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Peabody’s Doug Santos has been granted his green card and will play football at Assumption College this fall.
By ANNE MARIE TOBIN
It’s official. Doug Santos, Peabody’s all-time leading rusher will be playing football at Assumption College this fall.
Santos has been known to clear many hurdles in the form of would-be-tacklers on the football field. Wednesday, however, the 19-year-old cleared the biggest hurdle of all, on or off the gridiron, when a Boston Immigration Court judge granted his request for a green card.
The green card establishes proof that Santos has been officially granted immigration benefits, which includes permission to legally reside in and take employment in the United States.
In Santos’ case, it also means that he is now eligible to receive a financial aid package that had been promised to him by Assumption College.
Santos had signed a letter of intent to play at Assumption, but during the financial aid process, he learned that he was ineligible to receive the promised package without a green card, leaving Santos between a rock and a hard place.
Santos’ foster father and football coach Mark Bettencourt said they believed that the matter had been handled by the Department of Children and Families, as Santos had a social security card and a job. From that point, it was a mad scramble to put all the pieces in order and obtain a hearing date, which was held at at the Boston Immigration Court in the John F. Kennedy Building in Boston.
“I cannot tell you how excited we all are and what a relief it is to finally be able to put this behind us,” said Bettencourt. “I don’t know who expedited this process, I have my ideas, but we are all so grateful to all of the people who supported Doug through this process — our friends and family and those who worked hard to make this a reality.
“This is the ending we were hoping for,” Bettencourt added.
Bettencourt said that, according to Santos, the days leading up to the hearing were full of excitement, anticipation and anxiety.
“I cannot imagine how Doug felt answering questions,” he said. “He said wondered every time if was giving the right answers. It was very stressful to say the least, but that’s all behind us.
“Doug has made several visits to Assumption and he said he never quite felt as if he were equal to the other freshmen, but that now that the process is over, I am sure he will feel a lot differently.”
Santos does not know whether or not he will seek U.S. citizenship.
“We will cross that bridge when we are done celebrating this happy ending of a long and frustrating process,” Bettencourt said. “It’s like winning the pennant. You celebrate the pennant first, and worry about what you are going to do in the World Series later, so that’s what we are doing.”