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By: Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times ~ Sept. 7, 2017
Last month, California college student Miriam Juan stepped off a plane in Guadalajara, Mexico, and hugged her grandparents for the first time in 17 years. She had no words at first, just smiles and tears.
An immigrant brought to the U.S. from Mexico at age 4, Juan was able to make the trip thanks to a little known perk of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era initiative that shielded 800,000 “Dreamers” from deportation.
Under the program, young immigrants without legal status could apply for permission to take short trips out of the country for humanitarian, educational or employment purposes, and then return legally to the U.S.
No longer.
“The U.S. has now robbed us of that,” she said.
Juan traveled with the California-Mexico Studies Center (CMSC), a nonprofit that has arranged for about 160 DACA students to travel to Mexico in the last 3 years. Along with allotted time for family visits, the trips featured meetings with Mexican officials and seminars on Mexican history and politics.
The CMSC canceled another trip to Mexico planned for December after this week’s announcement that protections would be stripped from DACA students in six months. The administration has asked Congress to write a law during that period to resolve the issue.
“The world changed yesterday for this population of students,” said Armando Vazquez-Ramos, coordinator of the California-Mexico Studies Center and a Chicano studies professor at Cal State Long Beach.
Donald Trump’s Cowardice on ‘Dreamers’
President Trump didn’t even have the guts to do the job himself. Instead, he hid in the shadows and sent his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do the dirty work of telling the country that the administration would no longer shield from deportation 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children.
Mr. Sessions, a longtime anti-immigrant hard-liner, was more than up to the task. In a short, disingenuous speech, he said a program set up by President Barack Obama in 2012 – known as DACA, for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – was a lawless policy that “yielded terrible humanitarian consequences” and denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of American citizens. (Mr. Trump echoed these claims in a statement released by the White House.) Mr. Sessions called DACA “an unconstitutional exercise of authority” and said “failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and terrorism.”
False, false, false and false.
SAVE THE DATE!
The 2nd Annual Marco A. Firebaugh California-Mexico Dreamers Fund Drive
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The California-Mexico Studies Center in collaboration with Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC), Las Cafeteras, Casa Fina, and Ernie G. present“American Dreamers”, an evening of performance, music, and comedy in benefit of the 2nd Annual Marco A. Firebaugh California-Mexico Dreamers Fund Drive. The 2nd Annual MAF Dreamers fund drive is organized to celebrate Marco A. Firebaugh’s 51st birthday on Oct. 13, and to raise funds for the California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program.
The event will feature the participation and solo performances by Ernie G., Raul Pacheco ( Ozomatli), Justino Mora (co-founder of Undocumedia), Josefina Lopez (Casa Fina), Sergio Arau, Yareli Arizmendi, Gregorio Luke, Isis Avalos, Raul Pacheco (Santa Cecilia), and also a special musical performance by the Susie Hansen Jazz Latin Band.
Location:
Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC)
514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Time: 8 pm – 11pm
General Admission: $50
Dreamers and/or students: $25
For more information and to buy tickets, visit the LATC events website.
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The CMSC has successfully provided the unique opportunity to study abroad in Mexico to over 160 Dreamers since 2014, through the CMSC’s California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program.
However, due to the termination of DACA, the CMSC will not be able to continue the program, aborting the applications of 75 Dreamers that were planning to return to Mexico with our Winter 2017 program.
Notwithstanding this set back, the CMSC will continue its mission and the following projects already in motion, through the funds raised by our 2nd Annual Marco A. Firebaugh California-Mexico Dreamers Fund Drive:
The California-Mexico Studies Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, whose mission is to research, develop, promote, and establish policies and programs between higher educational institutions and cultural organizations that will enhance the teaching, mobility and exchange of faculty, students, and professionals between California and the U.S. with Mexico and other nations in the Western Hemisphere. |
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