“Knowing that my parents will be included in this bill, it’s a huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” she said. “It would allow my parents to get their own education and fulfill some of their own dreams as well.”

The bill would also impact her experience at Harvard, and allow her to concentrate in a subject about which she is truly passionate. Emily said that before receiving DACA and learning about the new immigration proposal in Congress, she felt that she had limited choices about what she could study.

“I was supposed to be the next breadwinner,” she said. “A lot of the things I was looking at were things I didn’t want to do. They were just things that I could take to another country and make a lot of money.”

However, knowing she might be able to become a citizen has made her reconsider her academic options. She is thinking about studying English, something she said would not help her if she were forced to leave the United States.

Emily also thinks that national immigration reform would impact her experience on campus. She said she has spun “a web of lies” for her roommates, and has only told one other student that she is undocumented. She thinks that passing the new proposal would make her feel more comfortable talking about her undocumented status.

THE HARVARD BUBBLE

For Emily, the attitude on campus towards immigration has largely been supportive.” I feel like Harvard keeps you in this bubble,” she said, adding that she feels this bubble protects her from some of the problems that usually face undocumented teenagers.

Francisco D. Hernandez ’13, however, has not experienced the protective benefits of this bubble. He said he thinks administrators could be more supportive of undocumented students, that immigration reform is not a prominent issue for most of the student body.

“There’s not a lot of talk on campus about immigration. We stay in the shadows,” Hernandez said of himself and other undocumented immigrants at Harvard. “If students don’t see or don’t know that we’re struggling, there can’t be a lot of push (for reform).”

However, he said that he has seen some change in attitude over his four years here.

“When I was a freshman, I felt like no one knew we were here,” he said.

He thinks that, because of movements towards immigration reform such as DACA, people are becoming more aware of immigration, though he said the shift is very slow.

“I don’t think we’d be having these talks on our camps if there wasn’t so much happening at the national level.”

While students here may not be well informed about the immigration debate, Anahi D. Mendoza Pacheco ’15, co-director of Act on a Dream, said that most are supportive. For example, she said some believe that the DREAM Act was for in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, rather than citizenship. Mendoza also said that there is more support for undocumented student immigrants, since people believe that being undocumented is “not the fault of the student,” than for comprehensive immigration reform overall.

HOPING FOR CHANGE