From Mexico to speaker at York College graduation: Her inspiring story of perseverance
During York College of Pennsylvania's commencement Wednesday, Jenifer Jazmin Hernandez-Vargas wove her graduating student remarks into an empowering speech about overcoming stereotypes and the low expectations of others to attain goals.
Her story began in southern Mexico with her father’s dream to better his children’s future.
Jenifer left her hometown and headed for the U.S. border with her father and mother when she was 3. She remembers this day because it was recorded by her grandmother in a photo that is cut out and framed with flowers, words and a picture of her grandfather on the top of her graduation cap.
In the picture is a little girl who was asked to put on a special dress by her grandmother to celebrate Carnival, a Mexican cultural holiday. Her grandmother, who took the picture, wanted to spend this special day with her granddaughter because she knew it might be a very long time before she would see her again.
She opened her graduation gown to the audience early in the speech to reveal a dress like the one she wore when she left Mexico. "I will never be ashamed to show my roots and where it all started," she said.
“I traveled illegally with my parents to the United States,” she said.
Jenifer remembers some things about living in California. Her first memory “wasn’t the best living in a trailer full of five families,” she said.
During her speech surrounded by the cavernous M&T Field House full of hundreds of students and their families, she expanded her story, ”I knew my parents had risked their lives crossing the border, working under the blazing sun in the fields to provide me with a better future.”
Jenifer went on to describe family life in her early years. “The time my parents spent with me are stretched thin. As much as they wanted to provide for their children, they could not, simply because they spent their lives working from sun up to sun down to provide my sister and me a better future. At age 5, I took care of my younger sister…”
“My biggest role models are my parents,” Jenifer said, adding, “despite their long work days, making less than minimum wage, sweat, body aches and pains, they never failed to smile and let me know it’s going to be all worthwhile in the end when they saw their first born daughter walk the stage on graduation.”
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"Growing up, my sister and I never had materialistic things that other children may have, but what we had was far more valuable. Instead, my parents provided me with the special gifts I will cherish forever: The gift of a strong work ethic, the gift of resilience and will to succeed."
By the third grade, Jenifer was living in York and going to school. One day, her teacher asked the class what they would like to be when they grew up. “I answered with a big smile: a lawyer.”
The teacher “instantly, bluntly, shared that because I was born in Mexico I would not be going to college,” she said, adding that it’s “a memory that lives endlessly in my head … my smile was turned upside down … as a third grader I was puzzled, I had no knowledge of what an illegal immigrant was or why I couldn’t go to college.”
The moment wasn’t lost on Jenifer’s father, who started proceedings to obtain citizenship for Jenifer and her mother, but it wasn’t easy. “The first lawyer took their money and didn’t help at all, the second lawyer didn’t help at all, and the third lawyer … he actually helped,” she said.
Jenifer became a U.S. citizen when she was 11.
Graduating from William Penn Senior High School, Jenifer said that she is grateful for the York College Community Opportunity Scholarship Program that helped make her education funding possible.
The day Jenifer was notified to give the graduating student remarks, she was studying into the early morning, “5 a.m. came around and it was time for my dad to get ready to head to work. He stopped in front of me, kissed me on the forehead and said ‘I’m proud of you.'”
Jenifer said that she would be the first in her family on "both her father and mother's side to not just graduate high school but also graduate college."
She plans to take her LSAT tests for law school this spring and hopes to apply to law school in 2024, working towards becoming an immigration lawyer. “I know how hard the immigration process is and how many corrupt lawyers there are … taking money from families who don’t understand the process,” she said.
Jennifer said she was nervous before telling her story before hundreds of classmates and families, which she described as a “predominantly white institution,” adding, “our journeys are all different.”
“Our motivations for our futures are all different. My motivations are endless as I overcame every stereotype that was placed on me. No matter what stereotypes or statistics are placed on you, you can overcome them,” Jenifer said shortly before ending her speech to robust applause.
I have captured life through the lens since 1983, and am currently a visual journalist with the USA Today Network. You can reach me at pkuehnel@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Story of perseverance: From Mexico to York College graduation speaker
