Should an illegal alien go to med school or nursing school?

January 10, 2007 8:05 AM

What's the better choice for an illegal alien: med school or nursing school?

I have a friend who is an illegal alien. She and her family came to the U.S. when she was 14 and they overstayed their tourist visas. They have been living for the past 7 years in a city that is heavily populated with people (many of whom are illegal) from the same country. Friend attended high school in this city, learned English, graduated at the top of her class and went to a very good large state university. (She lives in a state that is flexible with illegals attending college cheaply.) She is now a senior in the bio-chem major. She's gotten great grades, done special internships and is an all-around great girl.

She was hoping/betting on her folks getting their illegal status sorted out before she graduated. This hasn't happened. So now she's almost done and her dreams of applying for medical school have been are fading.

If she applies for med school (assuming she does well on the MCAT), she'll have to apply as an international student. This likely means she won't get any financial aid. She can't take out loans very easily and can't really work. Also, it means that she will have to continue putting off trying to get a permanent resident card for a number of years. Plus I wonder if the med school/SEVIS might have a problem with popping a student visa in an expired passport with a 7 year expired tourist visa!

So, she's now considering nursing school. Nurses are so badly needed in this country that she figures that she'll be on the path to getting a permanent residency card much more quickly. She is bummed out though, as her plans to be a doctor are quickly going away. It seems though, that she could probably apply to a nursing school program at a community college and try to play it out so that she seems to be just a citizen without a SSN rather than an international student.

Is it worth it for her to stick it out and try to go to medical school or is nursing school the most practical thing?

Is she going to have a problem getting a student visa in her expired passport?

What would you recommend to this wonderful young woman? Yes, the obvious answer is "just get married." This is a last resort.

Going back to her country of origin would be very difficult. First, if she went back after overstaying her visa, she'd never be allowed a visa back to the U.S. again and then she'd never see her family again. Secondly, she has no family or friends left in that country and it would be very tough for a 21-year-old with no connections to resettle in her country.

posted by k8t to education (27 comments total)

She won't get a visa in an expired passport, and if she applies for a visa from within the country she might still be subject to deportation and ten year entry ban.
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:18 AM on January 10, 2007

She needs an immigration lawyer. This is an immediate need for her.
posted by slavlin at 8:23 AM on January 10, 2007

Seconded. Her passport definitely needs to be valid. She needs to show it (send a copy) when applying for a student visa, so there is absolutely no way she'll get it with her current passport.

She should talk to an immigration lawyer, because I'm sure there must be a way she can go to school somewhere. Just not on an expired passport with a student visa.
posted by easternblot at 8:25 AM on January 10, 2007

My gut feeling is that she is going to have a difficult, if not impossible time, becoming licensed as a nurse or a physician as an illegal alien. She should definitely look into this issue before starting.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 8:25 AM on January 10, 2007

She can probably get a new passport through her country's embassy in the US, and she might be able to file for a waiver of the ten year ban, but that is likely to be denied.

Maybe she can find a way into community college without visa or SSN, but if she ever applies for US naturalization she has to swear she's never claimed in any way to be a citizen.
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:29 AM on January 10, 2007

The should go to the nearest consulate or embassy of her native country and get a new passport. This should not be too difficult.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 8:42 AM on January 10, 2007

"It seems though, that she could probably apply to a nursing school program at a community college and try to play it out so that she seems to be just a citizen without a SSN rather than an international student."

She won't be able to get aid without a SSN.
posted by Mitheral at 8:51 AM on January 10, 2007

To add to Mitheral's comment, all schools that admit international students have a designated school officer (DSO) whose job it is to verify documents and status. Few, if any, are going to risk the school's status by flaking on the review.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 9:04 AM on January 10, 2007

Given that I know people who scored a ten year entry ban for missing an administrative deadline by a week, she needs an immigration lawyer.

...and she's probably screwed, even with the lawyer.
posted by aramaic at 9:17 AM on January 10, 2007

Her family has an immigration lawyer, but as you can imagine, in certain communities there are immigration lawyers who are cheap and suck at figuring this sort of thing out. Lawyer guy has told the family that before their kids are 21, they are sort of "safe" because it wasn't their fault that they were illegal, but after age 21 it gets more complicated.

As I understand it, the embassy can give her a new passport if they think that she is going back, but they won't give her a new one knowing that she is in the USA illegally. This information came from an informal inquiry.

I would think that after she finished nursing school and got a job offer, that the hospital would sponsor her H1 visa, right?

Is her only option to try to get married? :( In conversations with folks in her community, it appears that this is the most frequent result of these type of situations.
posted by k8t at 9:25 AM on January 10, 2007

The should go to the nearest consulate or embassy of her native country and get a new passport. This should not be too difficult.

Terrible advice. Get her to an immigration lawyer, stat. Depending on her circumstances, even traveling to her native country and trying to get back could cause issues for her.

Also, getting married isn't the magic wand many people think it is - that in and of itself is a really hard undertaking, with all sorts of "proof" required that you really love each other, if you do it legally. If you do it quickly, like a friend of mine did to her illegal husband (he had fake identification, etc.) it means jack squat - he still came into the country illegally, and being married to her doesn't help his particular case one bit.

I used to work for immigration lawyers, so I know a tiny bit - enough to say, don't walk, run to one. The laws change constantly so I don't have the personal up-to-date experience any more, but it's impossible to get the best advice for a specific situation from a site like this.

Good luck to your friend!
posted by agregoli at 9:33 AM on January 10, 2007

Her family has an immigration lawyer, but as you can imagine, in certain communities there are immigration lawyers who are cheap and suck at figuring this sort of thing out.

I don't think you're going to find the community of non-lawyers here to be any better. However I think it's unfair to group all low-cost lawyers into a group identified as less than competent. There's plenty of True Believers out there and if their current solution isn't helping then they should try others.
posted by phearlez at 9:37 AM on January 10, 2007

Um, agregoli: consulates and embassies for her native country will be in the US, I didn't advise that she return to her country. She needs a valid passport no matter what else she does.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 9:48 AM on January 10, 2007

A good immigration lawyer will give your friend a free consultation before taking on the case and she should be able to assess her situation from there. I used Bernard Wolfsdorf and Associates in Santa Monica and was very satisfied with their help. Best of luck to your friend.

(She might also like to talk to some doctors here and find out what her best options are for studying overseas. This isn't necessarily the end of the world. Forgive me if this is gratuitous advice.)
posted by firstdrop at 9:53 AM on January 10, 2007

Good grief, don't take any of the mostly crap advice here without talking to a competent immigration lawyer.
posted by jcwagner at 10:03 AM on January 10, 2007

She should talk to an advocacy group. There are plenty of groups out there that specialize in advocating for undocumented immigrants, who can either point her to free legal help or give her accurate information on what she needs to do.

Considering she has been in this country since she was 14, through no fault of her own, she probably has an out that those of us who are neither lawyers nor immigration experts would know about.
posted by brina at 10:11 AM on January 10, 2007

I can't offer anything more helpful than the Nth the advice to go see an immigration lawyer asap. If she has no faith in her family's current lawyer, then seek a new one, and be willing to pay a little more if possible. As a legal immigrant to the US I could not have done it without a competent lawyer. US immigration laws are complex and often contradictory. The BCIS bureaucracy and offices are unhelpful to put it nicely. I have been outright lied to by BCIS staff at local offices, delaying and complicating the process. Without a lawyer I would have lost my right to work. I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just trying to reinforce how important a competent immigration lawyer is. Please do not suggest she go and get a new passport from her embassy, anything that could possibly alert US immigration as to her illegal status would be a bad move.
posted by Joh at 11:16 AM on January 10, 2007

Lawyer lawyer lawyer.

Also, what would be her chances of, say, moving to Canada as a student and going to med school here? UofT and Mcmaster are world-renowned medical schools. There are others, too.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 11:19 AM on January 10, 2007

She should go to her home country and try to come back in a legal status.
posted by JayRwv at 11:59 AM on January 10, 2007

There may be no option for her. There is/was a student at Princeton who was in a similar situation, and I don't know if he ever found a solution. All I can think of is that, yes, she really does need to see a lawyer. Perhaps one through her university? The law school at my university ran a clinic for students and other people.

There needs to be some kind of solution for children who were brought into a country by their parents which doesn't punish them, but I don't know if anything will change soon.
posted by jb at 12:30 PM on January 10, 2007

>I would think that after she finished nursing school and got a job offer, that the hospital would sponsor her H1 visa, right?

That depends on a number of factors. (This is all theoretical, of course, because without legal residence and a social security number she'll never be able to "pass" the criminal offender record check that all applicants for the national nursing licensing exam are required to take before they can sit for the exam. And before they can start clinical rotations at school. And sometimes before they start classes at all. Not all criminal backgrounds are an automatic disqualification from licensure, but without a SSN to run the check in the first place, she's out of luck.)

First of all, most hospitals don't have diploma programs for nurses any longer; most students need a formal associate's or bachelor's degree to sit for the national licensing exam. In the past, finishing a diploma program meant that you'd get a job at the hospital at which you studied. That's no longer the case.

Secondly, she would have to seek employment at a hospital in an area of the country where the nursing shortage is particularly bad, bad enough that nurse managers are hiring international applicants with all the extra paperwork they entail. In the Boston area, for example, the shortage isn't so bad, to the point that some of my classmates had trouble getting jobs when they graduated. The big academic teaching institutions in major metropolitan areas aren't experiencing the same kind of shortage as places like small rural community hospitals or nursing homes.

Thirdly, there are frequently waiting lists for admission to nursing school itself because of a shortage of qualified instructors. She could have to wait a year just to get started.
posted by jesourie at 12:34 PM on January 10, 2007

I don't know anything about immigration - but has she looked at pharmacy school? There's a big shortage there too but the pay is better than nursing. The degree is PharmD (doctor of pharmacy) and it takes 4 yrs.
posted by selfmedicating at 1:16 PM on January 10, 2007

Your friends' plan is not practical. She's going to have to sort out her illegal status before she can work legally here; she might as well do it now.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:17 PM on January 10, 2007

She should go to her home country and try to come back in a legal status.

Already been said, and yes, it's still bad advice.
posted by agregoli at 1:34 PM on January 10, 2007

My mom is an RN in California; from what I recall correctly, before the Board of Registered Nurses will license an RN they have to have a background check done, with fingerprinting and everything, and (I think?) get federal clearance - so your friend would show up as being illegal, or at any rate as not having any kind data on file with the federal govt. So in short, no, I dont think your friend can just choose nursing and hope that the shortage will bear her out.
posted by supercrayon at 2:03 PM on January 10, 2007

She could still get deported even if she gets married. Marriage does not equal automatic green card.

And Dan-el Padilla Peralta, the student from Princeton, ended up going to Oxford (Cambridge?). Whether he'll be able to get back into the U.S., I don't know.
posted by oaf at 2:36 PM on January 10, 2007

As much as I am against illegal immigration, this really doesn't sound like it's her fault. Kids generally don't grasp the concept of legal vs illegal immigration.

Nth the "find a good lawyer - NOW" comments. Just hanging around as an illegal alien and trying to skirt the system will very likely come around and bite her in the ass hard, making the whole situation much worse.

Also, there's a nursing shortage, yes, but there's also a shortage of good teachers. Pretty much every school where I live has a wait list for nursing students. So hopefully she'll have time to clear this mess up!
posted by drstein at 6:47 PM on January 10, 2007