In the United States, about 43.5 million people owe $1.6 trillion in student debt. According to the lead researcher in higher education finance at the Jain Family Institute, Laura Beamer, 18% to 20% of these borrowers are Latino. In addition, Latinos borrow more frequently. In this way, they become one of the hardest harmed with debt.

One of these cases is that of Iliana Panameño, she wanted to do a master's degree in Social Work and, for that, she returned to her parents' house and took out a loan in her name to enroll in the School of Social Work at Boston University. Iliana currently pays off about $1,500 in federal and private loans.

In an interview, she stated that “the pause in student loans (payments) was a great relief”, referring to the freezing of payments that happened during the crisis of the covid-19 pandemic. However, she still has doubts about her financial future and whether there will be the possibility of one day retiring, for example.

While she's not in such a bad shape, as she's able to help her parents and serve as the communications manager for GreenRoots, a non-profit environmental justice organization, she still voices concerns such as not being able to imagine buying a house on her own. She also airs the fears of her peers who have also fallen into student debt, stating that many of them don't feel confident they can raise a family, "Will we be working forever to pay them off?" she said.

The leader of uAspire, a non-profit organization that advises marginalized communities in Boston about college, Jaclyn Piñero, said that “lack of resources – not just financial, but knowledge – really is at the heart of the problem”. She stated that most students in the Latino community don't know anyone who has gone down this path before, so they don't have knowledge about the situation.

Anna Rosario, the daughter of Dominican parents with strong religious faith, was the first in her family to attend college. She enrolled at Manhattan College, a private Catholic liberal arts university in the Bronx, whose tuition is $46,100.00 for an academic year, according to her “it was a normal thing to go to a private institution”, she said, “I just went with the flow.” Later, one of her sisters began attending the same college, forcing the family to take out more private loans to support themselves.

Several other stories highlight the difficulty of Latinos in attending higher education in the United States and the debts they contract in search of a better life. With the return of debt payments, the situation of Latinos can become even more critical, accumulating with other debts, such as mortgages, and forcing them to choose which debts to pay first.