During Friends Select’s annual Social Justice Week, I participated in the Immigration Reform track. We spent the week doing activities, going on field trips, and hearing from speakers.
On our first day, we went over norms and basic terms before doing an activity where we organized dates of important moments and acts that shaped immigration. Afterwards, we visited the Mexican Consulate and heard a presentation from them. To conclude the day, we took the civics part of the citizenship test, which demonstrated how tedious and difficult the citizenship process is, and then we learned about “push” and “pull” factors of immigration and made a small flip book that told the story of an immigrant coming to the United States.
The next day, we had two speakers, Jonathan Grode and Jessica Daly. Grode is an immigration lawyer at Green and Spiegel, who spoke to us about the history of immigration laws, current immigration laws, ICE, and his personal opinions on the future of the US. Daly is the pro bono manager at HIAS. She taught us about HIAS as an organization, how they help refugees, and how they have been affected by the Trump Administration. In the afternoon, we participated in a case study about Yuchen Zhou, an immigrant from China. In groups, we were assigned to argue either that he should or should not be permitted to continue living in the US.
On Thursday, we watched the first episode of Immigration Nation, a documentary that showed ICE during the first Trump Administration. The documentary presented ICE as a group while also highlighting individual agents’ opinions, and it showed scenes of the horrific ways that ICE rips apart families and ruins the lives of innocent immigrants. Afterwards, we read articles about Renee Good, a woman who was fatally shot by an ICE agent, and learned about what ICE can and cannot do, and what one should do if ICE comes to your house. In the afternoon, we went to the Community Center, where we heard a presentation about Philadelphia’s need for immigrants, and then we ended by writing letters to our senators to show our opinions on the current immigration policies and the change we want to see.
On our last day, we began with a debate with the Asian American Experiences track. We were mixed into groups, and my group debated that Ellis Island was more significant to American history than Angel Island. Afterwards, we went with them to Chinatown and had Dim Sum for lunch, which was very fun and tasty! In the afternoon, we went on a mural walk through Chinatown, and then we had some free time to explore before coming back and writing thank you notes to all of our trips and speakers.
Throughout the week, we participated in many field trips and heard from knowledgeable speakers. One memorable field trip we had was visiting the Mexican Consulate on 16th and Arch. We heard a presentation that taught us about Mexican culture and what the consulate does to help Mexican people within Philadelphia. They spoke about how the consulate helps undocumented people by taking care of their needs, such as helping with legal matters, getting them credit cards, and providing healthcare. A memorable story that he told was that last year, a group of men were taken and detained for not having citizenship, even though one of the men was an actual US citizen. ICE had racially profiled him and taken him away without any proof. This is a strong demonstration of how our current immigration system is messed up.
Another memorable field trip we went on was visiting the Community Center. We heard an engaging presentation about how immigrants are literally building up our city. Over the past 50 or so years, our population has decreased by approximately 500,000 people, which negatively affects the economy and businesses. However, in recent years, the city has gained ~100,000 people, almost all of whom are immigrants. We also learned how immigrants make up ~30% of our healthcare workers, as well as large percentages of agricultural workers, and small business owners, showing how needed and valuable they are to our city.
To expand further on our speakers from Thursday, Jonathan Grode, an immigration lawyer, taught us so much about what is currently happening with immigration and our government. One really interesting thing that I learned is that both Democrats and Republicans have swapped ideas of what they believe is right regarding immigration. The last person to push for immigration reform was Ronald Reagan, a Republican president from 1981-1989. He also spoke about Trump’s executive orders and how they are ruining our true democracy. Lastly, I also learned that ICE existed before the Trump Administration, and was used for good, such as preventing human-trafficking, drug-trafficking, and sex-trafficking. Though now all of its new funds are being used to round up and deport innocent immigrants.
To learn more about Jessica Daly and her work with HIAS, she explained to us how HIAS used to provide both legal services and refugee resettlement, especially for low-income families. Last year, Trump cut all funding for refugee resettlement and will only allow in 7,500 refugees, compared to Biden’s 125,000. This has significantly affected HIAS’s work, making them only able to provide legal services, such as getting people asylum status and green cards. We also learned that all 2,000,000 refugees who were let in during the Biden Administration are being “re-checked”; this is being called “Operation Paris”, causing very long wait times and the separation of families.
Overall, I learned significant information about immigration, both historically and ongoing. Thank you so much, Hannah Smith, Grace Salmon, and Abby Davenport, for planning such an engaging week!
