Lynn student leads local immigration movement

LYNN – A local version of a statewide youth-led immigration movement is trying to work with undocumented immigrants in Lynn’s high schools to help the students receive jobs or go to college after they graduate.Student Immigration Movement started in East Boston in 2005 and now has chapters across the state. A group of recent Lynn Public Schools alumni started a local chapter about six months ago that they hope will soon develop into a full-fledged community organization, said Yonkera Santana, a 2008 graduate of Lynn Vocational Technical Institute and coordinator for SIM on the North Shore.”Our country was founded on immigrants, and it’s not going to stop now, so we need to make the situation better,” she said.Santana and several other youth will address the Lynn School Committee tonight to garner support for their cause, which includes helping undocumented seniors apply for college scholarships and for a new federal program that gives certain undocumented youth a work permit for two years and the ability to get a driver’s license.Santana, whose family emigrated illegally from the Dominican Republic when she was 9, said she wants to show undocumented students about to graduate high school that there are still ways for them to achieve their dreams.She said the full impact of her immigration status didn’tcome into focus until she graduated high school and she was unable to apply for financial aid, in-state tuition or a job without documentation papers.”It was a very dark period in my life. I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” she said of watching her dreams of becoming a holistic doctor or owning a business start to fade away.But she said since working with SIM, she is now studying medicine at North Shore Community College and plans to get her driver’s license once she applies for a work permit.”There’s hope that things can change and their immigration status can get better,” she said.School Committee member Donna Coppola said she supports SIM working in Lynn schools.She said many undocumented students – the city doesn’t keep record of students’ immigration status – come to Lynn as a first or second-grader and stay in the school system until they graduate.Coppola said that by the time students are done with public school, the city has spent $100,000 per child to educate them, and the ones who are undocumented suddenly have nowhere to take their education.”It doesn’t make any sense, because we put a lot of money out for them to get an education and then there’s no place to go on graduation day,” she said.Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy has also met with Santana and SIM members but didn’t return repeated calls for comment on the program.Beyond meeting with city officials, SIM held a clinic Sept. 1 at the North Shore Community College’s Lynn campus to help undocumented students apply for the federal deportation-deferral program. Santana said about 50 students showed up, as did Coppola, one of U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s sisters and community college officials.Santana said she hopes to hold similar events in the near future that draw even more students and community leaders.For more information about SIM, visit simforus.com.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].