College and Illegal Immigrants: an honest question

So a friend of mine linked to this article, about illegal immigrant kids who do well in school until they realize they won’t be able to get financial aid to attend college, or until they watch this happen to their older siblings or friends, and they drop out and give up. 

Now, to be sure, I’ve never quite understood whether this means that they then just join their dad in the day labor line outside the local Home Depot, or whether they join mom as an under-the-table nanny or maid, or whether they get the same kind of fake ID that’ll get them a job where the employer doesn’t use e-verify, or what exactly it is that they do.  And when the papers report on a student who, against all odds, perseveres and makes it through college, where exactly does the tuition money come from?  More work on false IDs?  No one seems to care.

But in any case, what I really don’t understand is why these kids put themselves through all this hardship when they (at least the Mexicans, who are generally the ones featured in such reporting, and most of the others as well) could get a quality college education for the price of a ticket back home.  Public universities in Mexico are free, at least for Mexican citizens!  No financial aid necessary!  (except for some family support, possibly, for living costs, I suppose.) 

Is it fear of striking out on their own?  Join up with some other “expats”/”returnees”/whatever you want to label American-educated Mexicans.  And, after all, that’s the age when adventurous living abroad is highly-prized.

Or is it fear of missing out on a future amnesty?  Do these students stay in the U.S. based on an expectation that if they wait long enough, they’ll be granted the legal right to work here, which they’d lose if they returned back to Mexico?

Or does the Mexican government impose further admission restrictions, such as the demand for a Mexican high school diploma and intentionally exclude these kids, whose parents they’ve likewise been happy to push to the U.S.?

Some time back, the Trib featured even more pityable cases, college graduates who couldn’t put their degrees to use — like the Latino Studies student, and the International Business major, who surely would be well positioned for an ex-pat-like position in a Spanish-speaking country but instead sat in the U.S. and waited (and worked under the table?), with the reporter, at any rate, not reporting on any efforts to find work abroad.

And I’m only midly sympathetic to the claim that “the US is the only country they know.” Their own parents were perfectly willing to uproot themselves to a new country, without knowing the language, without knowing anyone there.  These young people know Spanish, have extended family in their home country, have a strong education and an advantage in English fluency.  Yes, that’s harsh, and an amnesty, under the right conditions, might still be appropriate, but in the meantime, what a waste not to think of alternatives abroad!