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Come June, Cristina Correa will fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a college graduate.
The 48-year-old Modesto woman will complete her bachelor's degree at California State University, Stanislaus, with plans to teach in an elementary school.
As the nation engages in an emotional and heated debate over immigration, Correa's story isn't about anger, flag-waving or protest. It isn't about bitterness or politics.
It simply is about a woman who came to this country through proper legal channels, made it her home and wants to have an impact on children with similar backgrounds.
Correa is or was an immigrant. She became a U.S. citizen in 1986.
"On John F. Kennedy's birthday (May 29)," she said proudly.
But as Correa and her family can attest, immigrating is never easy, legally or otherwise.
During the Great Depression, frustrated people in the United States demanded that many people of Mexican descent be sent across the border so they couldn't compete for dwindling jobs.
It didn't seem to matter that many of Mexican heritage were born here and were U.S. citizens. California ejected about 400,000, including 50,000 from Los Angeles alone in a five-month span in 1931.
Among them was Correa's mother, Christina Escobar, who was 9 at the time. They forced the LA-born Escobar to move to a country she'd known only through ancestry. Her parents were legal residents in the United States. It didn't matter.
"Her parents were well-off. They both had good jobs, a nice place," Correa said. "They grabbed everybody and sent them back."
Settling in Sonora, Mexico, Christina Escobar grew up, married Enrique Arrizon and began a family that grew to 15 children nine boys and six girls.
Correa was born in Mexico, with Mexican citizenship. Her family still dreamed of living in the United States, and Correa came to the valley in 1974 as an exchange student at Modesto High. She struggled to learn English, speaking none when she arrived. She stayed here after high school and enrolled at Modesto Junior College.
Eventually, most of her family moved to the valley.
"My mom was already a U.S. citizen, and that made it easier for everybody else," Correa said. "But we were a family of laborers. We picked grapes, peaches, walnuts, almonds."
With so many mouths to feed, most of her family worked in the fields. Her father wanted her to stay in school.
"They valued education," Correa said. "He said, 'I don't want you to work in the fields again. Keep studying.'"
She talked him into letting her work seasonally at the old Tri Valley Growers Plant No. 7, where she toiled for 20 years before working five more at the Gallo glass plant.
During that time, she married and had two daughters Patricia, 25, lives in Bend, Ore., and Sarah, 16, attends Davis High before getting divorced.
Meanwhile, her goal of finishing college was on hold.
"At one point in my life, I was devastated," she said. "I didn't have the money to proceed with my career."
Her father took care of that, investing years of savings in his daughter before his death in 2003.
"I don't know how he did it, but he got the money for me to go back to school," Correa said. "He was very, very supportive."
She returned to school in Turlock and became certified as a translator while pursuing her degree. She has benefited from a grant offered by Modesto City Schools and the opportunity to work in a kindergarten class at Bret Harte Elementary School.
She plans to teach bilingual kids, filling an ever-growing void in an area where so many children are from families in which the parents speak no English in the home.
"There's more of a necessity to work with minorities, period," Correa said.
So as the rest of the country argues about immigration, Correa simply wants to give children the same fighting chance her parents gave her.
"I've never given up on my dream," she said.
That is a great lesson in any country, any language.
Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or jjardine@modbee.com.
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