Angy Rivera came to the United States from Colombia when she was three years old. Today, she is a 21 year-old criminology student at John Jay College in Manhattan. She is also an undocumented immigrant. People who lack empathy might call her an “illegal alien.”

Like so many in America today, she cannot afford college on her own. She managed to get a few scholarships, and the state of New York allows undocumented immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition if they live, you know, in the state. She cannot, however, qualify for ant sort of federal financial aid.

Debate the relative merits of immigrant education policy on your own time. Today I’m here to talk about how awesome people can be sometimes.

With a tuition bill of over $2,500 per semester, she needed to raise some funds. She took the remarkably bold step of “outing” herself online as undocumented so she could sell handmade “education bracelets” for $5 a piece. She wanted to raise $1,000 for a reduced academic schedule.

As the New York Daily News reported on January 7, she only made $60 selling bracelets online. She took a more direct route, going on Facebook and Chipin and asking people to donate $5 towards her education. It takes a certain amount of moxie not only to expose your immigration status to the world on the internet, but then to expose your financial plight to the world and ask for help. It just seems so…..American to seek opportunity that way…

If only 200 people contributed $5 towards her tuition bill, she would be set for a part-time semester. That’s not what happened, though. Life has a way of doing unexpected things.

Luis Hernandez, a 59 year-old retired subway conductor living in Brooklyn, saw her story in the Daily News and saw an opportunity to do a good deed. On January 10, he walked into the John Jay bursar’s office and plunked down $2,500, which means she can take a full load of courses this semester. The Daily News reported on him, saying that he tried to shun any publicity. “I’m just glad I was able to help her,” he told them. He told Rivera over the phone that her tuition bill was paid in full. She took the call while at a Starbucks in Greenwich Village and reportedly burst into tears.

Beyond that, the two of them apparently have no plans to meet in person.

I hope that we can find a sensible way to help people like Rivera get an education. Our immigration system, it should come as no surprise, struggles daily with its own psychosis. The DREAM Act would have allowed students who came here “illegally” as children (i.e. through no volition of their own) a path to education and citizenship if they would be willing to work their butts off for it. It was sensible and compassionate, so of course it was doomed. New York state has its own Dream Act in the works, and the state’s education department even has a price tag for offering tuition assistance to undocumented students. Based on the best available estimates of the total number of undocumented students in the state who would want to attend public colleges and universities, it would cost the state just over $600,000 per year to provide full tuition assistance. In state government terms, that’s small potatoes. And it’s an estimate, which means it is negotiable.

For now, I do not hold out much hope for a federal DREAM Act, or even a New York Dream Act. Don’t even get me started on Texas.

For now, politicians will continue to compete to see who can take the biggest dump on the dreams of hard-working immigrants everywhere.

While that is happening, I hope there are more people like Luis Hernandez.

Photo credit: Manhattan at night by hsosa5150 on stock.xchng.