First-generation grads carry hopes of immigrant parents
They’re proud of deeds but sad they’ll miss out on traditional ceremony
The Class of 2020 has enjoyed an educational career dotted with graduation ceremonies, from kindergartners moving on to first grade to fifth graders transitioning to middle school, and then from middle to high school.
Yet, none of those events eclipse the enthusiasm for the last public school ceremony, where seniors walk proudly across a stage, remembering to extend the right hand for shaking and the left to accept their high school diploma.
For immigrant families, the graduation is especially poignant, an acceptance of their children into their adopted nation. This year, the families of first-generation graduates won’t get to experience the traditional “Pomp and Circumstance” event because of COVID-19, but they are making the best of it nonetheless.
Betsaida Silva
Calero High School, San Jose
Silva is not the first of her siblings to graduate in this country — an older brother has that honor — but her journey to the high school finish line has been difficult.
Silva’s mother and father both were born in Mexico and immigrated here separately. They met at a restaurant where her mother worked, but when Silva was just a child, her father was deported, leaving the family to struggle.
The family — Silva, her mother and Silva’s younger sister, 9, and brother, 6 — were homeless for six years.
“It was really hard for me to go to school,” Silva said, “and I didn’t enjoy school very much. It was hard for me to focus.”
In her senior year, however, her mom was able to find a job and life became more stable. Now, Silva will graduate with a 3.0 grade average and the knowledge that her parents are proud of her.
She’s disappointed at not having a traditional graduation ceremony. Getting her diploma was to be a defining moment thus far in her life, a symbol of overcoming hardship and managing to not just survive, but to thrive, as a true immigrant’s story.
Josue Alejandro Solis
San Jose Jesuit High School
Solis has known for much of his life that his parents expect him to succeed and set a good example. His graduation ceremony would have been a fulfillment of that goal.
Solis’ father was born in Mexico. His mom was born in the United States, but when she was a young child, her family moved back to Mexico, where the two eventually met and fell in love. They moved to San Jose in 2001, and Solis was born here.
His parents always stressed the need for a good education, Solis says, promising to support their son in whatever he did, urging him to do well in school and continue his studies.
“They want me to be able to earn good money,” Solis said, “but not to have to work as
hard as they do.”
Solis’s father works in construction and his mother is a receptionist. They also want Solis to serve as a role model for his 5-year-old brother.
“Seeing me graduate will help him to continue his studies when he’s older,” Solis said. “When I graduate from college, I want to be his motivation.”
The family had been looking forward to the high school graduation ceremony, but are resigned to doing a “car graduation” and then, perhaps, a full ceremony in December.
“Getting to cross the stage,” Solis said, “spending those last few moments with my teachers, who all have given us so much support, that would have been so special.”
Solis has earned a scholarship to Marquette University, a private Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he plans to study nursing with an aim toward working in an emergency or trauma surgery department.
Evelyn Silva Rosales
Pittsburg High School When Rosales receives her diploma through a virtual graduation, she will be completing a dream that began even before she was born.
Rosales’s parents met, fell in love and married in their native Mexico, then decided to come to the U.S., not just
for the opportunities this country promises, but to make sure their children received a good education and a chance for a better life.
Rosales says her parents didn’t speak English and so haven’t been able to help her or her two young sisters with homework, but they did other things for them, always impressing the need to do well in school.
For kindergarten, they made sure to enroll Rosales in a school that taught her English, and throughout her schooling, they provided extra support with advanced classes in math and tutors. Now Rosales works as a tutor, giving back what her parents gave her.
“They’ve always helped me and my sisters,” Rosales said. “I try to help my sisters, too, telling them what our parents told me, that focusing on education is the most important thing.”
Before COVID-19, Rosales says, her father worked two jobs, seven days a week, working for a dry cleaners in the morning and as a cook at a sushi restaurant in the afternoon and evening. Her mom drove them to school each day.
The family had been looking forward to seeing their oldest daughter’s graduation ceremony, but like other families robbed of that opportunity, they are celebrating just the same.
Rosales is headed to UCLA in the fall to study biochemistry with the aim of going on to medical school and becoming a cardiologist.