The Hidden Pressures on Latino Students

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The Pew Hispanic Center's dry factual reports hide a world in every statement. Each sentence, like a highly concentrated brew, is the end result of months of interviews and research. Consider the following from an October 7, 2009, report on a national survey of Latino youth:

The biggest reason for the gap between the high value Latinos place on education and their more modest aspirations to finish college appears to come from financial pressure to support a family, the survey finds.

The report goes on to distinguish between Latino youth born in the United States and the 35 percent who are immigrants. The foreign-born are much more likely to be supporting their family and 64 percent of them in the 18 to 25 age group are sending money to support family in the old country.

Dreams die young under that kind of pressure.

Other pressures come into play. One is the 1996 Immigration Reform Act. It denies access to federally funded programs like food stamps or welfare to immigrants except those in special categories such as refugees, green card holders or naturalized citizens. Many immigrants here with perfectly legal work permits cannot access aid for low-income families. The social safeguards that would allow a family to forego the income a high school graduate could bring, even on minimum wage, are simply not available to them. If there are undocumented people in the family, there is the added fear of risk of exposure when asking for aid. Yet if undocumented children or elders are sent back, there may be no one to look after them. 

NPR's All Things Considered quoted another Pew Hispanic study on April 15, 2009, stating that U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants are twice as likely to live in poverty as those with American-born parents. While the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program, states that parents are not supposed to be reported when they apply for benefits for their children, some agencies have threatened to do so or require paperwork that parents don't have in order to access aid. Documented immigrants are also afraid to ask for help because they fear that it will threaten their attempts to become citizens. Would-be citizens are not supposed to have a history of being public charges.

On December 6, 2010, Public Radio International's radio newsmagazine, The World, aired the story of a little boy in Missouri taken from his mother. She was sent to jail for two years after she was detained in an immigration raid on a poultry plant where she was working with false papers. Her U.S-born child was taken from her and given up for adoption against her wishes. The circuit court judge ruled that her "illegal" lifestyle was not conducive to necessary stability for the child. Thanks to help provided by the Guatemalan embassy, the case is now before the Missouri Supreme Court, four years after her arrest.  

Unfortunately, the case is not unique. The PRI report states that 108,000 deported parents unwillingly left children behind between 1998-2007. While mainstream media seldom report these cases, Spanish-language media often do. These stories circulate and grow throughout Latino communities. As a result, families decide to live in the shadows even if it means living in poverty and sacrificing individual dreams for the greater good of the family.

Rocha-McCarthy has worked for more than a decade as a translator in schools, district courts and hospitals.