A diverse group of panelists tackled misconceptions about immigration and worked to humanize the concept
The Student Center for Reconciliation and Diversity (SCRD) hosted the third installment to their four-part Active Allyship series on Wednesday. The event, entitled Immigration & Allyship, aimed at educating students on important social issues, including immigration, racial inequity and social justice.
The panel featured Nori Henk, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Sociology at APU, Annibal Jimenez, a graduate student at APU, and Nathaniel Fernandez, an outreach coordinator at the APU Counseling Center. Other panelists included Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, who conducts faith-based work in local immigrant communities, and EJ Smith [not their real name], a graduate student at the University of Southern California and current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program member, who requested to remain anonymous.
By offering professional expertise and sharing personal stories, the panelists tackled misconceptions people have of immigrants and humanized immigrant experiences. They also discussed the difficulties undocumented immigrants face regarding the uncertainity of the future of the DACA program.
The DACA program protects young immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children from being deported. However, since the Trump administration ended the Obama-era program in 2017, the future of roughly 800,000 DACA beneficiaries has remained in limbo while they await a Supreme Court ruling that will determine whether ending the program was lawful.
As soon as Smith found out DACA was being rescinded, he immediately decided to enroll in a masters program.
“I knew that I needed to prepare myself with even more work options,” Smith said.
DACA is currently frozen in time, as it is not accepting new applicants, but has not come to an end. Smith and Jimenez said because of this, recipientes —like themselves— live in constant fear of deportation if the program would come to an abrupt end.
“Most people think DACA students love the program,” Jimenez said. “But in reality, they don’t. It can get revoked in any minute.”
This issue is especially critical in California, which has more immigrants than any other state. The city of Los Angeles itself is among the nation’s most populous and diverse cities, and is home to more than a quarter of the DACA beneficiaries, who are also known as Dreamers.
“If people could understand that immigrants just aren’t all the same and that there are so many ways that the U.S. is involved in reasons that immigrants have to come to a new place, we could have a better understanding of the immigration topic as a whole,” said Amanda Dean, a senior sociology major and SCRD intern who moderated discussion.
Dean emphasized the distinction between migration and immigration. Migration refers to movement from one place to another, while immigration is related to different countries’ decision to regulate and control people’s movements, specifically across nation borders. Dean said it is important to make that distinction as to some degree, everyone experiences migration.
Dean also explained how historically, the U.S. has had the ability to change people’s legal status through the enactment of various laws and policies, based on the country’s needs. This was the case during the intense labor shortage of World War II.
“That gives us a better understanding of what it means to be legal, and how really, no human being can be illegal, because human beings are not quantities,” Dean said. “The progression of U.S. laws and policies shows that your legal status is not fixed.”
Since the 1980 Refugee Act, immigration in the U.S. has been reshaped through an increase of militarization and politicization of the southern border, heightened emphasis on suspected terrorism and low refugee admissions.
The panelists agreed that the biggest misconception about immigrants is that they are “a drain to the system.”
Henk explained this is not true, as immigrants added $2 trillion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016, and $329 billion in tax revenue to state, local and federal taxes annually.
Salvatierra said when immigrants use false papers, they are using social security numbers that are invented. They pay their taxes using these false social security numbers, but the money doesn’t go back to the people that earned it—even if they are able to get legal papers later in the future.
This money is being used to help pay retirement benefits for millions of Americans, according to Salvatierra.
“[Immigrants] are very productive members of society, and if we were to ‘send them away,’ it would be really damaging to our economy,” Henk said.
Adam Garcia, a junior design studies major, said he could empathize with the struggles that some of the panelists voiced. He is a first generation student, and has heard about the difficulty of the immigration process through the first-hand experiences of his parents.
“There are so many people from around the world that go through similar hardships,” Garcia said.
Despite the emotional strain that the immigration process entails, many undocumented immigrants remain confident.
“No citizenship, no paper is going to determine who I am, where I’m going, and that hasn’t stopped me since,” Smith said. “Instead, it presented me with the goals that I needed to see to get more feel for what I need to do to get better. Not just for myself or my community, but for the whole world. And that’s when I saw that I’m being part of the change.”
The SCRD will host its next event in the Active Allyship Series in April, focusing on how students can be better allies to the LGBTQ+ community.