One summer day in 1993, when child psychology and Chicano studies junior Abraham Castro was 7 years old, he found himself standing alone outside a Southern California restaurant.

The people his family had paid to drive him across the Mexican border, dropped him off there and told him his mother would come for him soon.

“I didn’t speak English; I didn’t know where I was; I was scared out of my mind,” Castro said.

Castro graduated in 2004 from St. Paul’s Highland Park High School and earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Minnesota — contingent on legal residency. His family had applied for residency 10 years earlier but still hadn’t gotten it.

Somehow it came through.

But Castro’s case is very rare, said Alondra Espejel, communications organizer at the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network and a 2005 university graduate.

If Castro hadn’t gotten his residency in the nick of time, his options would have been much more limited.

When students awaiting legal status apply to the University of Minnesota, they might be accepted, but they have to pay out-of-state tuition, said admissions counselor Michelle Garay. For the 2005-06 academic year, that meant the difference between $7,140 and $18,770.

Applicants without documents are ineligible for any government financial aid, she said.

Castro’s friend, Felipe Mancera, was one of those students.

Like Castro, he graduated from Highland Park and earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Minnesota, as well as a full football scholarship to the University of St. Thomas. But he wasn’t able to secure residency like Castro, so he couldn’t take either.

Mancera now volunteers at the Minnesota Immigrant Freedom Network, lobbying for legislation that would provide people like him access to higher education.

“The only hope is through legislation in Washington that gives people visas so they can live here legally,” said Mancera, “that or the Dream Act.”

The act would allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, said Mariano Espinoza, executive director of the Freedom Network. But they still wouldn’t be able to receive government financial aid.

Dave Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration, said it’s unfair for out-of-state students who are U.S. citizens to pay higher rates than people who live here illegally.

Castro is working on a double major in child psychology and Chicano studies and hopes to go to graduate school to study education and become a counselor or teacher.

Mancera said he remains hopeful the work he’s doing will help him and that someday his younger brother will go to college.

“My mom always says hope is the last thing you lose,” he said. “You can lose your legs, but you don’t lose hope.”

Source: twincities.com

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