Many students from around the world attend community colleges, like Long Beach City College, to get the opportunity to transfer to a 4-year University.

The reason for this is that it’s not just the most affordable way but also known to be an easier process to reach academic goals.

Although the process of transferring may be the same for most students, it is quite more difficult for immigrant students due to many different factors.

The factors could be things such as financial hurdles, cultural adjustments, language barriers, but most importantly limited support networks.

Immigrant students might have fewer support networks compared to students who have lived in the country for a long time, making it hard to seek help.

Counseling and advising services have been the hardest part because these students need services tailored to their unique needs and challenges.

The help that they need most is academic planning and career development from advisors who are more aware of their academic challenges, but these counselors tend to be limited. 

Rather than getting the normal treatment for a regular student, advisors should be aware of the background of immigrant students and put in effort to find the best counselors suitable for them, and to also stick by them throughout their academic career in community colleges.

The transferring process to a 4-year university is known to be difficult with the amount of things that need to be done.

Immigrant students with immigrant parents are less likely to have someone in their family who knows what the American college process is like, much less how to transfer to a university from community college. 

 There are struggles that come with this lack of familiarity with the process. If a student doesn’t know what questions to ask their advisor, they cannot get the full support that they need to succeed. 

 This can put the student at risk of missing important deadlines, such as not having the necessary forms completed in time for transfer or not taking a required general education class in time, making students lose their admission to university.

It is already a complicated journey for students who are citizens, but most of them have their sources by having someone to lean on and being able to have a better understanding.

But many immigrants tend to need the help of where to even start or who to speak to.

Without having the sources and the guidance from people who understand where these students are coming from, it could potentially cause them to miss their opportunity to pursue their academic careers by missing important deadlines.

Community colleges, like LBCC,  should be a place where all students including immigrants have a place to find guidance and not struggle to find it.

There are a couple of resources found on the website with different programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals(DACA), but when you come across the site, it tells you that the site is broken or “Page not Found”.

The new program SCAN, which stands for Success and Completion Achievement Network, is the work of counselors and navigators to reach out to students who they believe need help.

This program has the potential of helping this issue, but rather than waiting for peer navigators to reach out to the students, students should have an avenue where they can reach out to peer navigators to help them.

These programs seem helpful and can save a student from struggling, but yet there are very few ways for a student to reach out for help themselves, such as a lack of contact information on the school’s website.

First generation or immigrant college students often face more challenges than students with family who have gone through the American college system. LBCC should increase its outreach for immigrant students and help them achieve their academic goals.