Undocumented in Academia: DACA’s Role in My Astronomy Ph.D. Journey

Written by Óscar Chávez Ortiz (University of Texas at Austin)

Disclaimer: “Beyond astro-ph” articles are not necessarily intended to be representative of the views of the entire Astrobites collaboration, nor do they represent the views of the AAS or all astronomers. While AAS supports Astrobites, Astrobites is editorially independent and content that appears on Astrobites is not reviewed or approved by the AAS.

It was a typical August morning in Encarnacion de Diaz, Jalisco in the country of Mexico. My family packed up our things into the car and said goodbye to our family, not knowing how long it would be until they saw each other again. I sat in the car seat while they checked that everything was packed in the car. With teary eyes, they waved one final goodbye to our family as they drove away.

Like many other families in Latin America, my family left everything they knew behind for a chance at a better life, chasing the American Dream, when I was just 2 years old. Once in the United States, my family and I navigated a new culture, language, political system, and social ecosystem, all the while feeling the added stress of being undocumented immigrants.

Growing up in Southern California, my childhood might have seemed typical at first glance. I went to school, played sports, indulged in junk food, and gave my parents the usual hard time—just like any other kid. It was during these formative years that my passion for astronomy began to take root. I remember being captivated by the planets in Seymour Simon’s books and awestruck by the vastness of the cosmos whenever the TV show “The Universe” aired. Little did I know, beneath the surface, that my family and I were living a very different existence in the U.S. than most.

Now as an adult, I understand all of the things my parents juggled that made my childhood as an undocumented immigrant different from yours. As a child, I thought everyone tried to avoid the doctor—taking over-the-counter medicine and hoping we would get better. I thought it was normal for your parents never to take time off work and to work on the weekends.  I thought it was normal to never travel outside of the state that you live in. Now I understand that what I once thought was normalcy for everyone was only normalcy to us because of our undocumented status.

During my junior year in high school, many students were thinking about applying to big-name schools like UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT, and I was only thinking about applying to jobs. Not because I wasn’t interested in pursuing higher education but because I knew that pursuing higher education would be too costly for my family and, unlike U.S. Citizens, I did not qualify for any federal aid—FAFSA was out of the question for an undocumented immigrant like me.

The door for me to pursue higher education opened in the Summer of 2012 when Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action for early Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA allowed undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to have temporary protective status, or in layman’s terms, a method to prevent deportation. The DACA program also allowed undocumented immigrants to receive a temporary social security number, which broke down a huge barrier to obtaining work legally. 

Following the DACA executive order, the State of California passed a slew of legislation to help those who qualified for DACA or were undocumented. One of the laws passed enabled DACA recipients to apply for state funds to pay for higher education. Another gave a route for undocumented immigrants to obtain their driver’s license.

For the first time, attending college seemed possible for me.

I began the DACA application process immediately, but the work authorization took about 6 months before I received my approval. I missed the December deadline to apply to many of the larger 4-year universities. I instead applied to my local community college, Riverside City College, where I began my academic career. Aside from being the first in my family to attend college, I was also navigating the academic system through the DACA system which added several layers of challenges. It was only through perseverance and a willingness to ask for help that I was able to finish community college. After this, I applied to four-year universities and was accepted into UC Berkeley’s Astrophysics program.

UC Berkeley had an incredible amount of support, in the form of dedicated programs to help undocumented students navigate DACA. UC Berkeley worked with city immigration lawyers and covered the cost (~$600) of renewing my DACA application every two years. They put together newsletters to update students about the current state of DACA if any new rulings occurred. They shouldered the weight of navigating DACA which allowed me to focus on what students should be worried about, learning, studying, and research.

Like many other astronomy undergraduate students, I wanted to dive head first into research, but Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) were reserved for U.S. citizens. I knew that having research experience was critical for applying to graduate school and it was disheartening to see so many summer internships only open to U.S. citizens. I applied to the few programs that would accept DACA students and attended the TAURUS program at UT Austin in 2019 (now potentially on permanent pause due to Texas Senate Bill 17) which allowed me to experience research for the first time.

I am now at UT Austin pursuing my Ph.D. in Astronomy and honestly, I was terrified of moving to Texas. I feared for my safety because the state of Texas historically does not take kindly to people with an undocumented status and the support I would have would be slim. Moving from California was a big change, but I thought it was worth it to be able to do cutting-edge research at one of the top astronomy programs in the country. After my first few years in the program, it was again time to renew my DACA application, but unlike UC Berkeley, UT Austin has no undocumented program on campus to support undocumented students navigating the legal process or money to cover the application fees. I was stuck filling out the DACA application without guidance and fronting the cost of all of the fees.

While DACA has allowed me to pursue my PhD in Astronomy, DACA does not have in place a pathway to make me a U.S. Citizen—I still cannot leave the country unless I apply for special permission through advanced parole and front another ~$600 application fee. International conferences happen frequently in astronomy and I am forced to sit back and watch my colleagues attend from afar, as I miss out on critical collaboration and networking opportunities. These connections and opportunities are absolutely crucial when applying to post-doctoral, faculty, and other academic-related job positions.

Outside of academics, I live with the constant fear that at any moment my loved ones or I will be deported back to Mexico. Through DACA there is no direct pathway to obtaining U.S. Citizenship, and the temporary protective status I currently have can change based on the political climate. If the president, Congress, or the Supreme Court decides to abolish DACA the repercussions would be life-altering. I would no longer have a valid social security number, meaning that I would not be able to work a U.S. job in any capacity, and with the temporary protective status gone I would be eligible to be deported. 

These fears are not without reason. In October 2022, a Texas judge deemed DACA unconstitutional. The ruling stated that existing DACA recipients can still renew their status, and new DACA applications are no longer being given. For people who do not have DACA currently, they are in a similar position as I was back in the Spring of 2012 with no easy way to make higher education feasible. With the current elections also coming up all I can do is leave my fate in the hands of the voters and hope that whoever is elected does not destroy DACA and single-handedly uproot the lives of every undocumented immigrant student.

A few steps forward, but now we are right back to square one.

I’ll leave you with these questions as food for thought: Does your astronomy program have a way to support undocumented students? Does your university provide resources for supporting undocumented students? Do you know what those programs and resources are? As an astronomy community, how will we support undocumented students in the event DACA is dissolved?

About the Author: Óscar A. Chávez Ortiz is a current fifth-year astronomy graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. His work revolves around studying the physical properties of galaxies and their ties to Lyman-alpha emission to probe the epoch of reionization. He is involved in outreach efforts through the UT Austin GUMMY program, through the undergraduate initiative GEVIP, and a python bootcamp co-instructor for the NSF REU Programs at UT Austin. When he is not working on astronomy research or helping out with outreach efforts he loves to watch and play soccer. You can almost always catch him learning, practicing, and creating music with his guitar or rather guitars. Last, but definitely not least, he love hanging out with my friends who, without the journey above, he would not have had the great pleasure of meeting.

Astrobite edited by Erica Sawczynec.