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Volume 126, No. 66
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Doing and Dreaming: The story of an undocumented student who is here to stay By Tatiana ParafiniukTalesnick @TatianaSophiaPT
Dreams can be incredible, but the thing about dreams is that you wake up. At least this is how Karen Villar, a sophomore double majoring in sociology and ethnic studies at Colorado State University describes them. Villar is one of around 175 “dreamers” at CSU. These students are undocumented on campus. According to Villar, the term came from the introduction of the DREAM Act in 2001. The DREAM Act failed to pass but has been continuously brought up since its introduction. The act proposed granting conditional and eventually permanent residency to minor immigrants. “It was just a good positive word to classify us all under,” Villar said. “I personally accept
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Colorado State University Students stand in support of DACA at the Lory Student Center Plaza on Nov 14, 2016. PHOTO BY LUKE WALKER COLLEGIAN
the term, and consider myself a dreamer, but I’ve heard people say, ‘that’s all they want us to be.’” Villar has more than dreams, she has goals and it is possible she may be more motivated than the average college student, because she has a lot at stake. At 4 years old her family made the hard decision to uproot their life to move to the U.S. from Mexico. Originally she, her brother Carlos, her father and her pregnant mother came to the U.S. with visitor visas to see family in Colorado. But, when her mom went into labor, the family found their youngest member was going to face a life with severe disabilities. Villar’s younger sister had hydrocephalus and epilepsy, fluid in the brain and seizures – leaving the family with a difficult choice. “Logistically, if we were to
Karen Villar in the Morgan Library discussing DACA.
PHOTO BY NATALIE DYER COLLEGIAN
move back to Mexico, medicine was going to be too overpriced. For her benefit, we decided to stay here, because of the health opportunities she had,” Villar
said. “Hospitals were better, better doctors, just more opportunities for her to get better.” So Villar’s parents decided to stay in the U.S. Her mother left behind her teaching career and her father left a job working with a non-profit aid organization to live in a new country and culture and to navigate life in a foreign language all without those nine digits that say you belong. “Parents say they are coming for the American dream, but it’s never for them,” said Villar. “It’s for ours.” Villar and her older brother have not left the country since. All she can recall of Mexico is the stories she has been told; the U.S. is the only home she knows. The Early Years Villar always looked up to her brother. He went to school and learned English and she soon followed suit. He was a
model student and she did her best to be the same. Immediately, the two where burdened with being the bridge between their house and the rest of the world. As elementary students they became their parents’ translators from reading the mail to going to doctor’s appointments. If her brother was not at the house, it was up to 8-year-old Villar to interpret the world for her parents. Learning to read and write in a new language you never use at home was challenging, Villar said, and occasionally her accent would slip out when she read aloud in class, exposing her and adding to the fear any elementary student already feels when they are forced to read aloud. Despite these difficulties, Villar describes a happy early see DREAMING on page 4 >>