Top Providence High School Senior Must Leave US for College
Monday, June 18, 2012
Rhode Island is set to lose yet another smart, talented young person.
16-year-old Silvia Yanez is the valedictorian at the Juanita Sanchez Educational Complex in Providence. She’s a member of the National Honor Society, a cheerleader and runs cross country and track. She was on her yearbook committee. And when she isn’t cooking or babysitting her two younger sisters, Silvia is a volunteer at Rhode Island Hospital. She wants to be a dentist or a doctor.
She’s also “illegal.”GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
Silvia moved to Providence from Bolivia six years ago to be with her mother and father, who came to the United States when she was a baby. At first, she was frightened. Already shy and tiny for her age, Silvia didn’t speak a word of English. She had no friends. She barely knew her parents.
But she understood numbers and excelled in math. She made friends by “helping” with simple multiplication and division problems, she laughingly recalls. She spent her first year in school taking ESL classes, but soon picked up the language. Now she prefers reading in English more than Spanish.
And she reads everything. Fiction, romance, biology. How many teenagers keep a picture of their home library on their cell phone?
She also learned to love the culture. The Disney Channel helped with that. So did Facebook.
“I used to not want to be here, but now I don’t want to leave,” she said Friday morning.
By the time she reached high school, college was already on her mind. How could she afford it? Without a Social Security Number, she knew obtaining financial aid would be difficult. So she studied and became a straight-A student. In a city where only 11 percent of 11th graders are proficient in math, she took precalculus her senior year. She also performed well on the NECAP.
“I kind of thought that if I worked hard and studied hard, maybe they’ll want me,” she said.
She was wrong. Silvia is among the roughly 65,000 undocumented citizens who graduate from high school every year with little hope of making it to college. The federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) act, which would extend residency to certain undocumented immigrants who attend college or join the military, has continuously stalled in Congress.
In 2010, the House passed a version of the DREAM act, but it died in the Senate. Last fall, with Governor Chafee’s endorsement, Rhode Island’s Board of Governors for Higher Education voted to extend in-state tuition to undocumented students. At the time, Chafee said giving undocumented students access to college will “improve the intellectual and culture life of Rhode Island."
It will also stimulate the economy. Silvia said she has spent a lot of time researching the DREAM act on the internet. In 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggested that the legislation could increase government revenues by $2.3 billion over a decade.
Apparently, Roger Williams University (RWU) and Providence College (PC) didn’t get the memo. Both schools admitted Silvia, but RWU only gave her $10,000 (tuition alone is $30,000).
And PC? Not a dime.
“It makes you feel helpless, like I did all this stuff for nothing,” Silvia said. “But I don’t want to cry, not now.”
That’s why she has no other choice but to fly back to Bolivia to attend college. Her parents and her American-born siblings will join her, but they’re all far more excited about the move than she is. She admits to telling her sisters horror stories about how strict the teachers are in Bolivia to scare them into wanting to stay in the United States. “I might have told them they hit you with rulers there,” she said, giggling.
It’s not that Silvia doesn’t want to see her family or have the opportunity to go to college (she’s got a cousin who just finished medical school in Bolivia). It’s that Providence is her home now. She loves the United States and she wants to contribute. She says she even considered joining the army because “they train you and I like that sort of thing.”
So she dreams.
And on Friday morning, as she sat and talked with a reporter over a coffee at the Starbucks in the Biltmore, something happened.
The Obama administration announced its plans to allow undocumented young people who pose no security threat to the country relief from any sort of attempt at removal. Supporters of the plan say it’s another step toward the DREAM act.
For Silvia, it could be an opportunity.
She looked at the eligibility requirements to see if she qualifies. Must have come to the country before turning 16. Check. Must have lived in the country for five years. Check. Must be in school or have graduated high school. Check. Must not have a felony. Check. Must be under the age of 30. Check.
“This is me,” she said, smiling.
Hoping.
Dan McGowan can be reached at [email protected].
