The freedom to nurse a dream
Four years ago, Zuri Flores took a job scanning groceries at a Food Depot in Stone Mountain, Georgia, instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse. Her job helped pay the bills at home, but Flores felt she needed to move her life forward.
This summer, she quit her job as a Food Depot supervisor to attend Freedom University, a nonprofit organization that offers free, college-level education to undocumented students in Georgia. Leaving work meant she was no longer putting money into her college fund, but Flores said she felt she had to dedicate all her time to pursuing higher education.
“My dad always told me if I wanted to go to school, I had to do something about it,” Flores said.
She planned to attend Bauder College in Atlanta for nursing when she graduated from high school in 2011. After passing the Kaplan entrance exam for nursing students and accepting admission to the university, Flores found out she had to pay out-of-state tuition – an annual $30,000 fee she couldn’t afford – because she was undocumented.
Flores and her family have always taken risks for education. As immigrants, her parents drove Flores and her four younger siblings to school every day. Both her parents have been pulled over and arrested for driving without a license, but Flores said it was a risk they were willing to take.
“(Driving illegally) was worth it because they wanted us to get a better education here,” she said.
When Flores was 10, her parents outlined an emergency plan – if they were ever arrested and placed into deportation proceedings, Flores, the oldest child, was responsible for notifying their relatives, arranging a place to stay with her aunt or church members and taking care of her siblings.
Each time her parents were pulled over, she hoped she wouldn’t have to put the plan in motion. Flores said she had friends whose parents weren’t released for months, and some who came back into the country years after being deported.
Several arrests later, Flores said she thinks it’s a miracle her parents have never been deported and her family is still in one piece, but it was painful to even consider the possibility they would be separated.
“Whatever happens, we’ll find our way back to you,” her parents told her.
Flores and her parents emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. when she was 6 months old. Since settling down in Georgia, Flores’ parents had four more children, all of whom are citizens. For their first few years together, the family moved frequently, sometimes to evade law enforcement and sometimes to settle into a more spacious home.
Flores said she knew she loved school the moment she walked into her kindergarten classroom. After her family dropped her off for her first day, her baby brother cried in his bedroom for hours because she seemed so happy in school, he was worried she would never come home.
Flores planned to go to college since she was in elementary school, but she didn’t know what she wanted to do until the ninth grade, when her younger brother became very ill and was hospitalized for weeks. She considered her family’s history of anemia, diabetes and asthma, and knew she wanted to become a nurse.
“I knew so many (undocumented individuals) around here who needed access to health care,” she said.
After her undocumented status deterred her from attending college in 2011, Flores said she is excited to let Freedom University open new doors for her. She plans to apply for Freedom University scholarships and earn her medical assistant certification from Georgia Piedmont Technical College. Flores then plans to work as a certified nursing assistant for a few years, and eventually pursue a degree in nursing.
Flores added she loves being able to say she attends Freedom University because it gives her a way to talk about her undocumented status, something she struggled to explain even to her close friends.
“People always ask me why I’m not in school, and now I can say I attend Freedom University,” she said. “What’s Freedom University? A school for undocumented students – like me.”