Just the other day, I had an email from a young woman, a former student, who is trying to do what she can to pursue a nursing degree. Committed to helping others, she is a regular volunteer at Hospice of the Valley. Several scholarships in hand, she is still short $5,000 a semester. Although she has grown up in Phoenix, she is considered a non-resident and must pay the prohibitive out-of-state tuition rate. Faultless, she was brought to America as an infant and lacks the nine digits of a social security number that would make it possible for her to find a part-time job to help pay for tuition. The nine digits that would enable her to apply for a driver’s license so she could drive across town to attend Grand Canyon University.

She tells me she is relying on a job as a dish-washer to help her parents make the house payments. Meanwhile, her mother is relying on anti-depressants from Mexico. She goes on to dismay me with news that she married an American, and I am wholly unprepared for her devastation when I tell her that this will not provide a path to citizenship. She will still be at the back of the line, except there is no line for kids like her. In fact, she will have to ‘go back’ to Mexico, a country she does not know. My advice to hang in there seems shallow.  Hang in there? The most resilient of us would struggle to do so, in a desert city, where the air often hangs heavy with hatred and xenophobia.

In response to my recent article, Advice for teachers of undocumented students  my inbox overflowed with anonymous hatred, the frightening kind of hatred that was captured on a youtube video not too long ago - a harrowing vignette of  21st century America:

In stark contrast to the woman featured in this footage is my undocumented student who has pledged allegiance to the flag of these United States every day at school, who volunteers her time to help others, a young woman who is out of luck, but not out of dreams, whose American dream is held aloft by a proud and undaunted immigrant spirit.

 For more info: Visit the Immigration Policy Center  which dispels the myth that most undocumented immigrants want to be undocumented and explains how it is impossible to simply get in line to become 'legal' in the United States.