One of the challenges that immigrants face is education. Education is known to be one of the main reasons why immigrants come to the United States. It may not be for them but for their children. Allowing them an opportunity to create a better future for themselves. Young immigrants in this country- legal and illegal- often have a common experience in attending an American public school: the experience is often being catalytic. With the right support in and around the schools will put the young immigrants to academic success, and options for the future. Yet there are barriers to education for some immigrants that go beyond policy and range from financial limitations to discrimination, and fear of deportation. In class, there were several videos that articles that we have read about, which showed first-hand how some immigrants experienced education in the United States.

The first article is about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students, which to protect eligible immigrant youth who came to the United States when they were children from deportation, or in this case DACA doctors. Since DACA students are permitted to receive work authorizations and a social security number they are here legally. Yet they are limited in accessing resources to turn their dreams to reality. This creates a barrier for students that are considered to be Pre-Health Dreamers. DACA students are not eligible for federal financial aid and commercial loans are hard to come by going to college hard let alone medical school. When the Pre-Health Dreamers are graduating college going to medical school another barrier comes up. Some schools only take in permanent residents or U.S Citizens making their chances very slim and each state has a law in whether the DACA students can get a license practice medicine because it depends on the states. These Pre-Health Dreamers were able to get some health from other Pre-Health Dreamers because their advisors weren’t able to help. In most cases, some Pre-Health Dreamers are able to achieve their dreams of becoming a doctor. The problem in this radio interview was the barrier of finical issues that wouldn’t allow the students to come as far as they could. The only solution was to do research on different laws by the states and to find a group of other Pre-Health Dreamers who are able to help. The DACA community has many kids who are helping one another and helping find resources that their school could not help with.

The second article is about Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca, an undocumented immigrant, who created an app called DREAMers Roadmap. It was created to help DACA students going into college with scholarship opportunities. She, herself had a similar situation like the DACA doctors. She wasn’t able to get any help from her school counselors and teachers. The app was used as a solution to help others that were in a similar situation as her. Since DACA students are not eligible for federal financial aid and commercial loans are hard to receive her struggle allowed her to create a network work allowing other undocumented to reach with a tap of a bottom. This addresses the issue that education is hard to come by. Like the children in the Flores family, The Mexican Laborer video, no matter the kids wanted to continue their education even if they had to attend night school. Just like those kids had the dream immigrants like Sarahi have a dream too, but there are barriers that stop them. What makes this great is that it gives children like her a chance to reach their dream.

The third article is about allowing the parents of immigrant children in San Francisco to have a voice allowing the community to build trust. The Proposition N was heralded as a way to let noncitizens vote in local elections. The article talked about a community effort in helping each educate others with outreach workshops to help noncitizen parents to vote and more. This is important because in some communities the noncitizens (immigrants) had trouble getting along with those who had already resided there. There was communication between everyone. In class, we watched a video on how there can be barriers between immigrants and non-immigrants and this article gave a little hope that there are others willing to help.

All three articles had something to with education. Whether it was young or older immigrants learning. Each problem had a solution with the help of others creating an opportunity.