Lynn college grad fights for future of fellow undocumented students

LYNN – Nine digits came close to keeping Katherine Asuncion, an undocumented student, out of college, and she is determined not to let it happen to anyone else.”We need to get into the schools to coach guidance counselors and teachers how to reach undocumented students and guide them through the high school and college process,” said the Marian Court College graduate, who is also now the development director for SIM, the Student Immigration Movement.Asuncion was a junior at English High School when she all but gave up on the idea of going to college because she didn’t have those nine digits: a Social Security number. She said there seemed to be no point in pursuing the idea since she was undocumented, couldn’t afford school and could not seek financial aid, but a guidance counselor and a teacher changed her mind.In 2003 Asuncion’s father came to Lynn from the Dominican Republic, found a job and an apartment and sent for his family. Asuncion said she was 10 when her mother brought her and her siblings to Lynn on a tourist visa then stayed on after it expired. Her parents always felt guilty for staying in the country illegally, but they wanted a better life for their children, she said.”In high school is when things started to go downhill,” Asuncion said.While friends began looking for jobs, getting their driver’s licenses and looking at college, Asuncion began lying. She said it was too difficult to explain to her friends that she was undocumented.”I told my closest friends, but it was easier to make excuses,” she said.Her junior year, Asuncion told her Spanish teacher, who introduced her to Molly Cohen, who at the time was an English High School guidance counselor.”Mrs. Cohen was amazing,” she said. “She pushed me and motivated me to continue and to not give up.”Cohen also led Asuncion to her first introduction to SIM, but she said she still wasn’t convinced college was in her future.”I was sure the stigma of being undocumented would follow me for the rest of my life,” she said. “I was in a very dark place.”At Cohen’s insistence, Asuncion did apply to college and was accepted at several, she said. Unfortunately, every scholarship she found came with the small print, “must be U.S. citizen or legal resident.””And that wasn’t me,” she said.So she worked full-time and figured out a payment plan. Although it was not easy, Asuncion has already paid off her college tuition. One of her goals is to try to get schools to seek out scholarships that aren’t tied to a Social Security number.”There is money out there,” she said.Asuncion said she has heard and felt the backlash of being undocumented. She has had people accuse her she is taking a college seat away from a legal citizen, that she is only looking to be rewarded for her crime and that she should just go home.The problem for Asuncion, and many young adults like her, is this is her home.”I was raised here,” she said. “We’re marginalized as a plague, but we can’t come out of the shadows because we’re missing nine digits.”School Committee member Maria Carrasco supports Asuncion’s cause. She said there are many students like her, and they deserve the help to have a future, but it’s not the School Committee, it’s the superintendent Asuncion needs to win over.Asuncion said she plans to seek a meeting with Superintendent Catherine Latham and Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy. She said there are two colleges putting together programs to help undocumented students, but the preparation needs to start in high school.”What if a guidance counselor said to you, ?I’m sorry, I guess you can’t be anybody?’ Where would your dreams go?” she said. “We want to put on workshops and tell people who we are. We’re the next generation of leaders.”