SPOKANE Wash.
A teenage girl studying entrepreneurship at Washington State University would be on her way to realizing the American Dream, except she is not American.
Mercedes grew up poor in a small central Washington farm town, studied hard and despite having to work part-time, the Running Start student graduated from high school with a 3.8 grade-point average and an associate’s degree from Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake.
Like other 18-year-olds starting college this fall, Mercedes is motivated by personal ambition. She wants to own a business so that she can provide jobs to other Latinos.
But because she was brought to the United States from Mexico by her parents when she was 2 and is here illegally, she has lived in fear since she was very young of being detected and deported to a native country she has never known.
“I always worried that immigration (officers) would come if I didn’t excel,” she said.
Last week, the U.S. Senate voted whether to end debate on a bill that would grant her and as many as 65,000 students a year like her, the U.S.-raised offspring of illegal immigrants, legal residency while she pursues her degree. Its bipartisan sponsors fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to bring the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act to a vote.
