Commentary: Undocumented Immigrants Deserve Fair Access To College

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Valentina Emilia Garcia Gonzalez, 20, is finishing up her first year at Darmouth College.

Immigration is a major issue in this year's presidential race, and it's a personal one for a lot of Georgians.  Valentina Emilia Garcia Gonzalez, 20, is undocumented.  She grew up just outside of Atlanta. She is finishing up her first year at Darmouth College, where she is a microbiology major on the pre-med track. Gonzalez says she struggled with college admissions and scholarships in Georgia because of her immigration status. 
Valentina Emilia Garcia Gonzalez talks about the need to make a college education more accessible in Georgia for undocumented immigrants.

I was born on February 16, 1996 Uruguay.  I grew up dancing, laughing, and being completely oblivious to my family’s struggles. My father built the home I grew up in from scratch. It took him 11 years. He worked two jobs, sometimes three, in order to keep my family fed, clothed, and as healthy as we could possibly be.  But things were different in Atlanta.

When registering me for elementary school, my mother couldn’t speak any English, and at the time neither did I. The lady at the front wanted to register me as white, though I was not. “She is pale and can pass off as white. Once she learns English, she’ll be fine,” she told my mother in Spanish. To be assigned a race because it was convenient was something my mother fought tooth and nail, but to no avail. Up until my senior year in high school I was still considered white.

But once I hit high school, my documentation status was slapped in my face wherever I went.

I was an excellent student but I soon found out I couldn’t go to college because of changes the Georgia Board of Regents made in 2011.  As an undocumented student I can no longer apply to the top five public universities in the state or receive in-state tuition at any of the state’s other public universities. No UGA, no Georgia Tech, Georgia State, GCSU, or Georgia Southern. I didn’t know what to do. As my close friends were putting in their applications, I had to sit by and think of ways to actually get myself into college. These were the same friends that I had grown up with….they’d cheated off of my tests and shared my lunches. 

I ultimately learned about Freedom University, which helped me navigate the college application process. The program offers financial-aid assistance, leadership development classes, and college-level classes for undocumented students in Georgia. But even more, it gave me confidence to openly demand justice and debate policies that ban undocumented students. 

 There are many students like me that don't know about their resources and their opportunities to achieve a higher education. What is most disappointing is that Georgia, after 5 years, remains adamant about maintaining discriminatory and segregationist bans that ultimately cause a brain drain in the state. Highly qualified students who happen to be undocumented have to jump through hurdles and hoops to attend college in Georgia when it should not be the case. Georgia NEEDS to lift the bans and let undocumented students show their amazing talents that get overlooked due to their immigration status.