Financing higher education is a national problem that carries consequences decades after a degree is conferred, with most college graduates paying student loan debt throughout their lifetime. Financing my graduate education required a consideration on which borders and their everyday manifestations shaped the contours of possibility regarding my enrollment into graduate schooling and the necessary funds to afford it.

Being undocumented

For the purposes of this short essay I focus on students who are undocumented, specifically those without access to DACA or state-based financial support like the California Dream Act to argue that the cost of financing an education extends beyond the financial. This is not to underplay the role of money in securing a graduate degree, but rather to highlight the additional costs attached to undocumented graduate students. I enter this discussion as a previously undocumented student. The following paragraphs serve as a personal reflection on my experience financing my graduate studies and the ways borders, national and institutional, drew the parameters of possibility regarding the locations available to pursue a doctorate degree.

To situate the timeframe informing my experience, I begin with the recognition that I attended higher education as one of the first recipients of AB 540, the California policy that provided in-state tuition at state-funded universities for undocumented students who attended high school in the state. This was the time that saw the introduction of the Dream Act in Congress and preceded the presence of DACA. As an undergraduate student, I was fortunate to have a mentor who constantly introduced the work of her students to faculty and administrators in different graduate programs across the nation. Prior to my graduation, faculty members at two different programs became interested in working with me and encouraged me to apply to their programs, until they found out I was undocumented. My immigration status would prove a barrier to attending their institutions given the ways funding was allocated through wage-based assistantships (TAs, RAs, etc.). That is, the inaccessibility to a social security number prohibited the availability of paid employment, thus preventing enrollment in their programs. Furthermore, many non-labor based institutional fellowships also required a social security number.

I believe the undocumented student experience is defined by a constant tension between hope and hopelessness. Hope of stability that constitutes the possibility of using degrees earned, living without threat of deportation—in short, “making it.” This is coupled with a continuous recognition that immigration policies that provide access to stability are scarce (IRCA, while problematic, was passed 35 years ago!); that deportation is an everyday threat and possibility; and that immigration-related boundaries are omnipresent and limit access to enrollment in postsecondary schooling, work, etc. After graduating with my Bachelor’s, I enrolled in a Master’s program in Mexican American Studies during which I hoped the Dream Act would pass, and that my enrollment would maintain my eligibility to it. The Master’s program being located in a California State University meant continued access to AB540. It was expensive, but given my circumstance at the time, not prohibitively so.

The Dream Act did not pass while I was enrolled in my Master’s, in fact, fifteen years later it has not passed. This meant still being ineligible to most funded graduate programs. Once again, a mentor stepped in to provide hope. This time however, it meant moving abroad. In my case, relocating to Canada presented the possibility of receiving funding to pursue my graduate studies and a chance at securing permanent immigration status. This opportunity however, came with a cost. According to U.S. immigration law, leaving the country after more than a six month undocumented stay in the country, carried the penalty of being barred from reentry for ten years. I had been undocumented for 15 years. Furthermore, Canadian law required study-permit applicants to file their visa applications from within a country where they held permanent residence (as a legal category rather than a fact of life). In short, the cost of financing my possible graduate education in Canada meant travelling to Mexico, receiving a ten year ban, and not knowing whether Canadian officials would grant a study permit. When considering the process of financing my graduate education, my thoughts immediately return to this moment. The cost of financing my PhD constituted a series of precarious experiences that were guided and affected by deportability. While my graduate stipend was insufficient to cover living expenses, an accurate calculation to determine financing a graduate education ought to also encompass the various different costs and who must bear them. To sum it up, it included the social cost of being banned from the home I knew and removed from family and friends, as well as missing life changing events such as births, funerals, and weddings; the psychological toll of deportability and a life on hold as it pertained to the ability of utilizing degrees to develop a livelihood; and the financial cost of applying to graduate programs, air fare to Mexico and Canada, application fees for visas and visa renewals, and the limited availability of funds as an international student in Canada given that many fellowships were reserved for people with permanent status. That is, hope carried a cost.

Final thoughts

To conclude, I ask the reader to reconsider the idea of financing graduate schooling and reframe it to “affording the cost.” The latter appears to be a more comprehensive way of understanding how costs are differentially experienced, and while not taking away from the value of monetary support, recognizing the other costs to be afforded along the way. I position my experience as a single example of the ways undocumented status shaped access to higher education and the various costs borne to support it. Universities, like all other institutions, are bordered in ways that prevent/facilitate access to different positionalities and social locations.