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In this essay, Ruben Elias Canedo Sanchez and Meng L. So share the history and development of the Undocumented Student Program at the University of California, Berkeley. In describing the creation of the program, the authors offer reflections on the strategies employed to holistically support undocumented students' success on campus. By drawing on their experiences as both students and program leaders, they highlight key lessons on how universities can garner institutional resources, build staff capacity, and develop nontraditional allies for undocumented students.
I vividly remember the first time I ever shared my family's undocumented story. I was eighteen, a first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley and in the second week of the Summer Bridge Program, a six-week academic transition program for first-year students from underrepresented backgrounds. My statistics study group finished our midterm prep session around 1:30 a.m. As I made my way to my dorm room, my residential assistant, Meng So, stopped me, asking, "You okay, Ruben?" I smiled. "I'm good, just tired and worried." Somehow, Meng sensed that my fatigue and worry had nothing to do with academics. He invited me over for a quick check-in that turned out to be everything but quick.
That night Meng and I shared our family stories. He told me about how his family escaped war in Cambodia and emigrated to the United States as refugees. He told me how, over time, they became a mixed-status family (some members granted permanent immigration status, others not) and described their struggles to survive in America, about the long hours he worked with his parents and siblings at their doughnut shop. He told me about his journey to Berkeley. As I listened to Meng, I was overwhelmed by every emotion imaginable. Growing up I always thought, "There is no way we are alone. We can't be the only family going through all of these struggles." With tears in my eyes, I thanked Meng for sharing his story with me.
In return, I shared my family's story with him, telling him about my parents' successful professional lives in Mexico and our subsequent journey to the United States via the border towns of Mexicali and Calexico. I told him about how my mother's application for a visa was rejected...