Our Undocumented Students -- Part 3 -- An Update

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“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. 

 Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. 

 Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. 

 No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.” 
― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

Review and Updates

We would like you to build on our previous two articles to explain the threat to migrants in our community after the current executive ending of DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — and the federal Administration’s attack on all undocumented migrants. Further, our previous articles focused on the State of Texas’s threat against undocumented migrants, including college students, through Senate Bill 4. Since November, the national political attack on migrants has increased, dangerously. 17,000 young people are currently at risk of deportation and 122 more are added with each day of their inaction. We start with an update on policies that threaten our communities and our students.

  1. On 10 January 2018, Federal Judge William Alsup in San Francisco blocked the President’s decision to cancel DACA, arguing, “"DACA covers a class of immigrants whose presence, seemingly all agree, pose the least, if any, threat and allows them to sign up for honest labor on the condition of continued good behavior. … This has become an important program for DACA recipients and their families, for the employers who hire them, for our tax treasuries, and for our economy."1 Over a dozen states and several private organizations have sued the Administration over the end of DACA, but of course, Texas is not part of those suits.
  2. Because of that decision, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Citizenship and Immigration Services have temporarily resumed DACA renewals only — new DACA applications are not accepted.2 Students must contact Citizen Services immediately to renew with updated forms. Of course …
  3. The Administration appealed to the United States Supreme Court to overrule Judge Alsup’s decision and — again — stop the DACA program. Interestingly, the Administration’s appeal to SCOTUS acts as the Department of Homeland Security vs a university (University of California) et al. as plaintiff.3 This reminds us that institutions of higher education and those employees have important roles to play in these proceedings, whether through complicity or resistance. If the administration’s decision to cancel DACA stands, all permits will expire on March 5, 2018. 
  4. The Administration is increasingly attacking migrant communities, including employers; activists; entire cities who attempt to protect their communities; and increasingly non-criminal migrants, including some who have lived in the United States for ten, twenty, and thirty years, raising families and building their communities. We have watched as ICE has detained and deported these people and torn families and communities apart. 
  5. The Administration ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of over 260,000 Salvadorans, including over 36,000 Salvadorans in Texas. Similarly, many of these Texas Salvadorans holding TPS have an estimated 42,500 children who are U.S. citizens. Like the threats to all DACA college students, this further threatens our college students. In short, many of our college students may lose their parents in 2019. 
  6. The Lone Star College System has called for “Rebuild Houston” to lead the community in re/training for this historic construction <http://www.lonestar.edu/RebuildHouston/>. We must understand that migrants will be the backbone in all construction efforts for coming decades. Undocumented migrants will work in every construction site. Many undocumented migrants will need increased skilled work to rebuild Houston.4
  7. Our federal president called many of our college students’ homes “shitholes.” 
  8. The State of Texas is defending racially-profiled SB4 law and expanding the collaboration of local communities’ institutions with ICE.
  9. Congress ended their shutdown in January 2018, based on an agreement to create an immigration bill, including restoring DACA, by February 8. Immigrants’ rights groups have called for a clean DREAM act5, meaning one that does not also include increased funding for a border wall and ICE personnel (which is, at best, an expense of questionable efficacy6 and at worst a direct attack on migrants).
The axis of Abbott-Patrick-Paxton insist, wrongly, that undocumented migrants are threats to our communities. Abbott-Patrick-Paxton are obsessed with any boogeyman as an easy way to target migrants in our communities. For example, when U.S. Border Patrol agent Rogelio Martinez was killed on 18 November 2017, Patrick tweeted, relying on a FOX NEWS source, “Border agent killed, partner injured by illegal immigrants using rocks,”7 while Paxton’s tweet relied on Brietbart’s argument that “Our borders must be secured and criminals must be held accountable.”8 Yet, importantly, Martinez’s death is still unexplained and the Border Patrol has not claimed that anyone crossing the border killed Martinez. Further, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz labeled Martinez’s death as “a stark reminder of the ongoing threat that an unsecure border poses to the safety of our communities and those charged with defending them.”9 This straw man fallacy mirrors other far-right politicians who politicize migration without facts, information, or discussion. We focus on this unsubstantiated discourse as reflective of the forces that created SB4, assuming that migrants are criminals and threats to our communities.
To clarify this myth that migrants are threats to our communities and our college, consider that update research shows a) though far-right “news” discourses claim that migrants are gangs roving the streets, gangs such as MS-13 have decreasing influence in Texas and the country10 while white supremacy violence is increasing.11 Abbott is silent on this trend, but he still defends the state’s decades of gerrymandering to disenfranchise people of color. 
Here as employees in our community college, we want to focus on challenging the persistent and inflexible discourse against undocumented migrants, against people of color, and against our college students who are threatened by SB4. The national and state ideologues use such discourse to effectively reach their political base, seeing all migrants as being “others,” “aliens,” and “sub-humans” (read: “not like us”) — that’s what despots do well: they maintain their power through repetitious hate and fear, without empathy, without reason, without dialog. As colleges, we must strengthen the American academy by defending rational discourse and expanding democracy, not silencing through fallacious arguments, ignorant fake news, and bellicose screams in the night.
These summaries are offered to ensure that we all understand the complexities and the state’s persistent assaults against our migration community. Yet these articles are not meant merely to inform. In defending rational arguments and the humanity of migrants, we must go beyond talking amongst ourselves and move into talking to our representatives. To that end, this union chapter calls for action -- three specific actions that all employees can be involved in, together:

Call for Action

  1. We plan that we meet in U.S. Senator Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz in his Houston office at 808 Travis St on Friday, 9 February, 2018 at 10:00 a.m.. We will meet his office aides to discuss the DREAM Act and how it affects our college students and our community. We will follow our meetings with sandwiches and socializing. Follow the AFT blog site <aftlonestar.blogspot.com> for organizing updates.
  2. We call for each college create to regular academic and civic engagement forums to understand migration. We further call to expand each college’s academic programs with regular, repeated, and expanding studies for migration and globalism. Our college is strong; we should lead the awareness of migration education.
  3. We call for the Lone Star College System to clarify in print and on its website how SB4 affects all students and the faculty and staff responsibilities, such as at UH: http://www.uh.edu/provost/policies/university/sb4/ (Currently, www.lonestar.edu has no comments regarding SB4. This is an unfortunate oversight and does not reflect the college’s values for transparency).
In our final series, we will address unjust laws such as SB4 and resistance of unjust laws is required in a free community.

Endnotes


1.  McCallister, Doreen. “Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump's Decision To End DACA.” 10 January 2018. NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/10/576963434/federal-judge-temporarily-blocks-trumps-decision-to-end-daca
2.  US Citizenship and Immigration Services. “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: Response to January 2018 Preliminary Injunction.” 13 January 2018. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-response-january-2018-preliminary-injunction
3.  United States Department of Homeland Security v Regents of the University of California. Supreme Court of the United States (slip opinion). 2018.
4.  Fernández Campbell, Alexia. “All the relief money in the world won't rebuild Houston. Undocumented workers will.” Vox. 7 September 2017. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/7/16243176/harvey-undocumented-immigrants
5.  Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act
7.  Patrick, Daniel. “ “ 20 November 2017. https://twitter.com/DanPatrick/status/932675899132178432
8.  Paxton, Ken. “Very sad news. My prayers are with these brave border patrol agents and their loved ones.” 19 November. https://twitter.com/KenPaxtonTX/status/932354178307051520
9.  Cruz, Ted. “Sen. Cruz Issues Statement on Attack on Two Big Bend Sector Border Patrol Agents.” 19 November 2017. https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=3496
10.  Downen, Robert. “MS-13 gang brutality grabs headlines while its influence in Houston and U.S. may be waning.” 5 January 2018. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Five-alleged-MS-13-members-charged-for-teen-s-12474774.php
11.  Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States.” 2017. https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states





Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
Twitter @comstone

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