Tom Gorman tells the story of a young woman who immigrated from Mexico and earned her place in America

Sunday, April 2, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

Given the supercharged debate over the nation's immigration policies, I'm chagrined that marching students wave Mexican flags and chant in Spanish while trying to win public support for immigrants. How could that not backfire?

And that's why I want to share the story of another student, a native of Mexico, who proudly waves the American flag.

I was sitting in U.S. District Court a couple of weeks ago when about 60 people from places like Russia, Ethiopia, Japan and Canada were sworn in as U.S. citizens by Magistrate Judge Lawrence R. Leavitt. Then they gave themselves a rousing round of applause.

Among them was 20-year-old Maria Parra-Sandoval, a junior in the honors program at UNLV. She was born in Ixtlan del Rio, about 60 miles northeast of Puerto Vallarta.

When she was very young, her father sneaked into the United States with his father and brothers. He worked at unskilled jobs and sent money home. It wasn't enough to sustain his wife and their three children.

"I lived with poverty all around me," Maria told me with no air of complaint. "Ours was one of the better houses. My dad and grandfather built it from bricks." Just down the street was a cardboard shanty town.

Their house was surrounded by cactus, sunflowers and pine trees.

When they ran out of gas for the stove, they burned firewood. They carried water to the house. Their garden produced chili peppers, melons, tomatoes, limes and grapes.

When Maria was 6, her mother decided to sneak the family into the United States. "My mom wanted the family together, and because we lived in a very poor neighborhood, she wanted to find new opportunities for us."

They left home on a rainy spring evening in 1992. "It was like being on the underground railroad," Maria said. There were no specific plans, just people helping along the way.

Several efforts to cross the border failed; once, they got across but were swiftly swept up by Border Patrol agents and sent back. Finally, in the mountains east of Tijuana, the family crossed on foot, part of a group of 40 immigrants guided by smugglers.

On this side of the border, Maria's family was hidden beneath blankets inside the enclosed bed of a pickup truck. Somehow they evaded detection at Border Patrol checkpoints, and arrived at a safe house in Los Angeles.

The next day they were taken to a grocery store parking lot, where relatives paid the smugglers $2,000 and then drove Maria and her family to Las Vegas. Here they were reunited with Maria's father, who was now a legal U.S. resident and working in the kitchen at the Stardust.

That fall, Maria was enrolled in second grade at Sunrise Acres Elementary School. The teacher, Mary Elizabeth Boyer Martinez, welcomed Maria into her classroom and under her wing. She would become Maria's mentor and guardian angel. Largely because of her, "I love school to this day," Maria said.

Long story short: Maria excelled at school, mastered English and the other subjects, gained legal residency status with her mother and siblings in 2001, graduated near the top of her class at Valley High School, and enrolled at UNLV with the financial help of the state's Millennium Scholarship.

Her school costs are now being picked up by a handful of privately funded scholarships funneled through UNLV. She was admitted into the university's honors program, where she is majoring in political science.

A year ago she attended Harvard's Public Policy and Leadership Conference (so elite that only 50 university students nationally were admitted). This summer, she will be one of about 30 students attending Princeton's Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship program.

In the meantime, she is serving a political communications internship at the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Harry Reid. She rides the Senate tram alongside senators who are debating immigration policy.

This is the still-unfolding story of a quiet, unassuming girl from Ixtlan del Rio who was snuck into the United States for its opportunities.

I don't know where she'll end up. She likes government and politics. She wants to earn a law degree. She'll achieve whatever she puts her mind to, I'm sure.

Maria Parra-Sandoval hasn't forgotten her roots, but is unapologetic about why she and others like her enter the United States. As the nation debates immigration policies, she offers her perspective.

"If my family risked their lives, and mine, to come to this nation, it was to become productive people, not to become a burden. If you are willing to risk your life - and so many people die at the border - they do it because entering the United States is their last resort, just as the Pilgrims risked everything to come here.

"Immigrants risk everything in order to live a peaceful life and to help build a great nation," she told me.

And she waved an American flag.