Let's Talk UNLV

Keith Rogers 0:06
All right, welcome to another segment of less tough, u and v on K u and v. You were co hosts Keith and Tanya. Tanya, how was your weekend?

Unknown Speaker 0:15
It was pretty darn awesome. So I went to the dealer motors deal and mortars Festival at this spring preserves. It was it was really cool and interesting saw a bunch of really interesting and different alters some of them were from organization some of them were for families they had things like for, for families that have lost loved ones for for children that haven't found placements. So it was really interesting to see that and a really beautiful, they had some great food. I did not get to sample any of it, but I could smell it. And it sounded authentic. You had an opportunity to put your loved ones name on a wall. And the music was wonderful. It was a beautiful experience. Now this is an annual event. Yeah, and apparently it sells out really super quickly. I just happen to stroll across my Facebook page and I said oh, let's do this. So it was a it was a great time it was it was beautiful.

Keith Rogers 1:12
I didn't do anything as memorable. I was just in couch potato all weekend so I just consumed as much college football and as much NFL football as I possibly could ended in disappointment with my rams losing like, seems like 10 games in a row has been very, very first you know, we had the high of winning a Super Bowl. Now we can't win a game this season. So it's been I don't know why I torture myself.

Unknown Speaker 1:39
Ups and downs. Oh, I forgot one other thing that I did this weekend is I attended an event by her Basha Habesha. Habesha is the Ethiopian group on campus, and they had this wonderful networking event where I got to try Ethiopian food, I got to listen to the panelists, it was a really great event as well, not quite as low key. This weekend, I'm going to be doing what you did, and just kind of chillin.

Keith Rogers 2:03
I hear you. Well, I'm excited. We have two guests. Today, we're going to be talking about the ruling on DACA. And for those who don't know, what DACA is, is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. And we have two of our colleagues on campus who do a lot of work in this space. So we we have today, Michael Kagan, who is the director of the UNLV immigration clinic, that we have now yella Lopez, who's the Resource Coordinator for the undocumented student program. So Daniella, we'll start with you if you could just maybe give us your origin story on how you came into the position that you're in at UNLV. Followed by by Michael.

Unknown Speaker 2:42
Of course. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Daniela Rika. Lopez, I'm the coordinator for the undocumented student program here at UNLV. And my journey, I guess, into how I got into this position is really full of a lot of successes, but a lot of trials and challenges as well. I myself am a DACA recipient and my family migrated to the United States when I was two years old. So I've been living here in the States for for quite a while now. And our journey here to the United States, trying to, you know, grow into a community assimilate and become one was very interesting, especially as as the oldest daughter, within my family, within my household was very challenging, trying to navigate the school system and in translating documents and translating during Teacher parent meetings. And then trying to navigate higher education and itself was a really challenging experience, but also one in which I found moments of empowerment, because that's where I found my my independence and recognize my own resilience. I graduated from Nevada State College in 2021. And I was a recipient of the green.us Scholarship at that campus, which was very helpful. And it provided that pathway of higher education for me and a pathway to the career that I that I have now. I was lucky to come on board in this role within UNLV. This past September of 2021. And I it's been amazing and I love the work that I do in supporting our undocumented students on campus.

Keith Rogers 4:47
All right, thank you for that. And Michael, could you share your origin story on how you arrived at UNLV?

Unknown Speaker 4:54
Sure, well, I mean, that would be a boring story of law school hiring but I My first job out of law school actually was abroad, working in the Middle East to develop legal aid for refugees. And I often say that the job at UNLV is the first normal job that I've had. But I would say on a personal level, my family's originally from Eastern Europe, and came in mostly in the first few decades of the 20th century. And I think I really credit my parents and my grandparents with really stressing those stories, I felt very close to that heritage and whether, you know, working with refugees in Cairo, Egypt, or with immigrants, here in Las Vegas, I think I really recognize a lot of things that, you know, similar struggles, similar kind of daily heroism of people to, you know, raise their kids that, that I heard about, with my great grandparents. And so that's close to something, I feel very close to the bone in terms of my identity.

Unknown Speaker 6:09
Um, thank you so much for sharing that, you know, that leads to that question about what brought you here in the first place, and what made this work important for you. But I'm wondering for the next generation of students, because DACA has evolved in and has continued to evolve over time. So in what ways will the recent DACA ruling impact the current and future students and their families? niaouli? Do

Unknown Speaker 6:32
you want to take that first

Unknown Speaker 6:34
choice. So right now with the ruling on DACA, just some background information. So DACA has was implemented in 2012. And it has allowed nearly 800,000 recipients to remain safely within the United States. And so this, the challenges with this program have been there have been up in ups and downs with this with challenges in the courts. In 2018, Texas, led seven states and filing a lawsuit, also known as the Texas versus United States case, to challenge DACA. Judge Andrew Hainan did roll DACA, unlawful on July 16 of 2021. And so, for right now, it does continue to allow for renewals for current recipients. Were waiting on Judge Hainan to now make a decision on the new DACA ruling from the DHS. And so the decisions that happen will almost certainly be appealed by the Supreme Court. And given given the current status of the Supreme Court in itself. So we're not expecting the program to survive. And so some of the impacts that it might have DACA renewals could be halted. For right now, as I said the renewals continued to be processed, but that could change. First applications are not are being received but not processed. And this has not changed as of recently due to the litigation happening. And there are other effects on the community and recipients as well. So according to research done by the immigrant wellbeing Research Center, and by scholars by from the University of Southern Florida, they their research shows that undocumented young adults with DACA do feel sadness, despair, anxiety and uncertainty about their future and that continues going forward. Especially with DACA being in the courts. A lot of the time. There are a lot of things on the line for these individuals. We know that they have contributed largely for our communities, both financially but also just by being members of community. There are in all fields. And if these individuals do get their DACA benefits halted. We do expect for approximately 22,000 jobs to be lost each month for two years. So there are a lot of financial implications on these individual families, which can be very detrimental to to them and to their loved ones. We'd also see their protections from deportation halted and that could have a lot of strain on their family and just the fact of having that that risk right of having your family separated is huge. Then it's a really big stressor on these individuals. There's also uncertainty around higher education, not knowing what's going to happen with their career with their current positions. So there's definitely a lot of a lot of feelings and really important things to keep in mind with DACA. At the moment,

Unknown Speaker 10:23
you know, as you speak about that, I'm thinking about the mental health aspects of it, and the fear and the uncertainty that I witnessed, and that I hear translated to me or transmitted to me, you know, in conversations, or even on a personal level. And I also think about this idea of living, almost like walking a high wire, you know, and every year someone came, comes along and shakes the wire, so you're barely balancing. And there's always the possibility that someone will pull the wire out from under you. And as you walk, it's just getting more wobbly and wobbly. So I am, I think, and I wonder whether or not some of these things then become generational trauma type of things, in the sense that living in fear and uncertainty, that stuff kind of passes on from generation to generation, not only genetically, but also emotionally, also circumstantially. So, thank you so much for sharing the bigger picture of what happens, you know, as a DACA ruling, keeps flipping and flopping from one side to the next.

Keith Rogers 11:27
And they might get you have any additional comments concerning the recent DACA ruling?

Unknown Speaker 11:33
Well, I just would summarize that DACA has been under threat from the beginning, it's, it was always a crutch. Because of the failure of Congress to actually address the problem in our immigration laws by giving people a recognition that this is their home. And basically, time is running out, Docker has lived on longer than many of us expected to so already essentially, only a half version of itself, because as niaouli explained that new piece, we can't do new applications, we can only really new the old ones, it is an urgent matter, it's going to be devastating to people. At the same time, we need to realize that undocumented people did go to college and did you know try their best to live their lives before DACA. Many still do and who never had DACA. But it really is. It's like if a bunch of people are riding like a treadmill, and everyone else is on an easy setting, and someone else has to be on the hardest setting. That is what an undocumented student going to college has done and DACA made that a bit easier. But we are running out of time to address this.

Keith Rogers 12:52
And then what would you say? The importance or I guess potential implications on sort of the results of the current election, impact on DACA efforts. And make

Unknown Speaker 13:09
sure that nothing good, but not a big change either. Looks like the Republicans are most likely to control the House. But whoever controls the House is only narrowly going to control it. And the Republican Party has really moved to a very strongly uniform anti immigrant position across the board. They are against immigration legal or not. And but that has to be said the Democrats did not address this, it failed to address this because of the filibuster. And because of their norm majority in the Senate. So the Democratic Party has not done what it promised either. Because of division, among its own ranks about how to proceed, which just leaves people who are our neighbors here in limbo, and like I said, time's running out, but we're going to have to stand by our neighbors and realize what people are going through people who we see in class people who are on campus every day. And that there are people who are under strain they should not have to be under this is a manmade catastrophe, basically.

Keith Rogers 14:22
And then this question is for niaouli. If we sort of take a more macro look at this and sort of drill down to sort of UNLV in Southern Nevada, like how many students are we talking about or families of students who are impacted by DACA efforts?

Unknown Speaker 14:41
Yeah, so we here at UNLV. We do not keep track of our undocumented student populations. So we don't have exact numbers, but we do know that national data, we know that there are an estimated population You're in the state of Nevada, of 210,000, or 7% of our population being undocumented. We also know that according to USCIS as of March of 2021, Nevada is home to 11,720 DACA recipients, and there are over 400,000 students in higher education who are undocumented. Now, in 2022, it's estimated that less than half are DACA recipients or are even DACA. Eligible. So we are seeing less and less students coming into higher ed with DACA, because of the current implications, as well as the limits on entry date eligibility.

Unknown Speaker 15:45
So it sounds like there's also a percentage of students that are hidden population for a number of reasons to include safety and to include the fact that they don't feel like they'll have access to the resources they need. Is that what I'm hearing?

Unknown Speaker 16:01
So we yeah, we do not track status, for safety reasons. We also still have the, the national policies and rules on on student privacy. So we have those in place that are also serve as a as a cushion and as as law that we have to follow. So we do this based off of safety precautions, but we do have the undocumented student program on campus that students can come to you and and ask for support, and we'd be more than happy to, to help them out.

Unknown Speaker 16:41
That's wonderful. So which brings me to my next question, how can students or in fact, you know, those who love them family members, and otherwise get involved to improve accessibility to education for those students, that would be DACA. Students.

Unknown Speaker 16:58
So we have, there are many ways in which individuals, if, even though if they themselves are impacted, or if they're allies of these particular populations, there are different ways they can get involved on they can definitely follow different organizations both on campus and off campus with a goal of supporting undocumented individuals, and they can engage in whatever capacity they have, they're also able to share out our resources and programs that we have going on, to further amplify and share out. We have a lot of different kinds of programs, both through the undocumented student program, but the, for example, UNLV immigration clinic does an awesome job in providing different resources and services, resource fairs and such. So we really want to make sure that we have that information going out to our community, because we do have these resources here and we want to make sure that they're utilizing them. So definitely amplifying the the work that we're doing is a great way to get involved. And that goes for both students, faculty, and staff, as well. And I was just going to say lastly, there's also different ways that individuals can get involved in their communities, whether that's working with a nonprofit organization with also the goal of supporting our immigrant community. Right now with elections, doing. The ballot curing could also be a way to get involved civically in supporting our immigrant population as well.

Unknown Speaker 18:45
Thank you for the great lead in Michael, would you like to tell us a little bit about the immigration clinic at UNLV? And what sort of resources that that are accessible for students?

Unknown Speaker 18:55
Sure, the UNLV immigration clinic, part of it is a teaching hospital for law students. So it's a place for law students to learn skills by serving the community and working in real life cases. But we are much bigger than that now. We have a community advocacy office with a staff of five attorneys and at others and other staff. Most of those attorneys work on deportation defense. So I often say you don't want to need our services. We don't want people to be in deportation proceedings. But if you are, that's like the ICU is of immigration law. You desperately need to have a lawyer if you're going to have any fighting chance to stay in the United States. But we have also within that a small university Legal Services program that serves anyone in the UNLV, or College of Southern Nevada communities. That's right now one lawyer, we're hoping in the future that we can find funding to expand that but any UNL Every student is eligible for immigration assistance. Daca for sure, but not only DACA, any kind of immigration assistance, whether someone who is undocumented or whether they're a citizen and want to sponsor a family member, they can go get advice and see how we might be able to help. You just googled at UNLV immigration clinic, there are intakes, there's an online intake form for university legal services, and a description of all the types of people that we can assist. So that is one of the things that we're trying to do to make sure to help people in our community. And the big thing I would, I would say, beyond specific actions to take is it's important not to see immigration as a marginal issue, particularly when you live in a place like Las Vegas that any attack on immigrants isn't it's not really about immigrants, most of people who are immigrants here have not migrated in a very long time that we're talking about people who are integral members of our community. And we need to respond to this issue accordingly. And in politics, it often gets dealt with as a, you know, as a culture war battle or something that's on the margin that most people can probably ignore. If you're part of this community here, you can't ignore immigration is part of who we are, as a city as a state as a campus, then

Keith Rogers 21:19
niaouli Could you expand on what services or assistance is available through the undocumented student program to UNLV students?

Unknown Speaker 21:29
Of course, so the undocumented student program provides services, resources and support for our undocumented students, and students within mixed status families on campus. Some of the things that we can help with include providing support, such as basic needs assistance, giving different kinds of resources, whether that includes financial aid, scholarship assistance, we can definitely help connect students to mental health and well being supports. We're pretty much here as as a resource that can help guide students in various circumstances. A lot of the time, I say, if if I don't know, I can find that information for you. So please, do not hesitate to reach out or refer any students over if they do need extra support. As someone who's undocumented. We also do a lot of programming. So we collaborate with different departments and organizations both across campus and within the community. So we've worked with the you know, the immigration clinic, the undock you network, which is our registered student organization in support of undocumented students on campus. We've also worked with the admissions office and financial aid office to provide more information, like geared for undocumented students. We also have had sponsorships with CSUN, who is our undergraduate student government to put together scholarships and sponsorships. We've also worked with the Mexican consulate, the governor's office for New Americans. So we're definitely connected to our community and want to make sure that we're providing access to higher education for our community members, and also supporting those that are those students that are already here.

Keith Rogers 23:19
And then how can students locate you who need services?

Unknown Speaker 23:24
Yeah, so you can find more information about the services that we have, as well as our social media links and contact information on our website, which is unlv.edu, forward slash diversity for slash undocumented.

Unknown Speaker 23:38
So I wanted to thank you for all of this information, which is new information and also positioning the this idea of undocumented individuals as part and parcel of who we are and woven into the fabric of just Vegas and UNLV in general, and I was curious, are students able to walk in? Or do they need an appointment in order to access your services?

Unknown Speaker 24:01
For the undocumented student program, they aren't able to book appointments with me, if they reach out via email, they can reach us at undocumented@unlv.edu. I can set that meeting up, it could be either an in person virtual or even a phone call meeting. And we can definitely set that up.

Unknown Speaker 24:23
Yeah. And is that the same for you, Michael?

Unknown Speaker 24:26
It's definitely better to make an appointment with us through the online portal, again, just Google UNLV immigration clinic to find it. Law Offices, walk ins often are complicated because lawyers have to take a lot of time with each client.

Unknown Speaker 24:41
Okay, thank you so much for that information.

Keith Rogers 24:45
And then we will we're going to wrap up so we will sort of give you the last word and then so we will turn it over to you Naeli first to share any any closing remarks or if there are questions you wish we had asked of you that we did not if you could please I'm sure at this time it did. Michael asked you the same question.

Unknown Speaker 25:04
Gotcha. Um, my last word, I was actually thinking of referring to one of my favorite poems by Ruby car. And I'll go ahead and read it, it says, perhaps, We are all immigrants trading one home for another, first we leave the womb for air, then the suburbs for the filthy city, and search of a better life. Some of us just happen to leave entire countries. And I think that this is very powerful, a very powerful poem, and I definitely resonate with it. Immigration is beautiful, and also very hard for many families. And at the end of the day, we are all trying to survive as human beings. And I think it's important that we come together as a community to make sure that we're all thriving and succeeding within our, our communities.

Unknown Speaker 26:04
Thank you. That was a beautiful poem, Michael?

Unknown Speaker 26:09
Oh, well, I think we should I think we should end on what naively just said, I can't top that. And I think that was a beautiful summation.

Unknown Speaker 26:19
I was hoping you were going to break out an original piece that you had formed yourself that you're going to debut.

Unknown Speaker 26:28
Yeah, no, I'm sorry to disappoint you on that one.

Unknown Speaker 26:32
Well, maybe next time.

Unknown Speaker 26:34
Maybe I'm better prepared.

Unknown Speaker 26:38
Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for humanizing the experience of being an undocumented individual. And also talking about the dualities and identity. I heard that, you know, in addition to trying to navigate your way, oftentimes you're helping families to navigate theirs as well, you're, in essence, forging a road without a map. You know, and the idea that we other someone who's undocumented is almost like we're othering ourselves, because all of us have origins somewhere. So that poem, I think, beautifully summarizes the idea of immigrants as just a part of the life experiences that we have.

Keith Rogers 27:22
Well, all right, that's a wrap.

Dr. Renee Watson 27:30
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