We need America to hear our voices in support of immigrant rights. We've opened this space as another opportunity for you to share your struggle with others around the country-- SEND YOUR stories, resource tips, ideas, photos and FEEDBACK to Nicola Wells, nwells@communitychange.org
College life, for any undergraduate student, is often met with challenges that can sometimes seem larger than life. Those same challenges can be even more burdensome for undocumented immigrants on campuses across the U.S.
Kent Wong, editor of Underground Undergrads and director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, is joined by Mariana Zamboni, who attended college as an undocumented immigrant. The two discuss how the nation’s immigration debate, for some students, shapes the college experience.
From ColorLines - When an Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested -
By Julianne Ong Hing and Seth Wessler
BEHIND THE THICK GLASS THAT RUNS THE LENGTH of the Yuba County Jail’s visitation corridor, Tatyana Mitrohina’s eyes glisten, and then fill with tears as she recounts the last time she saw her son. “During the visit, he climbed into my arms and fell asleep with his head on my shoulder while I walked around with him,” she remembers. Two months after that visit, Mitrohina was sent to the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, California, hours away from her 2-year-old son, who is in foster care. She was convicted on charges that she had hit him. While she does not deny the charges, she does say she had expected to be released from jail and to get counseling and start to rebuild her life with her child. But with the increasing collaboration between local authorities and federal immigration officials, Mitrohina found that she would not get that second chance. The government had slated her to be deported to Russia, the country she left as a teenager.
“When I first got here, I would break down crying once a week, just thinking about everything that’s happened,” says Mitrohina, who is 30 years old.
Immigration and child welfare advocates say that Mitrohina’s story—the loss of her child, her incarceration and detention, and her struggle to care for her child—represents a new and dangerous terrain at the intersection of three government systems—deportation, incarceration and foster care—that are tearing apart poor families and families of color.
While rates of detention and deportation have increased exponentially in recent years, what is happening to immigrant families is not a new story. It has been played out time and again in the lives of Black families who, in the past 20 years, have faced an increase in drug-related arrests and sentences that place Black parents in jail and their children in foster care. As immigrant families find themselves targeted by a combination of public policies, it is becoming clear that their experiences and those of Black families, women and children are troublingly similar.
Today, I read this article from Latina Lista about Tom Horne, a school superintendent in Tuscon, Arizona who wants to do away with an ethnic studies program at a local High School. The classes he’s looking to eliminate include African American studies, Native American studies, Mexican American/Raza studies and Pan Asian studies.
Horne, who claims to have a long history of “opposing ethnic studies and gender studies” says that the decision is “not based on a question of academics or education, but ‘values.’”
The classes he’s proposing for elimination have been proven to help Latino students at the high school perform at higher levels.
Countless studies of such classes have shown that such programs don’t just enrich the curriculum but broadens the knowledge base of the students and fosters a sense of pride.
On a personal level, I am terrified by this justification. What he is proposing is a return to close-minded isolationist education that limits worldviews and works to keep people in agreement by keeping them in ignorace. Not only am I offended, as a woman, by his proud opposition to “gender studies”, but as a student of ethnic studies myself I am outraged that he is inserting “values” into his argument.
It is tactics like this that are working to re-institutionalize bigotry, mysoginy and racism. By eliminating these types of learning opportunities for young people, Horne is sending a message that Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans and Asian Americans are not are part of our “values”.
Whatever happened to the melting pot? Whatever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What is my country heading towards - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness only if you can prove that your values match ours?
Is anyone else outraged by this?
If so, take ACTION!
Horne will be in Tucson tomorrow in order to talk “about reasons TUSD should abolish its Ethnic Studies department”. Prior to his press conference, however, community members will gather in opposition to this deluded strategy of axing programs that lift up minority students.
Community members representing the four TUSD Ethnic Studies Departments (AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES, NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES, MEXICAN AMERICAN/RAZA STUDIES, and PAN ASIAN STUDIES) will be holding a PRESS CONFERENCE in SUPPORT of ETHNIC STUDIES
Check out this video, featuring Samantha Contreras who is now a scholar at the Drum Major Institue for Public Policy. However, Samantha’s future wasn’t also so bright…
Despite her families attempts for legal status, Samantha graduated from high school while still undocumented. She quickly realized the barriers facing immigrants in the United States - she couldn’t drive, couldn’t work and couldn’t achieve her dream of attending college.
Watch the video to find out how her dream became a reality…
Yesterday, this article ran in the LA Times, discussing the effects of ICE raids on children.
As federal authorities expand immigration enforcement in California and throughout the nation, teachers, mental health professionals and immigrant rights advocates are raising concerns about the effect on children like Yesenia who are U.S. citizens.
Last month, a California congresswoman held a hearing on the raids’ consequences for children.
“The administration must take the necessary steps to ensure that these raids are conducted in a humane fashion and they are protective to kids, not harmful,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma).
During the hearing, an elementary school principal from the Bay Area city of San Rafael, testified that local immigration raids in 2007 traumatized children and resulted in high absenteeism and low test scores.
Last month’s ICE raid in Postville, Iowa has had a tremendous impact on the small community. Watch the video, produced by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, to hear just a few stories of the raid’s continuing shock waves…
Arthur Mkoyan’s 4.0 grade-point average has made him a valedictorian at Bullard High School in Fresno and qualified him to enter one of the state’s top universities.
But while his classmates look forward to dorm food and college courses this fall, Arthur Mkoyan may not make it.
He is being deported.
How do we explain a policy that is deporting the best and brightest of America’s future?
Aren’t we a country founded on the belief in education?
We will be paying for this failed policy for years to come.
Yesterday, I posted about two raids - one from Postville, Iowa and the other from Kentucky. In both communities, families were split up, children separated from parents and, in some cases, children were even left without caretakers.
Thanks to our friends at Citizen Orange, we just learned that today, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick broke his promise. He has refused to allowing students without legal status to have access to higher education in MA. He is blocking these students from paying in-state tuition and fees for the upcoming Fall semester.
This decision devastated the hopes of many graduating seniors and their families, friends and communities. Making the news even more difficult, Patrick had previously described providing undocumented immigrant students with in-state costs as “the right thing to do”. Patrick even went as far as to promise in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students during his gubernatorial campaign. We urge you to take action and let Governor Patrick know that we will not stand for this betrayal!
Click here to send a letter to the Boston Globe denouncing Patrick’s decision
And, if you’re feeling even more ambitious, give Gov. Patrick’s office a call @ (617) 725-4005
