Harry Reid's Dream Act: Help for Undocumented Students

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The Ivies and other elite schools appear to be the most attractive option. A June 2010 National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) study shows that schools admitting 50 percent of applicants or less are almost twice as likely to receive applications from undocumented students as those admitting more than 85 percent.

Reliable statistics for undocumented immigrants are hard to come by. It's impossible to know how their academic performance has changed over time. Certainly, more students are speaking up: David Hawkins, NACAC's director of public policy and research, says a growing number of valedictorians out themselves at the annual immigration rights rally in Washington, risking arrest. "Five or six years ago, one or two people [would] get up and say, 'I'm the valedictorian of my class,' " he says. "Now you'll see 10 or 15 up on stage." The Dream Act is behind much of the activism.

One who might benefit is Pedro Pedroza, a Cornell University would-be senior whose sister graduated from Harvard in 2004, earned two master's degrees, and became a resident by way of marriage. Pedroza, who hopes to become a teacher, was detained in 2008 while traveling to Cornell from Chicago on a Greyhound bus. He had encountered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on previous bus trips; they waived him on after seeing his Mexican documents and college ID. Not this time. Pedroza is now living with his parents in Chicago and awaiting a deportation hearing.

Dream Act proponents say young immigrants should have a chance to obtain legal status, especially since the U.S. faces a shortage of skilled professionals. They would generate between $1.38 trillion and $3.6 trillion over their work lives, estimates the North American Integration and Development Center, a research group at the University of California in Los Angeles. Opponents say the act would spur more illegal immigration. In the past, Democrats overwhelmingly backed the act; some Republicans did, too. Senator Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) is a co-sponsor. Senator Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), who lost his reelection, has said he would vote for it as a standalone bill.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, is navigating the complications of applying to medical school. Her undocumented classmates have left Harvard. Four of them, like Pedroza's sister, have enrolled in graduate programs. Two couldn't find legal employment in the U.S. and left the country, knowing that U.S. law requires them to wait 10 years before applying to return. "The world that Harvard provides is so privileged, and when you're thrown out without any ability to use the education you are provided, it's overwhelming," Gonzalez says. "I think all of them have seen graduation as the hardest thing they've ever had to do."

The bottom line: Even an Ivy League degree won't help undocumented students after graduation; Senator Reid vows to try to fix that in the lame-duck session.

With Laura Litvan

Winter is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

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