Los Angeles Prof Offers Lessons Exclusively for Undocumented Students
She’s just teaching the classes ordinary American students won’t take, right?
Alexandra Zimmern reports at the College Fix.
LA professor offers lessons exclusively for undocumented students
Educator takes college student ‘Dreamers’ on trips to Mexico – with surprising results
This winter, a professor at Cal State Long Beach will take a group of undocumented students living in the Los Angeles area to Mexico as part of a special class designed for “Dreamers.”
Created by Professor Armando Vazquez-Ramos of Chicano and Latino Studies, the class will consist of 25 college students who were brought to the U.S. before the age of 16 and who are now allowed to stay in the country under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“The intent is to have students come back and promote similar projects in their colleges and universities,” Professor Vazquez-Ramos told The College Fix in a telephone interview. “[Dreamers] are highly motivated and promising young people who will be professionals on both sides of the border.”
Vazquez-Ramos will hand pick 25 Dreamers enrolled in colleges throughout the Los Angeles area to travel with him to Mexico on a 21-day long exchange program, he said.
“This is something that has not been done by any other college or university,” Vazquez-Ramos said. “I am pioneering a model that any other university could also use.”
This past spring, Vazquez-Ramos brought 14 students from his Californian Mexican policy class, most of whom were undocumented, on a university-facilitated trip to Mexico. Some of the students visited relatives they had not seen in more than a decade. Others had never traveled outside of California for fear of being deported.
A documentary, “Without Roots,” chronicled the emotions students faced during their journey back to Mexico, where they were born and raised.
“They were excited to fly ‘home’ for the first time, only to find a huge cultural shock which made them question their true identity,” the film’s description states.
In one scene, the students were booted from a senate meeting in Mexico after applauding a controversial statement by a lawmaker, prompting surprise and strong emotion. Some students noted the trip, at times, made them feel more American than Mexican in many ways, that they have “two identities.”
LA professor offers lessons exclusively for undocumented students (The College Fix)
Comments
Pity we won’t deny entrance to every last one of them, including the professor.
Two things: 1) So, they only got in trouble (per se) when they spoke up in Mexico. But, the US doesnt bother booting them out.
2) How in the hell did they board flights in the US to cross in to Mexico? And how did they board a flight to fly INTO the US… all without legal IDs? oh right, California gives legal driver’s licenses to illegals. But wait, these kids all crossed the border. HOW? How did they cross a border, twice, without a passport? (oh, i understand the first time when they were kids and they crossed illegally, but wasn’t these last few times also illegally if they didn’t have a passport?)
In Mexico, according to Mexican immigration law, if you, a non-Mexican citizen, participate in ANY poltical process – be it a protest or speaking up during a Mexican political process (vote, debate on floor) you are subject to deportation. Period. End of stay.
What galls me is how this, and Mexico’s hypocrisy on its’ own Southern border is rarely brought up on tv when debates about immigration comes up.