Contronym and Controversy by Dr. Michael Olivas

Important read by University of Houston - Downtown President Michael Olivas on the situation that DACA students find themselves in today in the wake of Trump's election to the presidency.  I quote from within.

And I cannot promise these students that positive results will come of all this. I have urged them to be careful in expressing themselves in ways that might give rise to thermodynamic reactions, as have begun to surface. Getting arrested and convicted of any transgressions would give real rise to possibilities of deportation. And they should be careful about using social media in a way that might expose their parents to possible harm. I will not urge them to march into the valley of death or to put themselves at risk, although I will agree that the peaceful marchas galvanized public attention in 2006. American citizens who urge this option for DREAMers should examine their consciences and not encourage these students to put themselves in harm's way. At the very least, we should do no harm.

So what to do? He suggests that we advocate vigorously for comprehensive immigration reform. Thanks to Jaime Puente for sharing.

Angela Valenzuela 

Contronym and Controversy

It's doubtful that sanctuary proposals for immigrant students will provide actual sanctuary or create any genuine change, argues Michael A. Olivas, who calls on campuses to take much more meaningful actions.

By

Michael A. Olivas

November 29, 2016

 

 

I do not live in a bubble, and one of the ways I work things out is to write. So I have put this piece together as a means of expiating my own grief over the results of the recent presidential election.
At first, I wanted to keep my mourning private, especially as my current role as a college president requires me to tread carefully and not give an institutional patina to my personal thoughts. I have also not wanted to invite the various trolls who consider my views like catnip. But I have come to the view that silence will probably cause greater harm to our country's immigrant students, particularly those "DREAMers" -- the hundreds of thousands of students in the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who were brought to this country as children and have been allowed to attend college. The 1982 Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe allowed them to stay in school, while DACA gave them employment authorization, lawful presence and Social Security numbers. It is by no means legalization, but it has been a transformative program while Congress has fiddled over immigration reform.
Indeed, I have dedicated my entire life to many ideals, but the ones that matter the most were repudiated on election night. Since then, I have arranged over a dozen conference calls with DREAMers, immigration lawyers, college presidents and reporters. Many know I helped write the Texas statutes that give many of the DREAMers resident Texas tuition and financial aid. Inasmuch as I have taught higher education law and also immigration law for 35 years, these are my fields. I have won many more contests in this terrain than I have lost, but this one hurts, and I feel as if we all let down my students, a dereliction of duty that I feel deeply. I fear for the DACA students, many of them in my own institution, who placed their lives and hopes in higher education and the polity. I urged them to trust we would do the right thing if they took responsibility for their own lives by studying and coming forward. They have done so, but now we have not held up our part of the bargain.
In the wake of the election, a number of colleges and universities are declaring themselves "sanctuary campuses," saying they will limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. However, the various proposals for carving out sanctuary campuses have occasioned even more vexation for me, and this viral-fed option is what finally moved me to write this article.
These well-intentioned efforts to establish a sanctuary use the term in its root ecclesiastic meanings, such as providing safe harbor. But from whom?
"Sanctuary" is also a contronym -- an example of a single word that has opposite meanings. ("Sanction" is another.) To many folks, the term depicts a defiance of law and serves as a trope for unauthorized immigration and liberal pieties. That it has become tinged with racist and anti-Mexican sentiment renders the term even more poisonous. One person's safe harbor is another person's harboring, in the dueling metaphors, if not the actual immigration law.
My view on these proposals is that they provide a chimerical outlet for people who are frustrated and have no other pathways to ameliorate the situation. But the term "sanctuary" is a term that is too fraught with restrictionist meanings or misunderstandings about the difference between "defying the law" or choosing not to implement discretionary practices, for policy, efficacy or other reasons. Worse, it has no legal meaning and the admonitions are vague and impossible to implement, which will only frustrate people more.
I have urged all those people who have called me to be very cautious in suggesting that a legal cocoon is possible or even needed for students -- who, after all, are not lawbreakers. Of course, institutions should provide support and services, as they would for all their students, especially vulnerable ones. But exacting pledges that cannot be kept will do no one any good.
And there are longstanding rules of engagement, or, in this context, nonengagement in higher education, such as the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy on such enforcement. As it notes, schools and colleges are exceedingly low priorities, and forms of this policy have been in place for many years. Virtually no campus has ever been raided for students in unauthorized status or undocumented campus workers, and they are unlikely to be.
But just as I cannot tell you how to react to any rollbacks of the Affordable Care Act, I cannot tell people what could happen and what the alternatives are. I know it will not be good, if for no other reason than it has already exposed vulnerable populations -- who are not "criminal," and who actually may be lawfully present (such as DACA holders) or in legal status (such as F-1 students from Muslim countries).
And I cannot promise these students that positive results will come of all this. I have urged them to be careful in expressing themselves in ways that might give rise to thermodynamic reactions, as have begun to surface. Getting arrested and convicted of any transgressions would give real rise to possibilities of deportation. And they should be careful about using social media in a way that might expose their parents to possible harm. I will not urge them to march into the valley of death or to put themselves at risk, although I will agree that the peaceful marchas galvanized public attention in 2006. American citizens who urge this option for DREAMers should examine their consciences and not encourage these students to put themselves in harm's way. At the very least, we should do no harm.
Feel-good actions and solidarity are fine and have an important place in the civil-rights narrative. But I do not hold out hope that the sanctuary proposals will make any genuine change or provide actual sanctuary -- whatever that empty vessel means to anyone on either side of the issue. And so I prefer more meaningful actions, such as working with student groups and their supporters: advocacy groups, bar associations, social service agencies, philanthropies and the usual support infrastructures for colleges and communities. The University of Houston Law Center, where I have spent most of my professional life, has stepped up, and my colleagues and law students are providing technical assistance and advice, as have many of my immigration law professor colleagues.
We will know more closer to the change of administrations, and all of us should keep perspective so as not to frighten or to give false hope to these students, who have kept their part of the bargain. And we should work to support those who do this over the long haul, such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center, which have posted useful FAQs.
I ride with my students in the university's elevators every day, and it always is a life-affirming experience, as so many are first-generation students, immigrants and students of color. When they recognize me, they relate their experiences and their triumphs and concerns. In the last two weeks, they have actually cheered me up -- not for the first time. I have dedicated my entire life to them, and they have reciprocated. One of them sensed my own dread and said to me, "Llegamos tan cerca (We came very close)."
What can we do? We still have more than 20 states in this country that provide resident tuition for the undocumented. But the students' trajectory would clearly be altered if DACA were abolished or allowed to expire. It would be a foolish and tragic policy to demonize and deport these DREAMers, even as their parents have been criminalized in the narrative. We need these students, and they surely need us now. Can't we all agree that comprehensive immigration reform is overdue 30 years since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986? If we want to do something constructive, such advocacy has never been more necessary.
That will be a tremendous fight, under the circumstances. But these students in whom we have invested should be at the front of that line, when Congress recognizes its responsibilities. That is where we should all focus our efforts.

Five-year-old Dahlia Zabrano-Tercero at a July vigil for young Central American migrants in California. David Maung/EPA

Great article by USC doctoral student Stephanie Canizales.  Her research shows, among other things, that while the challenges these children face are significant, their resiliency is, too.  -Angela

 

August 2014, 6.21am BST

Life for child migrants is even harder beyond the US border

Between 2003 and 2011, 8,000 to 40,000 unaccompanied migrant children from Central America were stopped every year on the southern border of the US. When this number boomed to more than 57,000 during the first nine months of 2014, president Barack Obama announced an “urgent humanitarian situation requiring a unified and coordinated Federal response” at the border.

In early July, Obama asked Congress for $3.7bn in emergency spending to increase man power and surveillance at the border, and expand facilities and legal services for detained children. Later in July, Obama met with the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, from which many of these children come.

There have been many debates about the causes of this surge of child migrants, as well as the best strategies for addressing the trend along the border and abroad. But there has been little if any discussion about what happens to child migrants who successfully enter undetected. We can only speculate on the consequences of the US’s failure to address the crisis.

Since the summer of 2012, I have conducted observations and interviews with Guatemalan Maya young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 who arrived as unaccompanied minors between four and 19 years ago. My research shows that violence and poverty are not things of the past for unaccompanied Central American children who come of age in the shadows.

Life in Los Angeles

Although it is violence and poverty that push children to emigrate, many whom I’ve worked with report that a big motivation is the lack of education and job opportunities to escape these conditions, and the replication of their own suffering in the lives of younger siblings.

Arriving between the ages of 12 and 17 without a parent or guardian awaiting them, unaccompanied Guatemalan children enter Los Angeles’s low-wage workforce to support the families they left behind. Many enter the garment industry where they work 11-hour days for up to six days per week without a break, proper lighting or ventilation.

A young garment worker in his or her first weeks on the job might make $85 per week for anywhere between 58 and 66 hours of labour. Over time, these young people make between $280 and $420 per week. Children work feverishly to make the most of their two cents-per-button and six cents-per-seam wages, a workday that is no less physically exhausting as it is mentally and emotionally. Legal status, age and ethnic discrimination, and often language barriers keep children in the most vulnerable work conditions.

Migrant children go to great lengths and endure physical and emotional pain to pay their living expenses, repay the debt of their migration (which is upward of $4,000) and send money to expectant parents and siblings. In one case, an 18-year-old who had lived in the US for five years at the time of our meeting said he puts all of his money toward rent and his family, saving only five dollars per week for himself. All the while, children feel depression, isolation, and a longing to be with their families again.

Trapped in the margins

The young people we’ve interviewed say education is the only way out of their circumstances. But many are unable to attend school due to work schedules or unable to afford continuous enrollment in English classes. Those who make it to class do so with tired eyes and little energy left to give.
Life is particularly tough for Guatemalan Maya youth who primarily speak indigenous languages such as K’iche and K’anjobal. In the US, these young migrants learn Spanish at work or in their communities. The transition from indigenous language to Spanish and finally to English often requires the repetition of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and results in years of “retraso” (setback). Of the approximately 100 unaccompanied young adults I have met, only one in his early 30s has completed high school.

When it comes to access to services, unaccompanied child migrant workers transition into young adulthood under impoverished and exploitative conditions, without the support of parents and guardians. The pressures of financial responsibility, isolation, and cultural dislocation push some youth into drugs and alcohol, others to isolation and depression, and others as far as suicide. The need for support services is great, but their availability is sparse.

Though many new services are now opening due to heightened attention to unaccompanied migrants, there are very few existing services that cater to the settled population, particularly those older than 18 years of age and the indigenous language speakers.

Support services available during business hours are inaccessible for those working for their own survival and those of families abroad. Fear of deportation hinders young people’s confidence in seeking professional, legal and financial services. Medical services are perceived as luxury and sought out only after weeks or months of discomfort or pain.

Reform needed

These youth recognised their marginality but are not paralysed by it. Since summer 2012, I have witnessed the launch of book clubs, community gardening groups, sustained involvement in an informal support group, which I have called Voces de Esperanza (Voices of Hope) in my work, and commitment to the local church.

A young migrant at McAllen Border Patrol Station in Texas, where thousands have flooded across the border. Rick Loomis /Pool/EPA

While debate rages about the numbers of children now arriving at the Texas border, countless children have already entered the US and are now young adults, forging a life in the margins. Rather than stalling immigration reform in the US, this reality should press the government to move forward confidently.

In a recent report I recommend providing legal protection based on the length of stay. US immigration policy geared toward the inclusion of undocumented youth, such as the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act which was proposed in 2001 and the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals signed in 2012, require they meet education or potential military service requirements.

Though most of the unaccompanied migrant youth do not meet these requirements, they have contributed to the US economy for many years, build their local communities and aspire to a full life in the US, but lack the resources to thrive. The time to act is now.

Ala. Immigration Law Puts Squeeze on Schools

Mothers arrive to pick up their children from Flowers School in Montgomery, Ala. Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration. Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home, afraid that sending the kids to school would draw attention from authorities.
—Dave Martin/AP

By Jaclyn Zubrzycki | Ed Week
October 7, 2011

Alabama school districts are reeling from the impact of the state’s tough, new immigration law and a federal court ruling upholding a portion of the statute that requires schools to report on the immigration status of their students.

That requirement flies in the face of long-standing practice in Alabama and other states, as well as recent federal guidance that collecting such data would have a chilling effect on student enrollment and therefore would violate undocumented students’ right to public education as recognized by U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

And while Alabama administrators have taken steps to reassure families that children would not be denied admission, thousands of Hispanic students were reported absent in the days after the law went into effect Sept. 29. Local officials also worry that continued absences could hurt enrollment-based state education aid to schools and districts.

Eric Mackey, director of School Superintendents of Alabama, said Alabama educators are in a difficult position. “We want to make sure they’re following federal law ... and state law. We’ve been told there is a way to do both, but you have to walk a very creaky tightrope, so you don’t lean too far one way or the other.”

Alabama is unique in requiring schools to check students’ immigration status, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Texas, California, and Arizona—where a new immigration law last year raised concerns about potential indirect impacts on immigrant students—officials say schools are authorized to verify students’ residency, but not their immigration or citizenship status. Jenny LaCoste-Caputo, spokeswoman for the Texas Association of School Administrators, said collecting immigration data is “not the business of schools” in Texas.
Opposition Continues

National education, labor, and civil rights groups have been speaking out against the law.

Read on...

Students' Immigration Status To Be Coded With "0" or "1" in Ala.

By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
August 3, 2011

By guest blogger Alexandra Rice

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley proudly called the state's new immigration law the "strongest immigration law in the country," but some say it goes too far. The law, signed by the governor, a Republican, in June and currently being challenged in court, still gives all students the right to enroll in schools regardless of their immigration status. But now public schools are required to report the status of each student to the state department of education. When doing this, schools will code each child a "0" or a "1".

Using a flow chart sent out in a memorandum by the Alabama state superintendent, schools will determine how to code each child. The law, though, does not go into effect until Sept. 1, so most students will be exempt from it until the following school year, said Malissa Valdes, a spokeswoman for the Alabama Department of Education, because school starts there in August.

Those students coming into the state's schools after Sept. 1 will be asked to provide their original birth certificate or a certified copy of it. If parents can't provide a birth certificate or choose not to, they will be sent a letter asking for supplemental documentation regarding the child's immigration status. They will have a 30-day window to provide the documentation, after which their child will be labeled a "0" in the system. This number, the superintendent's memorandum says, cannot be used to deny any student admission to school.

According to an Associated Press article the numbers will also be used to help generate a report at the end of each year to determine the costs of educating undocumented students.

The complaint drawn up by the plaintiffs for the class action challenging the law, HB 56, states that the law will deter immigrant parents from enrolling their children, despite a child's own immigration status, and it will also keep those with proper identification from attending public colleges or universities in the state.

Under the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, all children have the right to a free K-12 education in this country regardless of their immigration status.

Esayas Haile is one of the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit. A recent refugee from Eritrea, Haile is worried the new law will prevent him from enrolling in the community college this fall where he plans to continue taking classes to learn English. Matt Webster, another plaintiff, also worries about the two sons he and his wife are going through the process of adopting. The boys were already in the country when their biological mother passed away, and they are now under the guardianship of the Websters. Now, the lawsuit contends, he will be illegally transporting the children until the adoption is final. The court document says Webster is also concerned about the implications of disclosing his children's immigration status.

At Texas A&M, Student Senate Votes to Cut Off Tuition Perk for Illegal Immigrants

By Alexandria Hein
November 16, 2010

Texas A&M University’s student Senate recently approved a bill that would no longer allow illegal immigrants attending the school to be eligible for in-state tuition rates.

Since 2001, illegal immigrants in Texas have qualified for in-state tuition, which offers them a generous discount compared to out-of-state students attending the university. Texas A&M has 49,000 students, and about 300 are illegal immigrants.

But while the student Senate voted 48-21 this month in favor of the bill, S.B. 63-11, the move isn’t sitting well with Student Body President Jacob Robinson.

Robinson, who vetoed the bill, says that it’s up to the state legislature – not the school – to address the problem of illegal immigration
.

“This is a state of residency issue and the state needs to address this first,” said Robinson.



The student senators voted because state legislators "mentioned the desire to receive feedback from students at Texas institutions -- specifically Texas A&M," said Clark Caperton, student Senate chair of external affairs.

That “desire” hit a nerve when the bill was introduced this month.

Demonstrators took to campus streets and held up signs that said, “Aggies don’t fight Aggies,” and “We don’t choose to be illegal." Many of the demonstrators support proposed federal legislation called the Dream Act -- which would allow immigrant children to remain in the United States to serve in the military or attend college.

Justin Pulliam, student Senator and chairman of Texas Aggie Conservatives, the co-author of the S.B. 63-11 bill, predicts that Dream Act
Activists will turn out Wednesday when the bill is brought back onto the floor. Students will have an option to override Robinson’s veto.

“Dream Act Activists are very effective and good at being heard,” Pulliam said. But he says there are others not so vocal -- students and faculty alike -- who support the bill.

The student Senate has the backing of state Representative Leo Berman, who has plans to introduce legislation on this matter in the spring.

“I’m very disappointed that one person would have the authority to say no to a bill that was passed by the entire student government,” said Berman, adding that Robinson's veto was “ridiculous.”

Texas A&M is not the only campus in Texas experiencing turmoil recently, as other campuses in the state have had similar splits in the student body. University of Texas San Antonio students took part in a hunger strike in order to enlist Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's support for the Dream Act. Undocumented students at the University of Texas Austin put themselves at risk for deportation while participating in a "coming out rally" on campus last Tuesday.

In 2001, Texas became the first of ten states to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, which includes graduating from a local high school and pledging to legalize their immigration status as soon as possible. Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin all have a variation of the law.

On Monday, California’s Supreme Court upheld its state law, after out-of-state students and their families challenged it, arguing they shouldn’t have to pay higher tuition while undocumented immigrants get to pay the lower state rate.

Georgia and South Carolina -- which have a selective admissions process -- are the only two states that ban illegal immigrants from attending any college there.

The Texas A&M bill has received 330 Facebook “likes.” But the petition site Change.org called the bill “discriminatory” and filed an online petition against it, saying it will result in the “loss of opportunity and advancement and higher costs for Texans in the long term.”

Caperton says the bill was to test the water of public opinion.

“S.B. 63-11 is merely designed to represent the collective, although not universal, opinion of the students at Texas A&M,” said Caperton.

Caperton or Robinson wouldn’t speculate if the veto would be overturned Wednesday, but both said that it would be a close vote.

Fewer Mexican Students Attending Border Universities

by Elizabeth Titus | Texas Tribune
July 19, 2010

Armando Martinez did not fear the violence that has engulfed his hometown, Juárez. Like thousands of young people from the border region, he moved to avoid getting sucked into the same life he'd always known. He wanted more, better.

So after attending school in Mexico through 11th grade and then graduating from Ysleta High School in El Paso, he applied only to the University of Texas at Austin, bypassing the UT System’s El Paso campus.

With a full-ride scholarship, he set his sights on the state capital to escape “a border-town mentality," he says. Now, as a fifth-year advertising major leading the Mexican Student Association, Martinez knows many of his fellow border region transplants in Austin. "Once we've taken a step," he says, "we've liked it."

Fewer and fewer students from Mexico have been attending UTEP since 2006, even as total foreign student enrollment in American universities rose. Enrollment at other border institutions, including UT-Pan American in Edinburg and Texas A&M International University in Laredo, is also down since then, according to state data. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican students at UT-Austin has grown by half since 2006 and has increased at Texas A&M University's flagship College Station campus, too.

UTEP officials aren't certain why fewer Mexican students are enrolling there, but they cite border violence and the attendant economic woes in Juárez, El Paso's sister city, as possible reasons. Others say the drug war just compounds the decades-old problem of border “brain drain,” as locals call it. Students who have moved away say bigger institutions in larger cities simply offer more opportunities. Martinez, for one, brushes off the violence. "I have immense love for the city of Juárez," he says. But, he adds, in Austin, “there’s a lot of other ways things flow: different cultures and values and customs and morals that really do influence you and grant you other opportunities.”

Mexican student enrollment at UTEP dropped to 1,702 in the fall of 2009 from 1,842 in the fall of 2006, according to state data. UTEP President Diana Natalicio maintains that the drop was even greater: to 1,415 students last fall, out of a total student population of roughly 20,000. (The enrollment is almost exclusively local: about 17,000 students come from El Paso County.) The dip could reflect larger trends: Between 1990 and 2000, the number of 15- to 29-year-olds in El Paso shrank by about 7,000, according to census data — even as El Paso's population grew by nearly 50,000.

Joseph Villescas, an El Paso business consultant, says the city has succeeded in boosting the number of college-bound Latino students but has failed in luring them back home. “We have yet to develop a system that links back the investments we make in students’ early development,” says Villescas, whose firm has surveyed El Paso expatriates, probing the reasons they left the border region. “Annually, we're losing thousands of kids to places like Austin,” he says. Villescas is concerned about “who will keep the lights on” in his hometown in the future.

The drop from 1990 to 2000 had a “fairly significant economic impact” on El Paso, says El Paso Councilwoman Susie Byrd. Today the city is focusing on downtown development and open space preservation, she says. It even closes down Scenic Drive along the Franklin Mountains for biking and running on “Scenic Drive Sundays” in an effort to appeal to young people and families.
 The violence across the Rio Grande may also play a role in the exodus of young and talented El Pasoans but cannot be blamed for the “brain drain,” Byrd says.

Yet the bloodshed in Juárez undoubtedly has an effect. In May, Alejandro Ruiz Salazar became the first UTEP student killed in Mexico's drug war. At border crossings, security checks mean students wait 90 minutes or more to make the three-and-a-half-mile trip from Juárez to campus, according to the UTEP student newspaper. Heeding a State Department travel warning this year, the university shut down authorized travel to Mexico, preventing even students' work in Juárez health clinics. And some students are short on tuition money because their parents in Juárez have closed their businesses for fear of extortion or thuggery. “I think that this violence has been extraordinarily disruptive,” Natalicio says.

Life as a student on the border also takes a psychological toll, which UTEP doctoral student Thom Taylor is seeking to understand. This year, Taylor surveyed 130 UTEP students who speak Spanish, have internet access and travel to Juárez at least three times a week. Young, mobile and bilingual, they likely represent the most affluent, educated and healthiest population of the border region, Taylor says. 

Preliminarily, he found that, according to traditional measures, about 40 percent of the students experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. His early results also indicated the amount of time that students spent in Juárez had no correlation to their level of traumatic stress; simply moving to El Paso did little to improve their mental health. Neither did their level of social support have any effect, he says, because friends and family were often going through the same trauma, if not worse.

Students' exposure to traumatic stress, though, "does not necessarily doom them to a life of mental health issues," Taylor says. Many are finding ways to cope. Some take different routes every time they drive to and from school. Others get help at the on-campus counseling center. Still others leave, moving on to universities farther away from the border, says Tony Payan, a UTEP political science professor. "They simply don't find the border that appetizing,” Payan says.

Mexican students who attend UT-Austin find the school offers the same monthly counseling sessions that are available to all international students. But a university spokeswoman says the international students office does not track the reasons why more Mexican students are enrolling there. Other students go to universities in Monterrey, Guadalajara or Mexico City, where they face less danger than in many border cities, Payan says. And more Mexican students are seeking to stay in the United States after graduation from UTEP, Natalicio says. That happens in small numbers, but the trend is nonetheless significant, as almost all Mexican students returned to their home country a few years ago.

"The best that I can do"

Aura Valdez explains the factors she juggled as a transfer student from UTEP to UT-Austin. “I didn’t want to get stuck,” she says, “and I knew if I didn’t transfer when I was supposed to — like, as soon as I got my credits done — I wasn’t going to leave.” Valdez, 21, graduated from Americas High School in El Paso after moving from Juárez in the 10th grade. A political communications and government major, she transferred to UT-Austin in 2009 but still travels several times a year to Juárez, where her father, a doctor, lives and works.

Her decision wasn’t based on the violence in Juárez that had spiked a year earlier. She wanted more opportunities than what UTEP and El Paso could provide. "I'm already going to be in the U.S.," the aspiring lawyer says of her decision to transfer. "I might was well do the best that I can do." Her 16-year-old sister, Michelle, wants to follow in her older sister’s footsteps and leave El Paso after high school. Their parents are hesitant for Michelle to move away, too, but Aura encourages it. "I'm the only one supporting her," she says. "I know what it's like to feel that you're going be trapped."

During her trips to Mexico, including one last month, Aura has not witnessed any of the horrors that her friends back home have, and she’s not scared to go. But her mother, who lives in El Paso, worries. The peace of mind her mother gets from knowing her elder daughter is in Austin turns to concern during summer break, when Aura frequently visits her father.

And though she's not afraid for her own safety, Valdez says she does worry for friends who are still there. “I get calls,” she says, “telling me, you know, this friend just passed away, they killed them at this place.”

Study: Majority of Institutions Receive Applications from Undocumented Students

by Arelis Hernandez | Diverse Issues in Higher Education
June 16, 2010

Before his family left Mexico, Joseluis Zacatelco remembers what his grandfather told him one afternoon while tending the fields of their rancho, where their profitable livestock had once grazed.

“You are going somewhere far,” Zacatelco recalled his abuelo’s words. “With education and perseverance, you can become the man of your dreams.”

Brought to the United States as a pre-teen, Zacatelco, now 30, carried the advice with him but didn’t realize his immigration status would obstruct his path. Today, as an activist he has walked hundreds of miles this year to advocate for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, congressional legislation that would create a pathway to protected legal status for undocumented students.

“In applying for college, I realized I needed a Social Security number and I didn’t know what that was,” he said. “I think I was very innocent and ignorant of how the system worked.”

Every year, four-year higher education institutions receive thousands of applications from students like Zacatelco, who remain undeterred in their quest of earning a scholarship or financial aid for college.

In a survey released today, the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) reported that about 60 percent of 382 participating institutions said they had received college applications from undocumented students. Among the most selective nonprofit colleges in the survey sample, the percentage is 86 percent.

“Many undocumented students turn out to be very high-achieving and it would substantiate the description of these students as contributors to our society,” said David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at NACAC. NACAC supports the DREAM Act.

Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) sponsored the Senate version of the bill along with 37 Senate co-sponsors. The House version, which is authored by Rep. Howard Berman, (D-Calif.), has 120 House co-sponsors.

Most college admission counselors have no knowledge of an applicant’s immigration status, but supplemental materials like recommendation letters or essays can divulge information about a student, Hawkins said.

Admission counselors develop relationships with high schools in their communities and know when these students apply to their schools. But there isn’t an exact number, Hawkins said.

“Admissions officers reported that they received these applications. There are no guarantees, but it gives us a rough idea,” Hawkins said. “We were looking for a thumbnail sketch of the number of colleges that have contact with undocumented students. They might not be able to substantiate it completely but it’s a snapshot of what’s out there.”

Among the surveyed institutions, about 71 percent of public colleges and universities and over half of private colleges reported they received applications from undocumented students.

The possible deportation of a Harvard University sophomore and the recent arrest of a Kennesaw State University student has only heightened the concern for advocates who want victory for the 9-year-old campaign by the close of the 111th Congress.

“The bottom line is these kids really have no more control over their documentation status than they did when they were 5 years old. To suggest they are culpable for their documentation status runs counter to Supreme Court decisions and basic human rights,” Hawkins said. “Our obligation as a nation is to allow these students who have made the best of their situation and give them a shot to higher education so they can contribute to this country.”

Previous efforts have coupled the DREAM Act with some other comprehensive immigration reform bills without success.

Education organizations have thrown their support behind NACAC’s research and the bill, including the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the Association of State Colleges and Universities (ASCU), and the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), which advocate that states should be able to determine public institution admission policies.

“I think there is a lot of support for the particular substance of the Dream Act,” said Jim Hermes, Director of government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges. “Three years ago when we got to a Senate cloture vote, we didn’t get the 60 we needed but we are going to have that chance this year.”

Among its most heralded as well as criticized provisions, the bill outlines a pathway to citizenship for students brought to the U.S. as children (before their 16th birthday) either through higher education or military service. It would also allow undocumented students with adjusted legal statuses to be eligible for financial aid programs such as federal work-study and student loans but not Pell grants.

The Urban Institute estimates that about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools each year and would benefit from the bill. Supporters position their argument around the loss of a class of promising immigrants who would expand the tax base and enrich communities.

DREAM Act opponents say any move to extend benefits to undocumented students that citizens do not enjoy is a violation of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. States are prohibited from “providing a postsecondary education benefit to an alien not lawfully present unless any citizen or national is eligible for such benefit,” according to the law.

The DREAM Act would authorize the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to allow states to grant in-state tuition to undocumented students.

Nevertheless, ten states including California, Texas, Washington, New Mexico and Kansas, offer in-state tuition to undocumented students with conditions. In-state tuition eligibility provisions are currently undergoing legal challenges in those states.

Legislatures in other states have passed legislation similar to the DREAM Act, but the laws were vetoed by their governors. South Carolina bars undocumented students from enrolling and others are exploring similar statutes.

Student Immigrants Use Civil Rights-era Strategies

This is a nice article. I would encourage you all to check out a new book by Nilda Flores-Gonzalez entitled "Marcha: Latino Chicago and the Immigrant Rights Movement."

Nilda does great work and is an amazing person, too.

-Patricia

by Russell Contreras, Associated Press
June 3, 2010

BOSTON – They gather on statehouse steps with signs and bullhorns, risking arrest. They attend workshops on civil disobedience and personal storytelling, and they hold sit-ins and walk out of class in protest. They're being warned that they could even lose their lives.

Students fighting laws that target undocumented immigrants are taking a page from the civil rights era, adopting tactics and gathering praise and momentum from the demonstrators who marched in the streets and sat at segregated lunch counters as they sought to turn the public tide against racial segregation.

“Their struggle then is ours now,” said Deivid Ribeiro, 21, an illegal immigrant from Brazil and an aspiring physicist. “Like it was for them, this is about survival for us. We have no choice.”

Undocumented students, many of whom consider themselves "culturally American" because they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives, don't qualify for federal financial aid and can't get in-state tuition rates in some places. They are drawing parallels between themselves and the 1950s segregation of Black and Mexican-American students.

“I think it's genius," said Amilcar Shabazz, chairman of the W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. “If you want to figure out how to get your story out and change the political mood in America, everybody knows the place to start your studies is the civil rights movement.”

For two years, Renata Teodoro lived in fear of being deported to her native Brazil, like her mother, brother and sister. She reserved her social contact for close friends, was extra careful about signing her name anywhere, and fretted whenever anyone asked about her immigration status, because she been living illegally in the United States since she was 6.

Yet on a recent afternoon, Teodoro gathered with other illegal immigrants outside the Massachusetts Statehouse with signs, fliers and a bullhorn then marched the streets of Boston, putting herself in danger of arrest by going public but hoping her new openness would prompt action on the DREAM Act, a federal bill to allow people like her a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service.

“I don't care. I can't live like this anymore,” said Teodoro, 22, a leader of the Student Immigration Movement and a part-time student at UMass-Boston. “I'm not afraid, and I have to take a stand.”

The shift has been building, said Tom Shields, a doctoral student at Brandeis University in Waltham who is studying the new student movement.

“In recent months, there has been an interest in connecting the narrative of their struggle to the civil rights effort for education,” Shields said.

The movement has gained attention of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in April, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under DREAM, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors act, and which they're sponsoring.

Last month, three illegal immigrant students demanding to meet with Arizona Sen. John McCain about DREAM were arrested and later detained for refusing to leave his Tucson office. High school and college students in Chicago and Denver walked out of class this year to protest Arizona's tough new law requiring immigrants to carry registration papers. In December, immigrant students staged a "Trail of Dreams" march from Miami's historic Freedom Tower to Washington, D.C., to raise support for DREAM.

Similar student immigrant groups have sprung up at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Houston.

By attaching themselves to the civil rights movement, Shabazz said, the immigrant students can claim the moral high ground and underdog status of the debate.

“The question now is ... can they convince moderate, middle-of-the-road, independent voters to support them?” he said.

The Rev. William Lawson, an 81-year-old civil rights leader and retired pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston, called the student activists' tactics courageous and said he'd like to meet them. But Lawson, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., cautioned student immigrant activists to prepare for peers getting arrested, deported or possibly killed.

“You do have to expect consequences. Many civil rights activists faced injury, sometimes death,” said Lawson. “And I'm not sure how many of these (students) understand the fundamental philosophy of nonviolence.”

Students have to keep in mind the audience they're trying to win over, said Lonnie King, 73, a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the group responsible for sit-ins at segregated restaurants across the South in the 1960s.

“They need to understand that the bulk of folks are in the middle,” King said. “They have to coach their message to make it broadly appealing.”

In Massachusetts, hundreds of student activists have gone through training by Marshall Ganz, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a former organizer with the late Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers movement. At special camps, students attend workshops on civil disobedience, storytelling and media outreach.

Students who have attended the workshops even continue to use the well-known farm workers' rallying clap at the end of organizing meetings.

“They know that clap,” Ganz said, “because I taught them that clap. It's all about the experience.”

Teodoro said the training changed her life and showed her the cause was larger than herself.

During the rally last week in Boston, she led a march from the Massachusetts Statehouse to Sen. Scott Brown's office at the John F. Kennedy federal building, which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Along with Carlos Savio Oliveira, 22, of Falmouth, Mass., another illegal immigrant, the pair walked into the federal building to hand Brown's staff 1,500 letters of support for the DREAM Act.

Outside supporters wore T-shirts with the words "Brown is beautiful" a pun referring to the Chicano movement chant and Brown's well-publicized nude photo spread in Cosmopolitan magazine as a college student.

Brown, whose office was previously the site of a sit-in by the same group, has not said whether he supports the bill.

In September, Teodoro and a dozen other students also took a weeklong trip from Boston to the South, with Shields driving.

Along the way, they met with Black former students who desegregated Clinton High School in Tennessee and Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They visited civil rights museums and filmed the journey for a planned documentary. But the highlight was meeting Carlotta Walls LaNier, a member of the Little Rock Nine.

Teodoro cornered LaNier at a book signing of her memoir, A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.

“I went up to her at the signing and told her my story and tried not to cry,” Teodoro said. “She listened. Then, she hugged me.”

Harvard Student Says He Faces Deportation From U.S.

by Russell Contreras, Associated Press , June 15, 2010

OSTON – An undocumented Harvard University student is facing deportation to Mexico after being detained by immigration authorities at a Texas airport, the student said Friday.

Eric Balderas, 19, who just completed his first year at Harvard, said he was detained Monday by immigration authorities when he tried to board a plane from his hometown of San Antonio to Boston using a consulate card from Mexico and his student ID.

“I'd made it through before so I thought this time wouldn't be any different,” Balderas said Friday in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “But once ICE picked me up I really didn't know what to think and I was starting to break down.”

Balderas, who previously had used a Mexican passport to board planes but recently lost it, said he became despondent and thought he was being deported to Mexico immediately, only to be released the next day. He said he has a scheduled July 6 immigration hearing.

“All I can think about was my family,'' said Balderas, who doesn't remember living in Mexico.



A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, Mark Medvesky, confirmed that Balderas was released and said his hearing will likely be in Boston.

Harvard officials immediately threw support behind Balderas.

“Eric Balderas has already demonstrated the discipline and work ethic required for rigorous university work, and has, like so many of our undergraduates, expressed an interest in making a difference in the world,” said Christine Heenan, Harvard's vice president of public affairs and communications.

The case also sparked a buzz on social media sites and among student immigrant activists who see the Balderas situation as the ideal test case to push the proposed DREAM Act – a federal bill that would allow illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship via college enrollment or military service.

Mario Rodas, who was an undocumented student in Chelsea, a small city near Boston, until Sen. John Kerry and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy came to his aid, launched a Facebook page Friday highlighting the Balderas case. “He's an excellent student and an example of someone this country needs,” said Rodas.

The page said that Balderas was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by his family at age 4 escape a domestic violence situation.

A feature in the San Antonio Express-News last year said the graduate of Highlands High School in San Antonio was accepted into several small liberal arts colleges but chose to attend Harvard, where he has a full scholarship.

Balderas said he is studying molecular and cellular biology at Harvard and hopes to become a cancer researcher. He said he qualified for Harvard's privately-funded scholarship package.

“I'm a private person so this is a change for me,” he said.

In March, Balderas was one of hundreds of undocumented students to publicly announce his immigration status during a nationally organized “coming out” day for illegal immigrants.

Balderas also has been an active member of student immigrant groups around Boston that have staged protests and sit-ins in an effort to get Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, to support the DREAM Act.

Brown has not said whether he supports the proposal, also called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The bill is sponsored by Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, of Illinois.

In April, Lugar and Durbin sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, asking her to halt deportations of immigrant students who could earn legal status under the act.

A number of college presidents have supported the legislation, including Harvard President Drew Faust, who sent a letter to Kerry and Kennedy urging them to pass it.

Kyle de Beausset, a Boston-based student activist and a friend of Balderas, said student activists are ready to rally behind him.

Advising the Undocumented

Elizabeth Redden | Inside Higher Ed
June 7, 2010

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- At the annual NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference, sessions focused on every aspect of the international student experience -- recruitment and admissions, student and residential life, and challenges in the classroom. The attendees, more than 7,000 of them, discussed every category of international student and scholar, those in the United States on F visas, Js and Ms. On Friday, the final day of the conference, a session focused on a segment of students who don’t fit into any legal category – the undocumented.

For these students, nothing is easy. “On our campus even just to get a student ID card, you have to have official identification,” said Teri Albrecht, director of International Student and Scholar Services at the University of Texas at Austin. Albrecht wrote her dissertation on the challenges and service needs of undocumented Mexican undergraduate students. “You have to have a driver’s license or a passport.”

The enrollment of illegal immigrants in U.S. colleges, always a controversial subject, has flared anew this spring. Arizona’s passage of a strict new illegal immigration law, which makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime, has refocused attention in higher education on those students who lack legal paperwork -- as in the high-profile case of a Kennesaw State University senior who produced an expired Mexican passport when stopped on a minor traffic violation in March.

Immigration authorities initiated deportation proceedings against Jessica Colotl, but the university’s president intervened, requesting, successfully, that no punishment be imposed until Colotl completed her degree. The incident gave renewed momentum to a movement to bar undocumented students from U.S. colleges. As one local commentator complained, of the president’s actions, “Everything is sacrificed by these universities in the name of 'diversity' and multiculturalism and open borders.”

At the NAFSA conference, where “diversity” and “multiculturalism” and “open borders” (or, at least, relatively open borders) are deeply held and shared values, the spirit of Friday’s session was how to ease these students’ passage through college, not restrict it, and how international student offices can better serve these functionally stateless students.

First off, to address any misperceptions: Federal law does not bar students in the country illegally from enrolling in colleges here. Per the most recent guidance on this issue, a 2008 letter from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stipulates that “the individual states must decide for themselves whether or not to admit illegal aliens into their public post-secondary institutions.… In the absence of any state policy or legislation addressing this issue, it is up to the schools to decide whether or not to enroll illegal aliens.”

The states and schools have taken different tacks. South Carolina, in 2008, explicitly barred undocumented students from enrolling in state universities. North Carolina’s State Board of Community Colleges flip-flopped on the issue before finally deciding that illegal immigrants could be admitted, as long as they are charged out-of-state tuition rates. On the other side of the spectrum, 11 states have passed legislation allowing undocumented students to qualify for lower in-state tuition rates. Texas was the first state to do so, in 2001, and Wisconsin the most recent, in 2009.

Albrecht, of UT Austin, got interested in the issue after Texas passed its in-state tuition law, HB 1403. “Each year we started seeing more and more students come through our international office,” she said. “We really felt the need to be able to provide good services to this group that doesn’t have any other office on campus that knows about their needs, that knows about what their experience is.”

Albrecht shared on Friday what she’d learned, in her research, about their experiences and needs -- how, she said, these students make it through.

“They view themselves as having to work twice as hard as other students because of the circumstances that they’re in,” Albrecht said. “They feel the need to prove themselves, that their education is deserved” – to refute the commonly stated argument that their spot in college should have been reserved for a U.S. citizen.

They face family pressures. Their parents, said Albrecht, often feel like higher education is a trick, that “They’re being lured into a system where they’re going to be found out.” They’re often first-generation college students and feel pressure to be role models for their families and communities. They worry about money; they worry that Texas will overturn its law allowing for in-state tuition. They’re exceedingly careful about whom they talk to about their status, even among their peers, for fear that someone will report them; they feel invisible to college administrators. They can’t study abroad and they can’t go along with student organizations to conferences or other events, because they don’t want to get on an airplane for fear of getting detained.

They also face immense uncertainty about what their opportunities will be when they graduate. Currently there’s no legal mechanism for these students to work in the United States. Proposed federal legislation, the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, would provide a pathway to permanent residency and work authorization for students who were illegally brought to the United States as children, but that legislation has been stalled since it was first introduced in 2001. It was again reintroduced this spring, but it remains a difficult climate to pass any bill related to immigration.

“They’re all waiting for the DREAM Act to pass, and get immigration reform going so they can work when they graduate. That is what they’re all going through college and hoping for,” Albrecht said. In the meantime, their options are severely limited. “I’ve followed up with students who have gotten their master’s degrees. They’re now living in other cities but they’re doing hourly work. These are students that have gone through public health, they want to be nurses, they want to give back to their community and they’re unable to do that.”

One lesson for colleges, Albrecht said, is to designate point people whom undocumented students can trust, and to whom they can turn for advice without having to re-explain their situation over and over. This person should be knowledgeable and up-to-date on undocumented student issues. “They want to have an expert on campus that they can go to and say, ‘Hey, is there anything I need to know that’s going to help me in my situation?’ ” Albrecht said.

One person in the audience asked how the undocumented students would know who that designated point person or office is. “How do you reach these students because obviously you can’t be called an undocumented student adviser?” Word of mouth, Albrecht responded.

Another in the audience, from a different Texas university, said that it doesn’t have to be the international student office that takes on this advising role; at her institution, undocumented students are explicitly classified as domestic students and the multicultural office serves in the advising capacity. And one other person in the audience worried about the legal implications of advising undocumented students – whether, specifically, these students will attract the attention of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. “I know I’ve tangled with my local ICE people who are adamant that we should not be allowing undocumented students to enroll. I’m always afraid that he’s going to call and say, ‘Who are they?’ ”

In response, Ellen Badger, Albrecht’s co-panelist and director of International Student and Scholar Services for the State University of New York at Binghamton, said that the international student officer’s legal responsibilities for reporting extend only to students on non-immigrant visas. For everyone else, she said, “there are no legal requirements to be monitoring them, tracking them, anything else – that includes undocumented students.” So, in other words, she said, there’s no list that you’re required to keep or report.

“In terms of ICE appearing on your campus,” Badger continued, “I will just say anecdotally that I have heard that runs the entire spectrum depending upon the role a particular district office chooses to take in your geographic vicinity. So it really depends. Have we ever had ICE officers on our campus? Yes. I think I know when that happens. Have they ever come to campus to pick up a student…Not that I’m aware of.”

Meanwhile, life moves on, often with difficulty, for undocumented students. Back to the student ID question -- this being the first step in accessing student services -- at UT-Austin, the university has developed workarounds for undocumented students to get their IDs even without the proper paperwork. But the students, who call themselves 1403 students after the bill granting them in-state tuition, first have to identify themselves: “They have to say, ‘I’m a 1403 student’ in order to get that special consideration,” Albrecht said. “They have to out themselves. And that can be very scary to them.”

Whose Student is She?

What a powerful narrative. Check out the entire Spring 2010 issue from Teaching Tolerance, titled: "The New Segregation': Gender, Sexual Orientation and Immigration."

- Patricia

Teaching Tolerance
Number 37: Spring 2010

Olivia Contreras remembers being afraid.

As an eighth-grade student at Jackson Middle School in Nashville, Tennessee, Olivia had arrived in the United States from her native Nicaragua the previous year. All of her academic experiences in the seventh grade had been in an English language learner (ELL) program. There, the teacher taught at a level slightly above that which was easily comprehensible to students, using demonstrations, pictures, diagrams, graphic organizers and hands-on materials to help students understand.

But Olivia learned English so quickly that she was placed in mainstream content classes the following year. Texts and materials in these classes were at grade level, and the expectations and requirements were the same for all learners.

“Science was the most difficult for me,” recalls Olivia. “I usually understood the information from labs, but I had difficulty reading the book and I couldn’t explain what I did understand because I didn’t know how to say it or write it in English. I was afraid that the teacher would think I just didn’t get the concepts.”

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 created a lot of stories like Olivia’s — stories that include big steps forward and big steps back. NCLB placed a new focus and accountability on the achievement levels of English learners by requiring that they develop English proficiency and meet the same academic standards that all children are expected to meet by the year 2014.

Administrators and teachers have responded by taking a good look at the ways English learners might progress more quickly toward proficiency on state tests, both in English language skills and in other content areas. In some cases this means students have moved out of ELL programs after one or two years. Sometimes, it means incoming English language learners will bypass ELL programs altogether, entering classes alongside native English speakers, usually with some type of ELL teacher assistance.

For ELL students who might otherwise get stuck on a separate academic track from their English-dominant peers, this sort of mainstreaming can be a good thing. Supporters of mainstreaming note that it can help students learn faster because they have English-proficient peers as models. And clearly, being included in all aspects of the school — rather than segregated into a separate classroom — can only help their sense of belonging.

What’s more, NCLB allows students to get credit toward graduation only for classes taught by “highly qualified” teachers endorsed in their subject areas. By moving students toward grade-level classes, teachers are helping them stay on track to graduate.

Still, this very distinction has effectively reduced or eliminated many transitional subject-area classes taught by ELL-endorsed teachers. The effects of this trend can now be seen in middle and elementary schools, where students are often placed in grade-level classes with ELL teacher assistance but with little or no opportunities for students to be pulled out into their own classes for specialized instruction.

And rapid mainstreaming seems to ignore what the research tells us: It takes five to seven or more years for students to pick up the academic language needed to survive in grade-level classes.

No matter how we feel about the trend toward mainstreaming, it is happening. If English learners are to be mainstreamed into grade-level classrooms, we must look at the ways in which grade-level teachers can be taught basic second language acquisition theory and research. We must give teachers the tools to incorporate effective and essential strategies and techniques into lessons so that English learners are not simply sitting alongside native English-speaking peers, but learning alongside them as well.

In this way, we all take “ownership” of students, and everyone can become a language teacher.

An Effective Tool
At Claremont Immersion Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, where one-third of the students are English learners, I am responsible for the professional development of a staff of 50 grade-level teachers, specialists and special education teachers in grades Pre-K through 5.

Our professional development is centered on the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP, which has been proven to be an effective tool for improving ELL student learning.

SIOP organizes 30 features of good lessons for English learners into eight overarching components. In the training, teachers learn how to incorporate those features into their lessons and units of instruction from practical examples.

Some of the ideas in SIOP (www.cal.org/siop) may seem obvious. Some may take you by surprise. All the lesson features suggested in SIOP are backed by research and arranged in a framework that helps teachers stay focused on what works. The strategies identified in SIOP are crucial for English learners and may prove to be beneficial other learners as well.

SIOP uses a peer coaching approach. Teachers are encouraged to pair up with a colleague and use a checklist of the 30 features to evaluate each other’s instruction in a systematic and non-threatening way. As someone who has been a classroom teacher, a program administrator and assistant professor in a master’s degree program for ELL teachers, I find that I am always excited to implement SIOP and work alongside teachers — because I always learn something I didn’t know.

The term “sheltered” refers to the means for making academic content comprehensible to English learners while they develop English proficiency. Classrooms with sheltered instruction teaching methods may be used in self-contained ELL classes or in grade-level classes that contain both English speakers and English learners. SIOP is currently being implemented in schools and school systems throughout the United States, including Kansas City, Missouri, where every teacher in this Midwestern urban district of 27,000 students and 4,000 teachers is trained in the SIOP model.

In preparing to write this article, I surveyed grade-level teachers, special education teachers, reading specialists and ELL teachers in both elementary and secondary schools. I asked them what they believe are the most important considerations for instruction of English learners, particularly given the trend that these students be placed in grade-level classes soon after achieving basic levels of English language acquisition.

Most teachers agreed that primary instructional issues are covered by the SIOP model. But they also identified a few additional issues that educators should be thinking about. These issues include:

Community: In order for students to work together and learn from each other, we have to create unity in a school and classroom.

“Integrating your community is not as simple as putting your kids together in a class. What is it to truly build community in your classroom?” asks Joseph Provisor, a former ELL teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District and director of the Council Project, which teaches students and teachers to tell their stories in the classroom.

“Teachers and students need tools to make the classroom a beneficial learning place for all,” Provisor says. “When you have kids from Vietnam, from El Salvador and from Azerbaijan, you have an extraordinary opportunity to expand your world view by truly integrating these folks in the community. What makes America? That’s a challenge.”

Time: Pacing guides, state tests and the pressure to make adequate yearly progress all force teachers to push through curriculum at a pace that is not appropriate for English learners who are learning the language as well as the content.

One grade-level middle school science teacher I spoke with said, “When I teach science, I cruise. I always get through all of the curriculum by the end of the school year.” But at what cost? When the pace is accelerated so that students are taught the declarative knowledge that is commonly required for success on state tests, they miss out on opportunities to probe deeply into concepts and explore higher-order thinking. This is especially unfortunate for English learners who need opportunities to use the new language and concepts in a variety of ways over time.

Differentiating Instruction: Teachers need to know how to differentiate instruction within a classroom. As budget cuts further increase class sizes, some teachers are faced with teaching 25 to 30 or more students per classroom and five to six preparations a day. Teachers benefit from training and specific guidelines as to how to plan and teach for different ability levels within one class.

Team-teaching: Putting two teachers together does not necessarily mean that they will function as a team. Team-teaching between ELL teachers and grade-level classroom teachers can work well, but teachers need to have mutual respect for each other, clearly defined roles and opportunities for shared planning.

Susan Connors, a 30-year veteran ELL teacher at Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, uses what she calls a “tag team” approach with her grade-level teachers. Susan and the grade-level teacher take turns leading instruction within a lesson. Susan’s focus is on extension activities that promote language development that work with all children in the room. “If we expect our grade-level teachers to be English language teachers, then we have to be grade-level teachers as well. It’s reciprocal.”

When I asked my principal, Cintia Johnson, why she believed in a mainstreaming approach to teaching English learners, she responded, “In my view, by including students in grade-level classes with English-speaking peers, we capitalize on the strengths and abilities these students bring to the learning experience. We raise the bar by having high expectations for all learners. My desire is for us to recognize the true abilities on the high end of what a child can do and not focus on their weaknesses. Training all of the staff in strategies to understand the needs of these children and know how to teach them is the key.”

Maybe then, students like Olivia Contreras won’t have to feel afraid of school.

N.J. to vote on bill to let illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition

Some great efforts being made in NJ. Notable observation and quote from the article: "New Jersey could be the tipping point in terms of energizing Congress to put immigration reform higher on the agenda..."

-Patricia

From Cassie Spodak, CNN
January 8, 2010


CNN) -- Both houses of the New Jersey legislature plan to vote Monday on a controversial bill backed by Democrats that would qualify illegal immigrants for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.

Supporters hope to pass the measure before Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine leaves office. Gov.-elect Christopher J. Christie, a Republican who takes office January 19, has said he opposes the bill.

On Thursday, a Senate vote on the legislation was postponed.

After hours of heated debate January 4, the bill passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee, 7-4, and the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, 8-6. Both votes were along party lines.

To qualify under the bill, New Jersey high school graduates who are illegal immigrants must be enrolled at a public university or college and file an affidavit with the institution stating that they have applied for legal immigration status or will do so when eligible.

If signed into law, the bill would be the 11th of its kind. There are similar laws in California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington.

In 2008, Oklahoma ended its support for in-state tuition for students who are in the United States illegally.

New Jersey Assemblyman Samuel Thompson, a Republican, said the bill discriminates against U.S. citizens who attend New Jersey colleges and universities but don't live in the state. Thompson believes illegal immigrants do not have the right to a reduced tuition.

"You can call it undocumented, you can call it whatever you want. But you are not legal and you are not entitled," Thompson said.

Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle, a Democrat, expressed frustration with misconceptions of the bill that label it as a "free ride" or "state-funded" education.

"These students have been here for decades, have gone through the school system here and should pay the same as their counterparts who have gone through school with them," she said.

G. Jeremiah Ryan, president of Bergen Community College in Huttle's district, supports the bill.

"The undocumented kids have a tough time anyway. They're really good about going to class," Ryan said. "Then they stop because they can't afford to go to a four-year institution."

The New Jersey Office of Legislative Services said the bill would not affect state revenue because the state does not collect revenue from public colleges and universities. It is estimated that the bill's provisions would increase the number of illegal immigrants applying for admission.

Assemblyman Michael Carroll, a Republican, questioned the validity of a bill that improves illegal immigrants' access to education when their illegal status prohibits them from giving back to the state in a meaningful way.

However, proponents of the bill believe that the young students will be resources for the state. Democrats say that the backlog in applications for citizenship is the real culprit and that the controversy highlights the need for immigration reform on a national level.

Daniel Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, agreed. "New Jersey could be the tipping point in terms of energizing Congress to put immigration reform higher on the agenda," he said.

Hurley cited a lack of legislative activity regarding in-state tuition for illegal immigrants in the past few years and applauded the New Jersey legislature. The legislation is the path to a more rational policy on education and immigration on a federal level, he said.

"These men and women are not going back to their native homeland by and large; they will be staying in New Jersey and the U.S. The question is: Do we want to facilitate their education and professional aspirations so they can contribute civically and economically, or do we want to prevent that?" Hurley said. "They may very well become a liability."

Thompson had blunt words for immigrants whose illegal status he felt nullified their right to education, "Go back home, apply, come legally, and I'll welcome you with open arms."

However, students who have lived illegally with their families in the United States see the opportunities the bill would give them. One such student -- Aura, who would only give her first name -- has been praised by teachers for her high grades.

"This bill would just make our school dream possible. They're not giving it to us for free," said Aura, who is now a U.S. citizen. "If they open up this channel for us, we'll do the rest."

To Overhaul Immigration, Advocates Alter Tactics

By JULIA PRESTON | NY Times
Published: January 1, 2010

Lacing up new pairs of walking shoes with a flourish, four immigrant students set out on foot from downtown Miami on Friday, starting a four-month walk to Washington to protest what they called the Obama administration’s lack of action on legislation granting legal status to illegal immigrants.

Three of the four protesters, who are current or former students at Miami Dade College, do not have legal-resident status and risk detention by immigration authorities during the 1,500-mile walk.

The students’ trek showed the resolve and also some limitations of groups supporting an immigration overhaul that would include measures to legalize illegal immigrants. Those groups said this week that they would start a national campaign in January to pressure President Obama to push for the overhaul before midterm elections in November.

But as immigration enforcement has continued at a steady pace during the first year of the Obama administration, many illegal immigrants are clinging to jobs and families in this country and may be afraid to participate in public demonstrations. With unemployment holding at 10 percent, immigrant advocates acknowledge that their campaign could awaken passionate opposition in Congress and around the country.

The students in Miami said in a statement that they decided to begin their walk because they had a “deep desire and need for complete citizenship” after they reached dead-ends in school or work because of their lack of legal immigration status. The protesters include Carlos Roa, 22, who was 2 years old when his parents brought him here from Venezuela, and Felipe Matos, 23, sent from Brazil by his mother when he was 14. They say they support proposals in overhaul bills that would open a path to citizenship for students who came to this country illegally when they were young.

Mr. Matos, a former student government president at Miami Dade, said he had been accepted by Duke University but had not been able to attend because his lack of legal status prevented him from getting financial aid. Trained as a teacher, he has not been able to take a job without a valid Social Security number.

Starting with a small but noisy send-off at noon by about 100 people on the steps of a landmark building in Miami known as the Freedom Tower, the students said they would walk about 16 miles a day, stopping to sleep at churches and immigration centers. They hope to reach Washington in May.

They said they had concluded that the exposure to immigration agents on the walk was not much greater than what they faced in their daily lives.

“We are aware of the risk,” Mr. Matos said by telephone. “We are risking our future because our present is unbearable.”

The case of a third student marcher, Gaby Pacheco, 24, an Ecuadorean, and her family is on appeal in immigration court. The fourth student, Juan Rodriguez, a Colombian who is 20, said he was not at risk because he became a legal resident in 2008, after 13 years in this country.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to requests by telephone and e-mail for comment on Friday.

Elsewhere, immigrant groups have been trying other tactics to push for reform, after an overhaul bill they supported was defeated in the Senate in 2007 by a huge surge of voter opposition. In November the groups organized a mass conference call on which, they said, more than 60,000 participants on mobile phones spoke with Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, to discuss an overhaul proposal. Mr. Gutierrez introduced the bill in the House last month.

In California, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants joined demonstrations in 2006, advocacy groups have shifted their focus, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. Now the groups are working to send immigrants who are voters to pay frequent visits to federal lawmakers who have not supported an overhaul.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, a group in Chicago, is preparing rallies for mid-January with labor unions and African-American churches, hoping to persuade American workers that immigrants would be less likely to undercut wages if they had legal status and could participate openly in unions.

Republican lawmakers said they remained confident that they could defeat any overhaul proposal. They said it would be political folly for the Obama administration to propose a huge legalization program for illegal immigrants when so many Americans are out of work.

“Allowing millions of illegal immigrants to stay and take jobs away from citizens and legal immigrants is like giving a burglar a key to the house,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.

ICE gives Houston teacher a reprieve

Well said critiques made by Rep. Lee. The current system is very broken and we will have opportunities this year to fix it.

-Patricia

She's able to stay for a year, but her case is still pending

By SUSAN CARROLL | HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Dec. 31, 2009

After years of fearing she could be deported at any moment, immigration officials have granted a Houston middle school teacher a one-year reprieve.

Marie Baptiste, 30, said she was told just before Christmas by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials that she had been granted “deferred action” for one year, meaning they will not try and deport her during that time.

“I thank God,” said Baptiste, whose relatives brought her to the U.S. from Haiti when she was 9 years old. “We're a little bit less tense.”

Baptiste, now a middle school science teacher in Houston, said she didn't realize she was in the country illegally until she was about to graduate from high school. She went on to earn a degree from the University of Houston and then a teaching certificate.

Baptiste met and married her husband, a Fort Bend County constable, over a decade ago, and they started a family.

Fighting to stay

In 2000, Baptiste filed for legal status, and the application appeared to be progressing, she said, until she arrived to an immigration court hearing less than 10 minutes late after rushing her daughter to the doctor that morning. In the meantime, the immigration judge had ordered her removed in absentia.

Since then, Baptiste has been fighting to stay in the country, appealing her removal order.

In 2006, she was picked up by immigration agents and detained for six months.In November, ICE agents stopped Baptiste on her way to school, but did not take her into custody after she had an anxiety attack.
‘Broken system'

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who has made appeals to ICE on Baptiste's behalf, called Baptiste's case “symbolic of the completely broken immigration system that we have in this country.”

“She grew up in our system,” Jackson Lee said. “She was educated in our system. She married an American citizen and her children were born here. What greater connection can you have than family to a country that you obviously love? She is a well-respected school teacher with talent that we need.”

With the temporary reprieve, Baptiste said she and her husband are able to relax a little, but are still worried about the ultimate outcome of her case, which is pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I just want to be free,” Baptiste said. “I really want to be free.”

Illegal Immigrant Students Publicly Take Up a Cause

By JULIA PRESTON | NY Times
Published: December 10, 2009

It has not been easy for the Obama administration to deport Rigoberto Padilla, a Mexican-born college student in Chicago who has been an illegal immigrant in this country since he was 6.
On Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they would delay Mr. Padilla’s deportation for one year.

Mr. Padilla’s case had seemed straightforward to immigration agents who detained him for deportation in January after he was arrested by the Chicago police for running a stop sign and charged with driving under the influence.

But since then, students held two street rallies on his behalf and sent thousands of e-mail messages and faxes to Congress. The Chicago City Council passed a resolution calling for a stay of his deportation and five members of Congress from Illinois came out in support of his cause. One of them was Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat, who offered a private bill to cancel his removal.

Obama administration officials said they would review cases like Mr. Padilla’s as they arose. They said the situation of Mr. Padilla, 21, pointed to the need for an immigration overhaul that would include a path to legal status for people in the United States illegally.

“We are committed to confronting these problems in practical, effective ways, using the current tools at our disposal while we work with Congress to enact comprehensive reform,” said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Behind Mr. Padilla’s case — and others in Florida of students who fought off deportation — is activism by young immigrants, many of them illegal, which has become increasingly public and coordinated across the country, linked by Web sites, text messages and a network of advocacy groups. Spurred by President Obama’s promises of legislation to grant them legal status, and frustration that their lives have stalled without it, young illegal immigrants are joining street protests despite the risk of being identified by immigration agents.

With many illegal immigrants lying low to avoid a continuing crackdown, immigrant students have become the most visible supporters of a legislative overhaul, which Mr. Obama has pledged to take up early next year. In the meantime, their protests are awkward for the administration, with young, often high-achieving illegal immigrants asking defiantly why the authorities continue to detain and deport them.

“Maybe our parents feel like immigrants, but we feel like Americans because we have been raised here on American values,” said Carlos Saavedra, national coordinator of a network of current and former students called United We Dream.

“Then we go to college and we find out we are rejected by the American system. But we are not willing to accept that answer,” said Mr. Saavedra, 23, a Peruvian who lived here illegally until he gained legal status two years ago.

Young people who were brought to the United States by illegal immigrant parents draw a certain degree of sympathy even from some opponents of broader legalization programs. Roy Beck, the executive director of NumbersUSA, a group that has staunchly opposed a legal path for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, said in an interview that he could support legal status for some young immigrant students. Mr. Beck said he would do so, however, only if Congress eliminated the current immigration system based on family ties and imposed mandatory electronic verification of immigration status for all workers — conditions that Democrats in Congress are not likely to accept.

The students’ goal is to gain passage of legislation that would give permanent resident status to illegal immigrants who had been brought to the United States before they were 15, if they have been here for at least five years, have graduated from high school and attend college or serve in the military for two years.

Known to its supporters as the Dream Act, it has been offered in the Senate by Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. An effort to bring it to the Senate floor was defeated in 2007, and proponents now consider it part of a package that includes a path to legal status for illegal immigrants in general, an estimated 12 million people. Mr. Beck said he continued to oppose that proposal.

Many illegal immigrant students who were brought to the United States as children receive a shock when they get ready to go to college. They are generally not eligible for lower in-state tuition rates or government financial aid. In most states they cannot get drivers’ licenses.

In recent years, student groups joined battles in several states for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, some successful and some not. This year, student organizers said, they worked to tie those state efforts into a national network, hoping to match the mobilization networks of opponents of the immigration overhaul, which proved far superior in the past.

The troubles for Mr. Padilla began when he drove home after watching a football game and drinking beer with friends. He ran the stop sign, and the traffic police arrested him because he did not have a driver’s license and had been drinking. Eventually, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Immigration agents found him in the county jail.

Mr. Padilla, now enrolled at the University of Illinois at Chicago, had no prior record and had been an honors student and president of the Latino student organization at Harold Washington College, which he attended for two years. Friends from both schools mobilized after his arrest.

Similar rallies took place in November in Miami, when immigration agents detained two brothers from Venezuela who were illegal immigrants — Jesús Reyes Mendoza, 21, a former student government president at Miami Dade College, and his brother Guillermo, 25. Students from the college held a protest in front of the immigrant detention center where the brothers were held.

“The undocumented youth are losing our fear of being undocumented,” said Carlos Roa, an illegal immigrant student from Venezuela who joined that rally. “I’m public with this. I’m not hiding anymore.”

Miami Dade College, with 170,000 students, has become a center for immigrant activism. After the protests, and letters from Eduardo Padron, the college president, the immigration authorities on Nov. 8 deferred the deportation of the Reyes brothers for one year.