UCLA’s Undocumented Alumni Association

From Inside Higher Ed:

Alumni Groups Support Undocumented Graduates

An undocumented graduate of UCLA created an alumni association to help undocumented alumni navigate the challenges of life after college. Now other institutions are following suit.

By Maria Carrasco,  Dec. 13, 2021

When Yadira Hernández Pérez graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2015, she faced many questions common among new graduates, such as how to save for retirement, how to apply for graduate school and which health-care benefits to choose. But Hernández Pérez, an Indigenous Mexican from Puebla, also found herself wondering about a whole set of other issues related to her undocumented status in the U.S.: Should she disclose her lack of a green card during job interviews? And how could she find mentors? As a first-generation college graduate, she couldn’t turn to her family for advice.

So in 2017, she created UCLA’s Undocumented Alumni Association to help other undocumented graduates navigate the unique challenges they face in adapting to life after college. The association holds social events for undocumented alumni, connects alumni with faculty members and offers guidance on legal issues from visa status to securing a job without a work permit. The association also facilitates meetings between undocumented alumni and potential employers and provides career counseling and information about graduate programs. Most importantly, Hernández Pérez said, the association allows undocumented alumni to share their struggles and stories with each other.

“One of the reasons I started the association was definitely a response to the anti-immigrant political climate that was happening” after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, said Hernández Pérez. “At the time, it was also my own experience being an undocumented alumni navigating my life after graduation and to create structures that will be helpful for future generations.”

Currently, the association is working on mentorship programs between alumni and current UCLA students. During the pandemic, she said, the association raised emergency COVID-19 grants for over 100 undocumented families—some alumni and some from the larger Los Angeles community—who didn’t qualify for COVID-19 stimulus payments. “We wanted to provide a community and network for when students graduate and they are no longer students, they still feel connected to a community where they can come and be part of this space and connect with others,” Hernández Pérez said.

Since she created the Undocumented Alumni Association at UCLA, Hernández Pérez has worked with other institutions—including the University of California, Santa Barbara, and California State University, Long Beach—to establish their own undocumented alumni groups. The struggles of undocumented students have won national notice in recent years, said Hyein Lee, director of measurement and evaluation at TheDream.US, the nation’s largest college and career success program for undocumented immigrants with or without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protection or Temporary Protected Status (TPS)...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/12/13/undocumented-alumni-form-support-groups.