COLLEGE GIVES IMMIGRANT A DREAM.

Byline: MARIEL GARZA

SYLMAR - In the one-bedroom apartment where Veronica Garcia and her family live, the only signs of the season are a 2-foot-high artificial Christmas tree and a few holiday knickknacks.

This year, the holiday isn't a big deal. No one was expecting tamales on Christmas Eve or more than a few gifts.

But 20-year-old Veronica, the eldest of four children, isn't complaining. Christmas presents couldn't possibly compare with the gift she's making for herself and for her family - a chance to live the American dream like millions of immigrants before them.

She is in her first semester at California State University, Northridge - the first member of her family to attend a university. Her sisters are following her example while their parents work hard and long to make ends meet.

``It hurts me to see my parents working every day, even Thanksgiving and Christmas,'' Veronica said. ``The best way I can pay them back is getting the best education I can and to make more money than they can do.''

For those born in the United States, even those struggling financially, opportunities to succeed often are taken for granted.

Veronica was not born in the United States. She was born into a poor family in Mexico, where there was no dream, just the reality that if you're born poor, you'll probably die that way.

The only promise of opportunity lies in ``El Norte'' - provided you're not afraid of hard, often unpleasant work.

That's where Veronica's story begins.

At the core, it's a common enough immigrant experience. At 8, she moved to the San Fernando Valley with her mother and two younger sisters. Veronica's father had come to Los Angeles three years before to earn money to send home. That didn't work out as well as hoped - Los Angeles being an expensive place to live - so the rest of the family joined him here.

Now the family lives in a cramped but immaculate apartment in Sylmar, Foothill Boulevard on one side and a freeway on the other.

Perched on the edge of the small love seat in the living room that doubles as the girls' bedroom, Veronica talks about her dreams and hopes.

``I'm focusing on broadcast journalism, but I have a double major in liberal studies because I want to be a teacher. Then I want to go to law school.''

She is heady with the possibilities.

Veronica's father is a janitor who works every day, all day and into the night. Her mother cleans houses in affluent suburban enclaves like Thousand Oaks, a job that makes her bone tired and often not able to do for her own family what she gets paid to do for others.

When she was younger, Veronica sometimes went with her mother to housecleaning jobs and saw the hard work she did, and the chemicals she had to breathe. ``My mother said, If you don't want to do this, then you need to get an education.''

At first, because she couldn't speak English, ``I hated school,'' she said. ``We all did. My sisters and me would cry because that's an age when people make fun of you: Oh, you can't speak English.''

The difficulty of the challenges she faced did not defeat her, but, rather, spurred her on, inspiring her 19-year-old sister, who is taking business administration classes at Mission College.

``It's just the way she does things,'' Victoria said, struggling to put into words what's special about her sister. ``There's nothing that can stop her. Even though she has nothing, she keeps moving on.''

Veronica doesn't mind being the role model, though she says it can be tough sometimes, always doing what's expected.

``I, as an individual, want to do other things. But I must stick to a rote so I can be a role model for my sisters, for my cousins,'' she said, though she can't really think of what other things she would do.

Most days, she works at a local restaurant as a hostess in the morning, then rushes home after the lunch shift to change for school. She takes two buses to get to CSUN, arriving about 4:30, leaving her some time to study.

After her evening classes, she catches a ride home with her father coming back from a job in Moorpark. That's the routine. When she's not at work or at school, she's helping her mother out by keeping the apartment clean, or taking care of her 5-year-old brother, Abraham.

When she was in high school, Veronica worked hard enough to be an honor student, even though there was no guarantee that she would be able to attend college. Because of her status as an undocumented immigrant, Veronica would have to pay out-of-state tuition, which was way beyond her financial means.

Then, it was like an angel stepped forward, in the form of AB 540, a law known as the Dream Act because it allows undocumented immigrants who attended California high schools to pay in-state tuition at state colleges.

The reality is that when Veronica graduates, she still will be undocumented. But that doesn't really faze her.

If she has to go back to Mexico and work for a while until she can get a visa, then that's what she'll do. But she has faith that she'll find a way to keep moving forward when the time comes.

``I think that when I get there, there's going to be something else that happens. That's my dream.''

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Photo:

Veronica Garcia plays with her brother, Abraham, as their parents, Jose and Victoria, watch. Veronica, the eldest child in a family of seven, is attending CSUN.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer