Aaron Dominguez and his mother wasted no time. They first tried to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, in early January, a few days after the online form became available. But right away they hit a wall.
Dominguez, a high-school senior in North Richland Hills, Tex., is a science buff who plans to major in engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, his first choice among a handful of colleges that accepted him. To get the federal aid he needs to afford it, he must submit the all-important application. But more than two months later, the application still isn’t working for mixed-status families.
Dominguez, who was born in the United States, is eligible for federal grants and loans. But his mother, a Guatemalan immigrant, isn’t a U.S. citizen. Ever since the new FAFSA went live, in late December, a technical issue has prevented parents without a Social Security number from completing their portion of the online form, making it impossible for their children to submit the application. The U.S. Department of Education first promised a solution for such families by the end of February; on Monday it said “the first half of March.”
Late last month the department introduced a temporary workaround allowing applicants to obtain a filing-date time stamp needed for early financial-aid deadlines set by colleges, state-aid programs, and private-scholarship providers. But that nine-step process results in an incomplete FAFSA that doesn’t give colleges actionable information — or provide applicants with an immediate estimate of what they can expect to pay for college. And the process hasn’t worked for some students.
Until a permanent fix arrives, mixed-status families will remain locked out of the system through no fault of their own. Their plight, many college-access experts believe, has been the most troubling aspect of the FAFSA’s rocky rollout, which has been defined by delays, glitches, and unexplained errors. In many immigrant communities, where anxiety about paying for college often runs high, the inability to complete the form is stoking doubt and frustration. The problem threatens to scuttle students’ postsecondary plans, and it has sapped some applicants’ faith in the system that determines who goes to college and what it will cost.
“It’s just draining and exhausting,” Dominguez said. “I know I have the right to ask for federal aid. But they’ve just made things so much harder for people like me. It’s unfair. The government clearly just sees us like an afterthought.”
Overlooked. Shut out. Stuck. Many students from mixed-status families feel that way because of a significant change in the FAFSA.
In the past, parents without a Social Security number were unable to create a Federal Student Aid ID. Instead, they had to print, sign, and mail in a signature page so that their child’s FAFSA could be processed. It was inefficient but relatively painless.
But the new FAFSA requires every contributor — a dependent student and at least one parent — to create an FSA ID, as it’s known. And that’s where many mixed-status families have been hung up.
Dominguez, an only child, is close to his mother, who has a degree in political science from a university in Guatemala. After coming to the United States years ago, he said, “she didn’t have a way to get a good job.” These days, she cleans houses for a living. Her relentless work inspired him to try hard in school. She has encouraged him to find a subject he likes, to pursue a career that would give him “a true future.”
After completing his portion of the FAFSA in early January, Dominguez helped his mother try to create an FSA ID. Since she lacked a Social Security number, she had to call the Federal Student Aid Information Center to complete an identity-verification process. But as many callers this winter have found, getting through to a customer-service representative is difficult. Dominguez’s mother dialed the 800 number again and again, only to hear an automated message: “We are receiving historically high call volumes at this time. Please try again at another time, or send us an email from the ‘contact us’ page on studentaid.gov. Goodbye.”
Dominguez’s mother — who asked The Chronicle not to publish her name because of her immigration status — kept a record of her attempts to activate her FSA ID, taking screenshots of her calls to the 800 number. She called dozens of times from early January to late February, often waiting an hour or more to speak with someone, if she even got through. Sometimes, while being transferred from one rep to another, she said, the call was disconnected. So she called back.
Some days, Dominguez’s mother called while working. She was cleaning a client’s house when she connected with a customer-service rep who explained the identity-verification process. The rep, she said, wanted to make sure she was alone because she was going to share personal information. It felt uncomfortable.
Dominguez’s mother recalled the conversation like this:
“The rep said, ‘I hear noises. Are you sure you aren’t with someone else?’ I said, ‘No, I’m here in the bathroom all alone.’”
After Dominguez’s mother received a case number and an email explaining how to verify her identity, she submitted a signed attestation form, along with other required documents — a copy of her Guatemalan passport, a Consular Identification Card, a utility bill. Then she waited for the department’s Federal Student Aid office to send an email indicating that her identity had been verified, allowing her to use her FSA ID and complete her portion of the FAFSA. She said she had been told the process would take a few days. A week passed. Nothing.
Since then, Dominguez’s mother has called the federal-aid office repeatedly, trying to figure out what the holdup is. Each time she selected the option to connect with a Spanish-speaking rep, she said, but didn’t get one: “Nobody answered in Spanish.” So she tried her best to communicate in English.
But she still isn’t able to use her FSA ID. “We have been trying to verify her account,” Dominguez said. “But they won’t tell her what’s wrong, if they even answer at all.”
On February 28, his mother called the aid office 15 times. She spent 75 minutes on hold that morning. Later, she waited nearly 90 minutes. After that, she decided not to call again.
“I am so frustrated,” she said.
Frustration has a way of turning into resignation.
That worries Viridiana Carrizales, co-founder and chief executive of ImmSchools, a nonprofit that supports undocumented students and those from mixed-status families. A February 26 letter to the Education Department, signed by her organization and dozens of other groups, warned that the continuing problems with the FAFSA could discourage students in mixed-status families from ever completing the application: “This is an equity issue that impedes access.”
Carrizales fears that some prospective college students with undocumented parents will get tired of waiting for a fix and scrap their postsecondary plans. “We’re learning through this FAFSA process that the system is still not equitable,” she said. “This is one of the ways in which we’re seeing that this country continues to not prioritize this community.”
The number of students affected by the problem isn’t easy to determine. In 2021, 3.7 million, or 6.9 percent, of K-12 students in the United States had at least one undocumented parent, and about three million of those students are U.S. citizens, according to a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center. The Education Department recently estimated that just 3,500 FAFSA contributors without a Social Security number would complete the identity-verification process during the current aid cycle, which strikes Carrizales as exceedingly low. One advocacy group estimates that up to 500,000 students ages 17 to 21 with undocumented parents could apply for federal aid this year.
The Education Department has declined to answer specific questions this winter about the cause of the problem preventing undocumented parents from completing the FAFSA. “It’s an issue that is very, very important to us,” a senior department official said during a call with reporters in mid-February, “and we’re working very hard to find a path forward.”
But the clock is ticking. “We don’t need to hear just that there’s a workaround for the FAFSA, or that ‘Hey, we’re working on it,’” Carrizales said. “We need the department to tell us explicitly how they’re going to fix it, and when it’s going to be fixed. That’s what our community is expecting to hear from the department.”
In Texas, Dominguez has been worrying about how the delay in submitting the FAFSA — and finding out how much financial aid he will get — is preventing him from applying for housing at UT-Arlington, which provides dorm assignments on a first-come-first-served basis. “Spaces fill fast,” the university tells applicants, and beds are limited.
“That’s my biggest concern now,” Dominguez said.
On Tuesday afternoon, Dominguez hopped on a bus after school. His mother picked him up from the bus stop, as usual. On the drive home they told each other about their days. Later, they sat down and ate chicken tacos for dinner.
They didn’t discuss the FAFSA. But for weeks they had talked about it almost every day. “It’s always in the back of our heads,” Dominguez said. It was there when he finished up a paper for his macroeconomics class that night. It was there when he woke up the next morning and got ready for school.
“It’s just, like, something we can’t really control,” he said.
They would just have to wait.
