Sonia Espinosa said despite Harvard accepting and helping undocumented students pay for tuition there are still gaps to fill. Her video, From an Undocumented Student: Dear Harvard, is her message to the school’s president.
Sonia Espinosa, an undocumented Harvard student, made a video and wrote a letter to the university’s president asking her to publicly advocate for students and help them navigate the school's system.
The video, From an Undocumented Student: Dear Harvard, casts the school and its undocumented pupils as being in a rocky romantic relationship.
"Harvard, everyone wants to be vulnerable, everyone wants to be loved,'" Espinosa says in the video. "I love you, too. But, you also make it a little difficult sometimes for me to be vulnerable with you."
The United States has a similar relationship with its 11 million undocumented immigrants, Espinosa told BuzzFeed News. The country is unwilling to give them legal status but offers them a tax identification number to pay taxes.
The 22-year-old said Harvard has been amazing in accepting students and helping them afford tuition, but there's more to be done. She hopes the video will move Harvard President Drew Faust to help students navigate the campus and immigration system.
"What I really want to do with this is encourage Drew Faust to come out and support us," Espinosa said. "If Harvard is so willing to accept us as students it should also be willing to publicly support us as undocumented people."
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This isn't the first time Espinosa used music to discuss undocumented issues. Last year she and Dario Guerrero, another undocumented Harvard student, wrote a song for his mother.
Sonia Espinosa
Guerrero was in the national spotlight when he was stuck in Mexico after traveling to his native country to help his dying mother find alternative cancer treatments. He was able to return to the United States months later with a humanitarian visa after his mother died.
Espinosa, a junior studying social anthropology, grew up in the suburbs of Greendale, Milwaukee. She was able to attend Harvard under a scholarship that covered most of her costs, but required her to work part-time, a difficult task for an undocumented student.
With the help of a professor she was able to secure a job as a researcher for a graduate student as a freshman. She later qualified for Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed her to legally work and apply for a driver's license. She said her father calls her everyday asking if she has received it yet but she's reminded that it is only a temporary solution.
She hopes work like hers help change the way undocumented people are perceived in the country.
"We're always placed against the economy, money and labor, we're never humanized," Espinosa said. "I want undocumented people to know they are beautiful creators and have the ability to define themselves."
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