Dear President Mortensen,

At Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) on August 2, 2019, the college had an open
house for the Dream Center. The speaker Humberto, a student at SLCC, had fears of going to
college to apply for scholarships and writing down his name to apply for SLCC. He was afraid
of getting deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) because he didn’t have
a Social Security number. He wanted to start the Dream Center to help students who are
undocumented to be able to graduate from SLCC and transfer to the university or begin their
careers. What programs Weber State University is putting in place? What actions are Utah
System of Higher Education (USHE) schools are taking?
Students in mixed-status families and undocumented can get help getting their education
and increasing their likelihood of graduation with the help of the Dream Center. The Dream
Center could support students who are in mixed-status families and/or undocumented students by
providing available scholarships that will pay for their school and local resource that will help
their families with their immigration status. The undocumented student can use the center’s help
to get them closer to becoming a U.S. Citizen. The center could educate staff and faculty
members on how to be an advocate for undocumented student and students in mixed-status
families. The Dream Center would have an advisor that would educate students on scholarships
available to them based on their immigration status.
Mixed-status families include members with different immigration statuses (Rodriguez,
2018). The differences in the gender that females and males go through are huge in mixed-status
families. Boys are less likely to represent their families in public fora. Instead, they are more
often supporting their families financially. Sometimes they stop their education and work to
become the breadwinner of the family (Pena; Ybarra, 2017). Girls and women place themselves
in active roles to contribute to the family and community both in public and private spaces. Girls
with social security numbers would often feel obligated to become the face of the immigration
justice movement and perform adult responsibilities as early as grade school. For example, they
would use their bilingual skills to represent family members in the parent-teacher conferences,
doctor visits, and legal paperwork (Pena; Ybarra 2017).
There is a good amount of research on undocumented immigrants but little literature
research on mixed-status families. Currently, there are fewer scholarships on how
(non-)citizenship is experienced within mixed-status families where there is representation from
the opposite side (Rodriquez, 2016). In mixed-status families, there are students who have
undocumented parents who can’t fill for financial aid to avoid getting tracked down by the local
government and face the risk of being raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE). The students with undocumented parents would put zeros on their FAFSA application to
get financial aid. We need another way to help students not risk their parent’s immigration status
so they can do the application the right way to still get financial assistance. There needs to be
more education on how to get financial aid. By lowering the standards for GPA requirements and
ACT/SAT scores to help low-income students to get their degree. They will be able to apply for
jobs that will help their family members out of poverty.
 Being a part of a mixed-status family you experience fear of losing your parents through
deportation. Being in a mixed-status family is watching your friend being deported back to
Mexico due to their father being caught by immigration for doing their job. Being in a mixed-
status family is the difficulty in legalization for a parent being a U.S. citizen. Being in a mixed-
status family is growing up too fast to take care of the family and taking over family
responsibilities at a young age. Being in a Mixed-Status family is becoming an adult over the
family at a young age in front of the government. Being in a Mixed-Status family is learning
about the power dynamics in family members. Being in the Mixed-Status family is struggling in
school for worrying about your younger sibling and single-parent over the government having a
close eye on.
My goals for this project are to open a Dream Center at Weber State University. I want to
inform students on their rights living in America. As someone who formerly had a mother who
was undocumented and a father with a resident card, I want to help students who are
undocumented or in mixed-status families to have a center dedicated to them to help them finish
their degree in the university. I will be building on my network and leveraging my powers as a
student to demand the University to meet the needs of undocumented students and students in
Mixed-Status Families. Writing has help me connect to people to form an understanding towards
the issues that I am passionate in immigration movement. Researching for my topic has help me
understand any blind spots I have towards Mixed-Status Families and to become a better ally for
this community. By writing this open letter it has help me connect the ideas of the spectrum of
migration to see that not only the community is in need for this resource, but the nation needs to
do research on this population to eliminated Mixed-Status Families. Administrators would be
educated on how students in Mixed-Status families go through their day to day life and what they
can do to support students filling out their financial aid processes. Including negating a way from
social security numbers and other information that students’ parents don’t have due to their
unauthorized statuses.

Sincerely,

Shirley Paxtor