Rhodes Scholar heading to Oxford after DACA uncertainty

BOSTON (AP) — The first “Dreamer” to be awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship is finally poised to attend the University of Oxford after years of uncertainty about whether the U.S. would allow him to return home as a DACA recipient.

Federal immigration officials last week approved Jin Park’s application to travel to England in the coming weeks, according to his law firm WilmerHale in Boston.

Park, whose family immigrated from South Korea when he was 7 years old, will be joined at Oxford by Santiago Potes, a Miami resident and 2020 graduate of Columbia University in New York who became the second American on DACA status to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship last November, according to the Rhodes Trust.

“We are thrilled that two DACA Rhodes Scholars will be heading to Oxford next month to start their courses, finally knowing they can safely and legally return after their studies to the only homes they know,” said Elliot Gerson, the American secretary for the British organization, which is helping prepare the visas for the two incoming students.

Potes, who graduated from Columbia with degrees in East Asian studies and Medieval and Renaissance studies, hopes to use his time at Oxford to “give back to the United States, which has given me every opportunity to succeed.”

Park, who currently attends Harvard Medical School in Boston, declined to comment Friday until he officially receives a copy of the approval from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Queens, New York, resident was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship in 2018 while attending Harvard as an undergraduate studying molecular and cell biology.

But the then-22-year-old shelved plans to attend Oxford to study migration and political theory as former President Donald Trump attempted to phase out the Obama-era...