CHAPEL HILL -- Sixteen-year-old Melina Renteria wants to open a dance studio when she grows up. Her friend, a high school sophomore in Durham, wants to work in medicine.
Both think they need some higher education. Renteria, who attends Durham School of the Arts, has a good chance of getting it. Her friend at Riverside High School might not.
A biology degree at UNC-Chapel Hill would cost her friend about $100,000. If Renteria studies dance at UNC-Greensboro, she'd pay about $21,000 in tuition and fees.
The difference: Renteria's friend came to Durham from southern Mexico without immigration papers at age 4. Renteria was born in Los Angeles and moved to North Carolina at age 9.
They both walked from Chapel Hill to Durham Monday as part of the Trail of Dreams, a 1,500-mile march to promote immigration reforms such as allowing U.S. high school graduates to pay in-state tuition in their home states.
"They want to study, but they can't because they don't have papers," said Renteria, who spoke on behalf of students who won't be able to go to college unless laws change.
An estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants live in the United States, and 65,000 graduate from U.S. high schools each year. Only 5 percent attend college, according to a report by the College Board.
Among those 5 percent are Felipe Matos, Juan Rodriguez, Gaby Pacheco and Carlos Roa, four students at Miami Dade College in Florida. The quartet left Miami on foot New Year's Day, aiming to arrive in Washington on May 1.
In recent days, they have walked all over North Carolina, visiting the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, where sit-ins challenged Jim Crow in 1960.
Matos said a man outside a Home Depot in Wilmington told him he wasn't "completely human," but he's still willing to go public with his identity. He knows he's risking physical abuse or even deportation in order to confront current state laws that prevent public universities from offering in-state tuition benefits to unauthorized immigrants.
"The situation for undocumented people in this country is so unbearable that we knew we had to make a statement, even if we had to risk everything," he said.
About 50 demonstrators joined the students on their march Monday from Peace and Justice Plaza on Franklin Street to El Centro Hispano and a potluck dinner in downtown Durham.
Renteria said that even if North Carolina taxpayers have to foot some of the bill to send her undocumented friends to college, the cost is worth it.
"If you study here, there's more of a better chance that you're going to help the economy," she said. "In the end, it will help the United States."
