A photo of a university graduate wearing a mortarboard and gown next to her farmworker parents in a fruit field has been widely circulated on social media.

Erica Alfaro, a 29-year-old who has just graduated with a Master’s degree at San Diego State University, posed for a graduation shoot in California strawberry fields where her parents have worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week.

“With love, I dedicate my Master’s to my parents. Their sacrifice to come to this country to give us a better future was well worth it,” Ms Alfaro said as she shared her graduation photos on her Facebook and Instagram accounts earlier this month.

Ms Alfaro got a bachelor’s degree from California State University in 2017 after becoming a mother at 15 and surviving domestic violence.

She graduated with her master’s degree in education, with a concentration in counselling, from San Diego State University on 19 May this year.

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Ms Alfaro’s parents do not have any formal education and she is the first member of her family to attend graduate school.

“The reason I share my story is because I want to encourage undocumented single mothers, and people who suffer from domestic violence, to get an education and achieve their goals,” Ms Alfaro told CNN.

“These photos represent many of us. Our parents came to this country to give us a better life and we wouldn’t be here without them.”

She said her parents are farmers who were never able to go to school – adding that her mother, Teresa Herrera, 51, and father, Claudio Alfaro, 50, are from Oaxaca, Mexico, and speak Mixtec, an indigenous language of Mexico. They both migrated to America separately and met later.

Ms Alfaro herself was born in Fresno, California, but brought up in Tijuana as her parents moved back to Mexico in order for her mother to get US residency.