Prove To Be Hispanic For Scholarships?

Ive never heard of this, but my cousin is convinced it is true.
We are Cuban, German, Native American among some other things… I know Native American nearly always needs some documentation (which sucks…. its really hard to prove even if you are active in the community), but hispanic seems odd to me. Like, if your family is hispanic, but has been raised in America for generations, how would you prove your ties (Ive heard of this with SSN too, but Ive never been ased to prove it)

Tara:

Different scholarship programs have different eligibility rules. Just like one scholarship organization might require all eligible applicants to have a 3.0 high school GPA, another organization can have rules that relate to ethnic heritage. It’s up to the scholarship organization to determine how they want to enforce the rules, and how they want to verify eligibility.

As an example, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund is perhaps the largest and most active Hispanic scholarship organization in the US. Their rules state that:

“You or your family must be descended from at least one of the following countries: Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Cuba, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic. Students from Brazil are eligible to apply.”

That’s their rules – other organizations do things differently.

How do you demonstrate that you are descendent from one or more of these countries? Let’s put it this way – MOST scholarship organizations employ an honor system – they rarely find the need to resort to investigations. However, if a grantor found out (somehow) that you had misrepresented yourself, there’s a good chance (depending on the amount of money involved), that they would seek criminal fraud charges against you – unless you agreed to quickly, and quietly pay the money back.

If you are interested in Native American tribal enrollment, you can find a helpful discussion here: http://www.ntjrc.org/native/enrollment.asp explaining how to establish your eligibility.

I hope that helps you – good luck!