By: EFE, LA Opinión ~ JULY 31, 2017
Despite official threats to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), 35 "Dreamers" took the risk to travel to Mexico this month to study abroad as part of the Summer 2017 California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program taking place at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) from August 1 to the 21st.
"My mother is the one who is most distressed, I am nervous about the return, but I have faith that I will be able to enter," said Francisca Mejía Campos to EFE, one of the participating students that has benefited from DACA, the immigration relief established in 2012 by President Barack Obama.
This is the sixth program the CMSC hosts, which facilitates undocumented students protected by DACA to study abroad and explore their roots through ethnographic research on their family origins and migration.
Moreover, this will be the first group to risk leaving the country under the Donald Trump administration, who has promoted an aggressive immigration policy that could threaten DACA's permanence.
"I understand that they can remove it at any time. And the fear will always be because if they remove DACA you start from scratch again, but you have to try, you have to create resistance" said José Rivas, who is part of the group.
"What we inculcate in all the Dreamers is to challenge the element of fear, and that we cannot panic by the threats", said to EFE Armando Vazquez-Ramos, coordinator of the project.
In 2015, president Obama's DACA initiative opened the doors to undocumented minors and became a badge of the Dreamers' struggle to return to their roots.
Students from California, New York, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Wisconsin and Washington will participate this year in the program, mostly women.
They will conduct ethnographic research work in 12 Mexican cities and then converge in the border city of Tijuana, where they will participate in the Second International Seminar on Migration and Public Policy at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) from August 17 to 19, 2017 before they return by bus across California's San Ysidro border.
"We have spoken with the border authorities and we are very confident that these young people will return to the country, together with our faculty and staff" said Vazquez-Ramos.
The security and support of Vazquez-Ramos and the California-Mexico Studies Center staff is what encouraged Jennifer Jasmine Nava, a nursing student who came to the United States at 7 years of age, to join the group.
"If I lose the DACA, I would lose everything, my life, my dreams," explains Nava, who has been able to work in a hospital for two years and obtain her license, thanks to Obama's relief.
But like her 34 companions in the adventure, Nava believes that returning to the country with a lawful-entry, also helps the Dreamers to open a door towards adjusting their status to permanent residence.
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Recap on Gregorio Luke's "The Plight of the Immigrant" Presentation
Last Friday July 28, CMSC staff along with previous California-Mexico Dreamers Study Abroad Program participants, had the honor to participate in Gregorio Luke 's special presentation on "The Plight of the Immigrant" at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California.
Pictured: CMSC staff and Prof. Armando Vazquez-Ramos pose with Congressman Lou Correa
The presentation celebrated John F. Kennedy's Centennial, and also helped to benefit Casa de la Familia (CDLF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing mental health services to children and families in Southern California.
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