When Felecia Russell was a highschool scholar rising up close to Los Angeles, she was getting good grades and loads of encouragement to go to school.
However when it got here time to do the paperwork of making use of to a campus and monetary assist, Russell requested her mother for her social safety quantity.
“My mother was like, ‘yeah, you don’t have one,’” she remembers.
Russell didn’t have a social safety quantity as a result of she didn’t have everlasting authorized standing within the U.S. She was “undocumented.” She had moved to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was about 12. However she hadn’t totally understood till that second, as she Googled for extra particulars, how her immigration standing might sprint her goals.
“All I noticed on-line was ‘unlawful, unlawful, unlawful,’” she remembers. And every thing on-line appeared to inform her “which means you may’t go to school.”
On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we inform the story of Russell’s combat to get her school diploma, and the way she has grow to be an advocate for different undocumented college students. (She went on to get her Ph.D. and is now an adjunct professor at California Lutheran College.)
Her greatest message is that even when schools do work to assist college students who lack everlasting authorized standing, they usually aren’t taking note of Black undocumented college students, as a result of nearly all of companies on this area are designed for Latino college students.
“A few of it is smart,” she says, “as a result of the Latinx inhabitants is two-thirds of the undocumented inhabitants, so it is smart that every thing is centered round their expertise.”
But the undocumented inhabitants within the U.S. is 6 p.c Black, she says, and a large share of the 408,000 undocumented college students in schools are Black. Knowledge from the Increased Ed Immigration Portal from the Presidents’ Alliance on Increased Schooling and Immigration, which Russell directs, exhibits that as of 2023, 46 p.c of undocumented college students in school have been Hispanic, whereas 27 p.c have been Asian, 14 p.c have been Black and 10 p.c have been white. Some folks establish as each Black and Latino, and generally describe themselves as Afro Latino.
“And so it is so harmful, as a result of now we’re forcing these folks again into the shadows,” says Russell, who grew to become a DACA recipient however as a scholar usually didn’t really feel welcome in assist teams for undocumented college students. “Now they do not have an area to belong.”
Russell shares her story in a brand new ebook out this month, referred to as “Amplifying Black Undocumented Pupil Voices in Increased Schooling.”
The ebook additionally consists of deep analysis on the subject, based mostly on intensive interviews she did with 15 Black undocumented school college students. And she or he has suggestions for college and school leaders on find out how to higher assist the total spectrum of scholars going through immigration points.
Hear the total story on this week’s episode. Hear on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you hearken to podcasts, or use the participant on this web page.
