Yale freshman, undocumented immigrant – and now Bernie’s warm-up act

Before seventh grade, TD freshman Alejandra Corona Ortega crossed the border between Mexico and the United States.

Last Sunday, she spoke before Bernie Sanders at his “A Future to Believe In” rally, telling the huge crowd: “With little money and the clothes on our backs, my mother, father, brother and I crossed the border [in 2009].”

We spoke to her this week.

How did you end up speaking at the Bernie Sanders rally?

On Saturday night is when they reached out to me. It was very last minute, but they said if I’m comfortable supporting Bernie, will you come out and speak. The New Haven community has made me so comfortable that I don’t fear telling my story. That’s a privilege that not everyone has.

So have you been a Bernie Sanders supporter throughout this race?

I wasn’t very aware that he was even running, like many people, until he got momentum. I was a Hillary supporter, but the more I heard from Bernie the more I liked him.

Alejandra speaking at the Bernie Sanders rally.

How did your family come to the United States?

I was born in Mexico, and by the time I was a few months old, my biological father left. That left my mother without a college education in a place where she was running out of money and couldn’t keep up with the bills. So then she met this other boyfriend—her boyfriend back then—and he convinced her to come to the United States because he said it was where she could make money.

She moved to the U.S. by the time I was three years old and my brother was six or seven. She left us with relatives, and came here to work. She started in Kansas, but the last spot she was in was New Haven. When I was 11 or 12, she had saved enough money to have a small house in Mexico, and thought she could come back and see her kids.

She went back to Mexico with her boyfriend, they broke up after a few months, and she started her own bakery. We had this small house for ourselves, the three of us, and it was awesome. The bakery went out of business and then she sold the house we had, and we moved into a small apartment and started a bakery somewhere else, so we could try again. But that bakery also went out of business, and then when she finally sold everything and we were living with my grandmother, she started a small restaurant. That as well went out of business, and because public schools in Mexico required us to pay for inscription, to sign yourself up, for all the uniforms, she realized we couldn’t afford it.

She realized that I was not going to be able to go into seventh grade, and I would need to drop out and start working. She really saw potential in both my brother and I because we liked school and were doing well. So, for the second time, my mother sold everything we had, borrowed money from everyone she knew, and decided we were going to cross the border.

How did you cross?

We took the bus from the capital of Mexico to Sonora, which is the state that borders Arizona. We crossed through there, but we were caught twice. We were sent to a small detention center, they took our names and everything, and then dropped us off at the border. By the third time we crossed, that was fine, but we stayed in a very small house near Las Vegas with a lot of other immigrants from everywhere. Finally, the coyote (the person who transported us) gave us a bus bas to take us from Las Vegas to New York. We took the bus to the city, which was so long, but we couldn’t afford anything else. From New York, we took the train to New Haven.

Before we even made the journey, my mom had contacted friends in New Haven to get us an apartment and help us with jobs, food and clothes. I started the seventh grade in the bilingual program at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, and my brother started his junior year in the local high school, Hillhouse.

Did y’all speak any English before starting school?

No, none. That’s why I was in the bilingual program, but Hillhouse didn’t have that sort of program by then, so my brother just had to start taking all sorts of different classes. Right now he’s at Gateway Community College and is a waiter. I went through middle school at Roberto Clemente, and then I went to Hillhouse. By my junior year, I was at Sound School with the help of my AP Environmental Science teacher.

Tell me more about your high school experience and applying for college.

During my sophomore year, I wanted to apply for a program during the summer between my sophomore and junior year. It was at UConn and basically they let you take courses over the summer and live there. It’s specifically for New Haven residents, but when I spoke to the lady promoting the program, she told me she couldn’t do anything for me [as an undocumented immigrant] because it was federally funded. That’s when I realized that some schools might say the same thing, and that maybe I wouldn’t be able to go to college.

I was doing so well in school, that it didn’t seem real that everything my mom had given up would be for nothing. That’s why I started to look and find schools like Yale that are privately funded and could afford to be more lenient with those kind of policies. Thanks to them I’m able to be here on financial aid.

I started to work hard on SATs and ACTs because my vocabulary was not where the rest of my classmates’ ones were. I started to work hard while my mother was working in every job: waitress, busgirl and now a cook. My brother has always gone to school and work, because my mother couldn’t pay the bills alone. They took my education as a priority because I was never asked to work. My mother obviously wanted me to know the value of work and have that respect for the money and food on my plate, but it was never required for me to give up my education to help pay for the bills. I think that was a luxury that my brother did not get. That experience sophomore year taught me that I couldn’t afford not to go to college.

I found out different colleges that could accept me, and I started to apply. I was on the debate team that the Urban Debate League here at Yale started, which was amazing. Thanks to that, I believed that could come here. Finally, I was deferred early action from Yale, but was accepted in regular admission. I got accepted to another Ivy League school, but I wasn’t ready to leave my family up, so I decided to stay in New Haven and go here.

If you could talk Yale students about your story and undocumented immigrants, what would you say?

One of the things I dislike the most when I tell people my story is “Well, are you doing anything right now in terms of the process [to become legal residents/workers?” When my mother was here the first time, she had a partner who had problems with alcohol and drugs and caused some disruption. Sometimes he came close to hitting her. But thanks to that, my mother was able to contact officials and could apply for a work permit. She applied by the time I was 17, so during the entire I was able to apply for a work permit as a dependent, but my brother couldn’t benefit from it because of his age.

He’s my role model: he’s done school and work, and more than anyone could be asked to do. But he doesn’t benefit from it, which puts a bigger pressure on me. So when people ask that questions to me or him, it’s completely undervaluing his sacrifice.

It was hard finding out that FAFSA wouldn’t apply to me, and it was absurd because it meant I had to do a bunch of extra stuff my parents couldn’t help me with and because my counselors were unprepared to deal with an undocumented immigrant. There was a lot of stuff I had to do on my own, putting it all together. It was very stressful, and a lot of people just think, “Oh well, you got here, you’re on a full scholarship, you don’t know what some of the middle class kids here are going through because some of them have to pay a lot”. I believe that’s also unfair that they have to pay so much, however, that doesn’t mean I haven’t earned what I have. I would give anything not to be on full financial aid and for my parents not to have to worry about where the next paycheck will come from.

What’s your experience like at Yale as an undocumented student? Are there others?

I think a lot of people overlook that undocumented immigrants are here at Yale. Even though there are some, I actually don’t know anyone who’s undocumented and doesn’t have DACA like me. Not to trivialize the burdens or problems they’re going through, but the university is unprepared for students like me who don’t have DACA, who can’t work for the university, and who still have to worry about helping home in some certain way.

How do you think the university can make Yale a better place for students like you?

I would say include it in the financial aid letter that goes to pre-frosh when they get accepted, so that all students get a glimpse that there are undocumented immigrants and that the undocumented ones get to know what the process of applying for aid is. That could bring awareness to the things students like me face.

I was very lucky because I live in New Haven and could go to the financial aid office and ask the lady about the process, but that’s not the case for everyone around the country. So when they have questions and all the forms are in English that brings a bigger problem. I know that I was looking up some words in the financial aid letter to translate for my mother; she didn’t even know what they were.