Keish Kim was a new recruit to Georgia’s growing movement of “undocumented youth” when she found Freedom University.
The previous year, as a senior in high school, she had been accepted to an elite private university, which she could not afford to attend. The abrupt end of her education hit her hard, and she fell into despair. Connecting with young organizers for immigrants’ rights and discovering that they had encountered similar obstacles made her feel well again.
Through her new friends, Ms. Kim met four professors from the University of Georgia who were planning to offer free classes to undocumented immigrants. At first she was skeptical.
“I didn’t believe it,” she says. “Free college-level courses for undocumented students? That’s the craziest thing I’d ever heard.”
But eventually Freedom University took shape, with an application process, classroom space, and dynamic discussions.
“I have never felt so much energy,” says Ms. Kim. “Even in my high-school years, I have never felt as one with the class in how much we love to learn.”
In time, the professors encouraged Ms. Kim to apply to college again. She wasn’t so sure. Despite her advocacy for young immigrants’ access to higher education—she helped found the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance—she didn’t expect college to work out for her.
Her wariness stemmed from a lifetime of having been guarded, in both actions and ambitions.
When she was 8 years old, Ms. Kim and her family left a prosperous life in South Korea for the United States, where her father had been promised a stake in a new business. A year and a half after arriving in Georgia on visitor visas, the family discovered that their applications for permanent work visas had never been processed. To their surprise, they were living in the United States illegally.
The family moved 11 times in as many years. But Ms. Kim’s parents made sure that she and her younger brother stayed in the same school district in Alpharetta, an affluent suburb of Atlanta.
Her mother and father pushed their two kids to work hard, telling them: You’re different from everyone else. When they came home from school, the siblings kept the blinds drawn and the lights off so neighbors wouldn’t know they were home alone while their parents worked long hours. Together they studied in dark corners.
‘This Is a Secret’
In high school, Ms. Kim excelled in her classes, thrived on the debate team, and dreamed of going to college. But she knew nothing about how to apply. Senior year came. Still uncertain, Ms. Kim visited her guidance counselor. She knew it was time to explain.
“I have something very serious and important to tell you,” she recalls saying. “This is a secret I haven’t even told my best friend.”
Federal law prohibits schools from disclosing students’ immigration status to authorities, but Ms. Kim didn’t know that. She was terrified, she says, that she’d jeopardize her family’s safety—and her own future—by revealing that she lacked the necessary papers. Still, she told her guidance counselor and pleaded with him not to call the police. Stunned, he said he had no idea how to advise her.
So she tried to figure it out on her own. She called college admissions offices from pay phones to ask if they admitted undocumented immigrants. Using fake names, she e-mailed others. “The paranoia of being undocumented goes very deep,” she says. “We are told to be afraid of everyone.”
Eventually she applied to both public and private colleges in the South. In a burst of optimism, she accepted an offer to an elite private institution. “I don’t know why I did that,” she says now. “There was no way I could pay.”
Federal aid was not to be had. And private loans weren’t viable, given her limited employment options and ability to repay.
So she deferred the offer for a year. Maybe the Dream Act would pass, she hoped, and open up more opportunities to pay her way. Meanwhile, her parents suggested she spend the year studying hard and searching for scholarships.
“It was the lowest point of my life. I was stuck at home. I couldn’t drive. There was no way I could look for a job,” Ms. Kim says. “Imagine, for a year, a crazy person waking up every day and going to their desk and reading a book. I had a feeling that if I didn’t study, I’d be wasting my parents’ time.”
Her e-mails to organizers in Atlanta’s immigrant community eventually landed her in the small Athens classroom where Freedom University’s classes meet on Sunday afternoons. Last year she was part of its first class of students.
In August, Ms. Kim, now 21, started classes at Syracuse University, with two fellow alumni of Freedom University. So far the academic rigor is a welcome challenge, she says. Socially, it’s a different story: “I’m still trying to search for that community where I feel at home.”
