by Anonymous
Penn prides itself on its “commitment to inclusion,” but when it comes to students living on the cusp of legality, how much does Penn really live up to its promise?
Immigration status is rarely part of casual conversation— if anything, it’s the one topic that must be avoided as an undocumented individual. For the undocumented, having that conversation is like leaving your future at the whim of another. To exist undocumented is to make an effort to not exist at all; with deportation a possible outcome of any interaction, invisibility is key. Living undocumented, attention is detrimental, making community out of the question. Because it is dangerous for undocumented individuals to come together and share their experiences and situation, there is a scarcity of information regarding the undocumented status. This lack of information on the undocumented status leaves such individuals with little to no support, making their existence within the realm of higher education nearly impossible.
DACA-eligible and DACA-ineligible students, while both sharing the term ‘undocumented,’ have key differences. DACA-eligible students are legally able to work, study, and travel as they please while DACA-ineligible students risk deportation simply by seeking such opportunities.
Because DACA eligibility is year-dependent, the DACA-eligible generation of undocumented students is slowly phased out, resulting in an increasing number of DACA-ineligible undocumented students with no designated legal or institutional support. As the number of DACA-ineligible undocumented students surpasses that of DACA-eligible students, there is a growing imbalance between students that benefit from institutional DACA programs and the students that have no institutional support.
On the Penn website, one can find a section specific to DACA/Undocumented resources at and outside of the university. As it stands, there are currently only two on-campus resources available for undocumented students, and only one is beneficial to DACA-ineligible students. Penn’s DACA resources and support email is meant to help DACA-eligible people, but you’ll find it lacks expertise in DACA-ineligible students. Another resource students are referred to, Penn Law’s Transnational Legal Clinic, also has no experience with DACA-ineligible students, as their expertise is asylum-seeking refugees and human rights violations. As useful as the clinic’s loose legal consultations and advice could be, it lacks the specificity that a DACA-ineligible undocumented case requires, leaving the clinic out of the question. As for Penn’s external resources, what they provide is a list of different organizations and departments of immigration and immigration relief, something that is helpful when one has to travel and request citizenship or a change of status but whose resources do not make the transition to university any easier for DACA-ineligible undocumented students. A lack of resources and understanding surrounding undocumented status plagues Penn, sentencing DACA-ineligible students to the unknown.
Undocumented individuals are “international-domestic,” not international since they are ineligible for student visas.
For example, in an anonymous account received by the Disorientation Guide, one way Penn lacks support is how they incorrectly distribute financial aid awards to DACA-ineligible students. For context, it is illegal for DACA-ineligible undocumented students to work, which closes off opportunities for them. This means no internships (unpaid or paid, with or without stipends), work-study, or off-campus jobs, making it virtually impossible for undocumented students to earn a living while in college. In certain cases, including in the anonymous source’s case, the university awarded DACA-ineligible undocumented students work-study opportunities, acknowledging their status with no regard for their lack of work authorization. These students then go through the interview and hiring process only to find out they are ineligible for a job they already got. This situation forces undocumented students to fight university departments for large grants and additional refunds. Students often have to bounce between different departments, such as International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) and DACA Support, a division specific to DACA-eligible students. While Penn may eventually grant that student additional financial aid, this is not to say that undocumented students do not go through emotional distress and humiliation when compelled to speak to multiple people about their legal status, begging for money over and over again.
Gave work-study when ineligible.
That is simply not true.
While Penn strives to be all-inclusive, its departments seem to be dangerously uneducated on topics of undocumented students outside of the DACA spectrum. As Penn’s “help” relies on a mix of vague, Penn-specific services and DACA-only external resources, DACA-ineligible undocumented students are left to their own devices; because each undocumented case is different, there is no real guideline for Penn’s responses. As a DACA-ineligible undocumented student, you are often hit with “I’ve never seen anything like this” or “I have no idea who to refer you to” from Penn services. With ISSS admins replying to incoming DACA-ineligible undocumented students with what could be taken as passive-aggressive responses regarding the legality of their enrollment in one email and then admitting their own lack of expertise in another, ISSS is a counterproductive resource at best. As for DACA Support, with a mountain of unanswered emails and admissions of, yet again, a lack of expertise, Penn leaves DACA-ineligible students lost and unsupported. Ineligible for student visas and faced with the uncertainty of legal enrollment, undocumented students arrive at Penn blind.
No experience II.
No experience III.
Receiving a degree at an institution of higher education is already an elusive goal for undocumented students as the law breathes down their necks; so as Penn flaunts its inclusivity badge, undocumented students expect Penn’s facilities to be able to support them appropriately, which is not the case. Penn having no direct department nor resource for DACA-ineligible students outside of a club’s FAQ defeats the entire idea of inclusivity. While they claim to gladly welcome and embrace applicants from all over the world, this sentiment only extends as far as an acceptance letter. With no grasp of undocumented students’ reality and little effort to educate themselves on their situation, Penn fails to thoroughly commit to ‘inclusion’. When a university actively advocates for diversity and inclusion, we should expect these values to extend to the entirety of the university’s population. In Penn’s case, they accept up to three undocumented students each year, a number that Penn officials should be ashamed of but instead flaunt over diversity meetings and panels; these same students go to extraordinary lengths to get to Penn but get turned away or discouraged at every turn— something officials do not mention on their diversity panels.
If they truly wish to achieve inclusion, accessible support should extend to all undocumented students, not just the individuals who were lucky enough to make DACA eligibility. Seeing as this lack of expertise and information on DACA-ineligible undocumented status has not been addressed publicly by Penn, it is up to the students themselves to bring up said subject and criticize Penn’s lack of action. It is with this article that one can only hope that Penn lives up to its “inclusivity” claims and includes DACA-ineligible students in revamped immigration support plans designed for both DACA-eligible and DACA-ineligible circumstances.
Penn Disorientation Guide 