CSUN Holds Promise for Illegal Immigrants : Education: Many seek a better life through college. Some fear their safe haven is threatened by Prop. 187.

NORTHRIDGE — Cal State Northridge sophomore Vladimir Cerna is the sort of student high school counselors always remember--a poor kid but bright, someone who gets into trouble early on, straightens out and makes it to college.

While his mom cleans houses and his stepfather works at the carwash, Cerna--a student body senator--studies to be a sociologist. Two days a week, he tutors junior high students in algebra and geometry. Between classes he works as a clerk in the school’s business department.

To many, the 21-year-old Cerna embodies the American Dream.

He is also an illegal immigrant, living in the United States without permission.

So far, those two identities have not caused much conflict for Cerna. Nobody at Cal State Northridge--or any of the other 19 California State University schools--is asked to prove legal status.

But now, Cerna and other illegal immigrants enrolled at the Northridge campus worry their safe haven will be transformed into a government trap by Proposition 187.

The initiative, if passed, would restrict access to public education, health care and other government programs by illegal immigrants. It would also require school officials to report to authorities any students suspected of living in the U. S. illegally.

The prospect of being deported, of being denied a chance at college, puts yet another obstacle in front of these students, most of them poor, who were brought to the U. S. as youngsters or teen-agers.

“I came here five years ago to escape the war in El Salvador,” said Emilio Flores, 20, a CSUN junior and photography editor of the campus newspaper. “I didn’t want to come. But here I am.”

Supporters of Proposition 187 say it is wrong for legal residents to subsidize lawbreakers. State officials estimate it costs taxpayers about $4,400 a year to school each of CSU’s more than 320,000 students.

Ronald Prince, chairman of the pro-187 campaign, said the issue boils down to the law--which sets a limit on the number of legal immigrants to the U. S.

“We should not be destroyed by allowing people to come here illegally,” Prince said. “We cannot allow our state to go bankrupt providing services. There is simply not enough money to go around.”

But opponents of the initiative argue the cost of denying education would be even higher.

“Years ago I had a professor who would always say that even though he didn’t have any children, he and his wife would vote for every education measure,” said Jorge Garcia, dean of the school of humanities at CSUN. “Because no matter what it costs, it was cheaper than ignorance.”

For years, CSU schools have been the fast track for undocumented students bright enough and ambitious enough to escape the low-wage drudgery endured by their immigrant parents.

Although lawsuits are expected to delay or void portions of the initiative restricting education for kindergarten through 12th grade students, college education does not have the same constitutional protections in California. CSU officials say they can only wait and see.

No one knows how many CSU students are illegal immigrants. Estimates range from several hundred to several thousand.

Few of Cerna’s friends know his status. Being an illegal immigrant is no badge of honor.

But like the other CSUN students interviewed for this story, Cerna asked that his real name be used. The decision to shed anonymity reflects the deep sentiment that Proposition 187 has aroused among those who did as they were told: rejecting gangs and drugs and welfare in favor of the historic and well-worn path to success in America.

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Cerna seems always on the run--leaping to answer the telephone at his Northridge apartment, dashing to class or to another meeting. A friend, CSUN senior Liz Montanez, says Cerna keeps a wide circle of friends informed about campus politics.

“He’s the one who goes to meetings, so a lot of us get our information from him,” she said.

Cerna began his scramble in the U. S. eight years ago, when he was 13. It was November and Cerna had graduated from the eighth grade, the last mandatory year of school in El Salvador. He was looking forward to entering a secondary school, but his parents had other plans.

“My stepfather said, ‘Pack your things, we are leaving Monday,’ ” said Cerna, who with his two brothers and sister endured a six-week journey that included 10 days strapped to the top of freight trains through Mexico. “The trip was like going to hell and back.”

He arrived on New Year’s Day, 1986.

“It was total culture shock,” Cerna said. “When I first stepped outside, I was thinking, ‘Why are the streets so wide?’ I started school three weeks later, in the sixth grade.”

Cerna adapted to his new life, learning English--as well as the temptations of the street--while at Hollenbeck Junior High School. In the ninth grade, he and some buddies found a master key and used it to enter their school at night, to steal and vandalize. On their third trip, the authorities were waiting for them.

“I was fined $350, got 120 hours of community service and was kicked out of the school district,” Cerna said. “My parents were so disappointed, and I was so ashamed. . . . I started thinking, ‘This is not going to take me anywhere,’ especially when I would see my parents struggling to pay bills. I didn’t want to end up like that.”

So the following school year, Cerna enrolled at Roosevelt High School, using his mother’s maiden name. And in the 10th grade, Helen Rodriguez became his guidance counselor.

“He was behind on credits, had some missing grades and had that disciplinary problem at Hollenbeck,” recalled Rodriguez, who has worked for 27 years for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “But I looked up his reading and math scores and found out he was very intelligent. He told me frankly what had happened and said that was in the past.”

By 12th grade, Cerna was excelling in college preparatory classes, eventually graduating with honors and earning awards in English and math. He hopes now to someday earn a doctorate in sociology. His younger brother graduated from Roosevelt High and is preparing to follow Cerna to CSUN.

“If 187 passes, I’m not sure exactly how it will affect me,” Cerna said. CSU officials say they believe that if the initiative passes, legal challenges will likely delay implementation, possibly for years.

“First I would try to work full time and pay as an international student,” he said. “But I guess in the back of my mind I’m thinking I would go back to El Salvador and teach there. That would be difficult. With the new government, it is very unstable.”

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Supporters of 187 say the initiative is a pocketbook issue, in addition to a legal one, a reaction against those looking for something from nothing.

CSUN senior Laura Godoy--the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters--says she has paid a steep price to live in the U. S. And now, though she has lived most of her 22 years in Los Angeles, she still has mixed feelings about the life, and the family, she left behind.

“I came here to live with my grandmother when I was three or four,” said Godoy, a Chicano studies major. “I think my mom and dad thought it would be best for me to keep my grandma company, and to learn the language and get a better education.”

So instead of starting school in Guadalajara, Mexico, she enrolled at Glassell Park Elementary School. Over the years, it was her grandmother whom she called mom. And English quickly joined Spanish in her everyday speech.

She returned to her family’s house in Mexico for junior high school at her parents’ request. But by then she had become a stranger accustomed to a different life and culture.

“It was difficult to understand Spanish in school,” Godoy said.

At home, there were also problems.

“I was raised as an only child. I was an outsider to my brothers and sisters,” she said. “My little brother, he was about 8, would say I was too bossy. He’d say, ‘Why don’t you go back where you came from?’ ”

During summers, she would return to live with her grandmother, who had been working in Los Angeles since the 1930s, cleaning houses and caring for seniors.

Finally, at the end of the summer before 11th grade, Godoy decided to stay in Los Angeles. “I told my dad, ‘I’m not leaving.’ My grandmother told him, ‘Her life is here,’ ” she said.

This time it was English that gave her trouble in school, since she had missed junior high grammar. But she did well enough at Franklin High School to be accepted at CSUN, leaving behind friends having babies or getting jobs.

Her grandmother--who had encouraged her to remain in the U. S. and go to college--died during Godoy’s freshman year, leaving her suddenly responsible for her own life and finances.

“I’ve gained a lot of responsibility and independence, learning how to survive,” Godoy said. “I’m not sorry I’m here. I will be the first in my family to graduate from college. My dad didn’t finish junior high school. My mom didn’t finish elementary school. . . . But those sibling memories, you know, ‘Remember how I kicked your butt when I was four?’ I don’t have that, and it hurts. But I think it’s my destiny that I be here.”

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Especially troubling, say opponents of Proposition 187, are its requirements that school workers, police, health care workers and others in traditional helping professions report suspected illegal immigrants to authorities.

That far-reaching provision would “make informants out of all of us,” said Rabbi Harold M. Schulweiss, leader of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino and an initiative opponent.

Presumably, Latinos with brown skin and dark hair are suspect. GOP congressional candidate Richard Sybert, a 187 supporter, said in a recent interview that he can spot an illegal immigrant in a crowd using “logic, intuition and common sense.”

Emilio Flores said that kind of thinking frustrates and frightens him.

“These stupid stereotypes about illegal immigrants, they think they are all these people who take social services or they are the guys selling oranges at the freeway on-ramps,” said Flores, who was sent to Los Angeles from El Salvador by his father on a tourist visa, now long expired.

He enrolled at University High School after arriving in the U. S. five years ago, and took an after-school job at Taco Bell.

After an angry customer spat at him when he forgot to include taco sauce with the man’s order, Flores said, “I realized I had come here for something else,” for a life better than one as a fast-food worker.

“My parents weren’t here, I could have done what I wanted . . . hung around and become a gangster,” said Flores. “I was hanging around a crowd that partied a lot and I could have easily stayed a part of that. Thank God, I didn’t.”

He stayed an extra year in high school, learning English and then stumbling onto photography in the fall of 1991 when the adviser of the campus newspaper suggested he try journalism.

“I started taking pictures and through that I was able to earn scholarships,” Flores said. “I shot pictures all through the riots.”

Flores enrolled at CSUN using counterfeit residency documents, thinking that proof of legal status was required. During his first semester, Flores continued to live with an aunt in South Los Angeles, traveling five hours a day on the bus to school. “That was my commitment,” he said.

He moved to the Valley his second semester. Besides a full load of classes, he worked 20 hours a week entering computer data at a Sun Valley sales firm. During his sophomore year, he received scholarships to pay for tuition and books. This year, he is struggling financially but knows he is better off than most in his home country.

“In some villages there is nothing to do but stare at the dirt floor,” he said. “People come here to work.”

Flores said he has two dreams.

One is to be able to afford to bring his mother to the U. S. and pay for medical treatments that she cannot afford in El Salvador.

The second is to make a living shooting pictures.

“In El Salvador, the media seldom tells the truth,” he said. “So I want people to know both sides of the story. . . . During the riots I took a lot of pictures of people helping each other. After that experience I decided, this is what I want to do, to tell the truth.”