The Department of Homeland Security announced last week that arrests at the border have dropped 40% in the last three weeks since President Biden announced a new hard line policy restricting asylum processing.
The number of people who have arrived at the U.S. border has soared in recent years, many of them seeking asylum — and many of them with kids.
Ileana Salinas is program manager of the mental health and arts department at Aliento, and works with many of those young immigrants in high school classes around the Valley.
Many of them are recent arrivals trying to learn the language, culture and education system. The Show spoke with her more about how these students navigate the American education system — and the challenges they face.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: How do schools determine where to place a student when coming in? Because grades are not necessarily the same, you know, you're not necessarily learning the same thing in, in a different country as you would be here at age 10 or 11 or, or 8, right? How does that function?
ILEANA SALINAS: That's a great question. Yes, that reminds me of when I came here to the country, I was 15. And basically I brought my transcripts from when I was in high school back there in Mexico. And they went through a process of reviewing my transcript and seeing what classes would transfer and what transfers would not.
So, for example, I think that my math, all of my credits transferred. But of course, history didn't because I, history, I learned it in Mexico history and here, U.S. history is different and I think they put some of those as electives. And so then you make a plan for graduation.
GILGER: So does it often take students longer, did it take you longer, for example, to graduate than it would have if you had stayed in Mexico?
SALINAS: Yes. In my case, I was put one year behind. It also had to do with my birth date, but at the end of the day, it actually helped me because it gave me a little bit more time to like understand everything. And I didn't know that graduation from high school had specific requirements, but then admission to a university had similar but some additional requirements. And so it gave me a little bit more time to figure all of that out.
GILGER: And then there's the issue for students of, of learning English if they don't speak it already, right? How do they navigate that? There's a test you can take to prove that you're proficient in English. And then there's been a lot of controversy over the English language learner program in our state and an English language only law that was essentially passed back in the year 2000, right.
SALINAS: Yeah, in 2000, the, Proposition 203 passed and it requires all students classified as English language learners to be educated in English-only classrooms. And so basically many times there are students, if they don't pay close attention to their graduation plan, it's possible that they could be behind towards graduation because they need to be able to fulfill all of the requirements of the ELD program plus the classes that are required for graduation.
And so, yeah, that is something that, that becomes sometimes a barrier because many parents don't really understand that system either, even like, for example, as far as grades in Mexico, the system is like 1 through 10 and here is the like the letters, right?
And so, and then the GPA, you know, understanding all of those details, take some time taking into consideration that these are working families many times both parents work or have multiple jobs. And so it, it does add a level of difficulty when the language barrier is there for them as well.
GILGER: So I know a lot of the work that you do at Aliento has to do with the other side of this, like the mental health side, the the culture shock probably that many of these students are going through. What do you hear from students? What are the what are the biggest challenges for them?
SALINAS: They feel that they can understand the subjects, like for example, in, in math, they, they are smart enough to be able to finish the work, right. But sometimes because there's the English only law, they can't be provided with the instructions in Spanish.
Like if, if I'm given a math problem, it is, it involves language, right? But for me to be able to even understand what I'm going to calculate, I need to understand the problem. But if it is provided in English, then it might show us if I am behind. But in reality, it's not that I am not able to understand it or to do it. It's just part of the, the language.
And so those are some of some of the barriers. I know that in my case, for example, one of my teachers told me like if you were to read this book in Spanish, you would be able to keep up with what we are doing as far as like the English comprehension or like the assignments. So I had to take it upon myself to find that book in Spanish. So I could understand as well.
GILGER: Read it in two languages.
SALINAS: Yeah. Yes. But what I've also heard from the students and this is a little bit difficult because what I see in the classroom is that many of the students don't even know that college is an option for them. I think that there's this idea that because they are recent arrivals or because they come from another country that college is not an option.
And when we come into the classrooms, we try to show them that there is a path. There are scholarships available. Some of them depend on your immigration status, but some of them don't. And so we try to educate them and let them know, hey, if I made it through, you can do it, too.
And many times it's, it's just even seeing that somebody did it that can give them that light to have the motivation to get through their classes because sometimes they feel so discouraged that, you know, they just don't understand or they don't see the progress and they might feel like giving up or like why even try.
GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. What's the role of parents in this? And I know you work with parents and, and trying to get them more involved, explain the way the education system works here. Is that tough?
SALINAS: Yes. Yes. I've talked to a couple of families as I prepared for this interview. I talked to one family and what she was expressing, the mom, she was saying I have two jobs. I clean houses all the time and I try to keep up with like announcements from the school. But when they call me, there's an intro in Spanish, but then the whole message is in English and I don't understand what they're saying. So if I don't understand what's happening, I can't really get involved.
And the research shows that when parents are involved in the education of their children, there's a higher percentage of academic success.
Right now, what we are seeing is that of Arizona learners, only 2% of them are proficient in higher, higher than third grade reading. In the state, it is 41%. We're also seeing that only about 55% of English learners are graduating from high school in four years.
