Connecticut Students for a Dream won the right to admission to state colleges even though they're undocumented students. Now they want to be able to apply for financial aid.
They had caps and gowns for a news conference at the SLOB in Hartford. What they don't have is the papers they need for institutional aid.
Sixteen-year-old Gabriela Valdiglesias, from West Hartford, said, "I constantly worry that I won't be able to go to college. My parents' situation puts me under a lot of stress."
What the group wants is a financial aid system separate from the federal government's rules. Right now the federal government does not give financial aid to undocumented students. And even though the institutional financial aid is a state program it relies on the federal financial aid application. The top Democrat in the state senate calls that a roadblock.
"Those who are motivated to be in Connecticut, to seek higher education, should be afforded every opportunity," said Sen. Martin Looney, (D) New Haven.
One man motivated to be here escaped gangs in his native Guatemala as a teenager, even though he had to come the hard way.
"And I walk," said Edgardo Perez Cabrera, a student at Naugatuck Valley Community College.
"I walk from my house to Texas where my father sleeps. And I am here! I'm living my dream."
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But the students said their dreams of university turn to nightmares even after they're accepted.
Angelic Idrovo said she won admission to Western Connecticut State, "but what happened is that my family and I weren't able to pay, weren't able to afford the tuition."
The group said students' tuition already pays for institutional aid. They just want the government to give them a chance to get it.
