Santa Rosa Junior College’s ‘Dream Center’ aims to help undocumented students

To U.S. citizens, state and federal laws can be dizzying. To someone here without legal documentation, it can be far worse: intimidating, frightening and limiting.

Santa Rosa Junior College’s new Dream Center, which marked its grand opening Monday, aims to become a safe, supportive, one-stop shop for undocumented students and potential students as they explore their educational future.

Since 2002, California law has exempted undocumented immigrant students who meet specific requirements from paying out-of-state tuition at the state’s community colleges and universities.

But more than a decade later, outreach specialist Rafael Vazquez said, word still hasn’t trickled down to the people who could benefit from assistance provided by that law and others, including the California Dream Act, which allows some undocumented students to receive financial aid for college.

There are more than 900 undocumented students at SRJC, Vazquez said, some of whom didn’t know they weren’t American citizens until they began to think about higher education. They hail from Mexico, Canada, China and even Russia, school officials said.

Enrollment at the college totaled approximately 27,000 students last year. White students make up the majority, accounting for about 54 percent of enrollment, while Latino students are the fastest growing ethnic group, accounting for about 31 percent of the student body, according ?to campus statistics from last year. The largest number of international students at the college, meanwhile, come from Asia.

Ricardo Navarrette, vice president of SRJC student services, said he hopes students will feel safe coming to the center. The facility is the most public symbol so far of the increasingly greater effort the college has put into outreach to prospective and enrolled students who are undocumented.

“Educating the dreamers - the folks who’ve been raised and educated as our neighbors, friends and families - has been going on for years,” Navarrette said, “sometimes quietly, behind the scenes.”

“Not until that nine-digit number was asked did they hit that roadblock,” Vazquez said, referring to the Social Security number assigned to each U.S. citizen and other formal hurdles undocumented students face. “But now they can come to the Dream Center.”

The center, a small office inside Plover Hall at the Mendocino Avenue campus, is next to the admissions, records and financial aid desks.

It is envisioned that students or potential students with questions about their immigration status and possible college future will start their inquiries at the Dream Center.

“We’re kind of a triage center,” Vazquez said. Immigrants will be advised about work permits under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival policy, as well as possible college funding options and the SRJC enrollment process in general.

DACA, advanced by the Obama administration, delays immigration enforcement and opens up access to other aid programs for some young immigrants.

Those with more confidential questions about other immigration issues will be referred to other experts.

SRJC President Frank Chong, whose family emigrated from China to New York City, said he remembers “cousins” or “uncles” from China who would stay with his family for brief times when he was a child. Often, they would disappear and his parents would tell him they’d been deported.

“Even in disagreement of who should be American,” he said, “studies have shown that the future of California is dependent on the success largely of Latin Americans and immigrants in general.”

Though the center offers a non-judgmental atmosphere, some participants of the grand opening ceremony were still leery of going public. Some shied away from cameras or didn’t want their names used in fear that their immigration status could trigger enforcement and possible deportation.

“It still happens, someone says ‘You don’t belong here,’?” Vazquez said. “But this is a step forward.”

You can reach Staff Writer ?Lori A. Carter at 521-5470 or ?lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @loriacarter.