that there are millions of kids like these in the U.S. He seems surprised as he writes about the children not speaking with accents and making stellar grades. However, it could be said that at least the guy wrote a positive article on immigration.



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Living in Shadows While Children Shine
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: September 2, 2007
The New York Times

HE was a doctor in Ecuador. She was a year short of finishing dental school when she left to have children. He visited the United States on a six-month tourist visa in 1998 to see the place for himself. “I got to visit — to see how’s that country everybody talk about,” he says. “Everybody talk about living here, everybody coming here.”

That was the second reason.

The primary reason: “Mostly my family, for my children, yes, of course,” he says. “Education is good in Ecuador, but you need a lot of money to go to good school there. Here, the public education is good.”

When he and his wife made up their minds, his son was 3, his daughter 1.

In February 2001, they registered with the immigration service to become legal residents, naming the wife’s brother, a United States citizen, as their sponsor. The family was assigned a 13-digit number and put on a waiting list. A lawyer said it could take 10 to 12 years before they qualified for a green card.

And so they’ve lived in a middle-class suburb on Long Island for eight years — illegal, deportable, in limbo. To most Americans, they are invisible, a man and a woman living life off the books. He works at an auto parts store six days a week, 10 hours a day, earning $8.50 an hour, with no overtime. She was a cashier at a doughnut shop for five years, but after it closed she couldn’t find a new job without papers. She now works 10 hours a week caring for an elderly woman.

While they stay in the shadows, their children, now 12 and 10, move freely in broad daylight. Both were born in Ecuador, but are Americanized, speak unaccented English and are academic stars in their schools’ gifted programs.

The undocumented parents have meticulously documented this success. “I save all,” says the mother, hauling out piles of tests, essays and certificates of recognition dating to kindergarten.

The son, an A student who’s going into eighth grade, has been awarded certificates for perfect attendance the last two years; playing in the band; displaying outstanding effort and service in the publicity club; jogging 21 minutes without stopping in gym; serving on the safety patrol; getting a top score of 800 on the state’s seventh-grade math test; and being selected the social studies student of the month.

The daughter got a top score on the fourth-grade math test; plays in the elementary-school orchestra; never missed a day of school in two years; and donated hair to Locks of Love. Her first-grade teacher wrote a letter to the parents, praising her for serving as a translator for a newly arrived Hispanic immigrant child.

Son and daughter have read all seven Harry Potter books.

The son did so well on the state tests, he qualified to take the SAT last year under a young scholars program run by Johns Hopkins, then scored so well for age 12 — 500 in math, 480 in verbal — that he was invited to participate in the university’s summer enrichment program.

“I looked into it,” said the son, “but it was too much — ”

“Money,” said the daughter.

The son plays football and lacrosse for the middle school, which supplies the equipment, and was invited to play for a lacrosse travel team but declined. “It’s like $80 just for the chest guards,” says the son.

For a school project, the son had to interview his parents.

Q. Was it difficult for you to come here?

Father: Of course. I could not speak English and we don’t know too many people here, but little by little we grew accustomed to it.

Q. Do you like living in America?

Mother: Yes, because of the education of my children is excellent.

They keep to themselves, so hardly anyone in the community knows their story: highly educated people living illegally and working menial jobs in hopes of providing their children a better life. “One teacher in the gifted program, she knows,” says the father. “Others? No. We come to school once a year for 10-minute conference, that’s all.”

The father read American medical texts in Ecuador and works the counter at the auto store, so he speaks English pretty well. The mother often relies on her daughter to translate.

The parents’ sacrifice has probably made the son more serious than most boys. “Sometimes I feel pressured,” he says. “Keeping my grades up, doing extracurriculars, activities after school. I read more than most of my friends.”

The father is now 47, the mother 51, and they know that the more time they spend in limbo, the fewer opportunities are available to the two of them. They live cramped, on the first floor of a modest Cape-style home, which the father says is about the same size as their apartment in Quito a decade ago.

The wife’s father and one of her brothers have died while she’s been here, and the husband’s 84-year-old father is dying now, but they can’t go back to Ecuador; they wouldn’t be able to return.

Asked whether he gets depressed about this life, the father says: “I don’t, because I don’t have that kind of personality. I try to keep up. If I get depressed — everything is finished.”

The son wants to be a doctor, and the father believes it will happen. “He can get it. He’s smart. He’s responsible. He’s a good student. He’s a good son.”

The parents try to teach by example, “by doing good things,” says the father. “They know we don’t smoke, don’t drink. We be nice to neighbors.”

“We don’t bother anybody,” says the daughter.

“We try not to get in trouble,” says the son.

The father wasn’t sure whether to let their names be used and didn’t have anyone to ask, so I consulted an immigration lawyer working in New York City, James Stillwaggon. He said the government doesn’t usually go after such families, but if a neighbor read their story and reported them, immigration officers could take action.

Mr. Stillwaggon said their status — sponsorship by a sibling who’s a citizen — is low on the federal priority list. “They could be on that list another 10 years,” he said.

As for college for the children, that’s iffy. While 10 states, including New York (but not Connecticut or New Jersey), allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates, these students are ineligible for many types of financial support, including federal aid, which often becomes the real barrier.

Mr. Stillwaggon said the family’s best hope of becoming legal anytime soon was the immigration legislation that failed in the Senate in June.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02Rparenting.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1