Supporting Our Most Vulnerable First-Gen Students: The Role of Immigration Status in the Pursuit of Higher Education

First-generation students have received a great deal of attention from post-secondary institutions. Despite the attempt to help address the barriers faced by this student population, the generalization of the term “first-gen” limits the capacity to grasp how specific identities, such as those pertaining to immigration status, may impact a student’s educational opportunities. Undocumented and DACA students face unique challenges in their pursuit of higher education. They often are more vulnerable to additional barriers and stressors due to the ambiguous nature surrounding immigration and education policy in the United States. Barriers for this subgroup of first-gen students include access to state and federal-based financial aid and in-state tuition rates, including a knowledge barrier in understanding the process of attaining post-secondary education. To help combat these obstacles, I developed programming under three overarching concepts: co-learning, supporting, and providing, which aimed to cultivate strong support systems and resources for student success. Thus, this community engagement profile focuses on how I addressed these barriers as the Immigrant Scholarship Hustle program fellow in my caseload of seven undocumented high school students through three applied methods, including student-parent orientation, educational workshops, and yearlong mentorship.