How long have you been involved with AIRC? When did you start and why?
I got involved about 10 years ago. I’m one of the co-founders of U-Lead Athens. We started in 2014 and that’s the year that I retired from UGA. I’d been involved with immigrant rights related to the right to higher education when I was working because that’s when the board of regents banned students from the university and made the exorbitant international tuition rates which effectively locked out all the students who are not citizens.
So I’d been doing that work for a couple of years before I retired and then with local teachers and students and colleagues at the university, we started U-Lead Athens. As you know, it’s one of the organizations under the umbrella of AIRC.
I actually met the two founders through Economic Justice Coalition. Noe was on the board at the same time that I was back in the 2010, 2012 around that area. I was following their activism and leadership for many years. I was on the steering committee for AIRC for a number of years representing U-Lead as well as, at times SIFIC (I’m the co-director of SIFIC). I was also involved with starting the interfaith sanctuary coalition with a colleague Joel Siebritt so, other than DIA, I’ve been involved with all of the branches.
So U-Lead was a separate thing that you decided to incorporate within AIRC
Yes, AIRC invited us to be a member of the coalition and we were eager to do so.
What does U-Lead do?
It’s an organization that works towards access to higher education for immigrants and children of immigrants. We’ve been meeting every Thursday night for 11 years and we have wonderful volunteers who work one-to-one with students, everything from tutoring them for their high school classes to fairly intensive their senior year working them to apply for college, apply for scholarships and just navigate the whole world of creating a college list doing the SAT/ACT prep work, determining where they can go based on their immigration status, what they’re eligible for in terms of financial aid. We have a wonderful financial aid counselor who works with them and their families to do FAFSA if they are eligible for FAFSA and to do alternative forms if they are not. And then we provide scholarships for students, between 150 and 175 thousand dollars per year in scholarships. We currently have 75 students who are on U-Lead scholarships.
Can you talk to me about why immigration a cause you have been drawn to?
Initially with U-Lead, it was the institution that I was working for that was discrimination so blatantly against immigrants. It was horrible. When we moved to Georgia from Kansas, I had qualms about moving to a state that was so steeped in segregation up until the 60s and then only by Federal mandate. I was very aware of that history of the University of Georgia and here it was happening all over again with a new population. I just felt like I had to get involved in whatever way I could to work against the system.
Are there any significant changes you have seen in the landscape since you began to get involved?
I think the permission to express hateful rhetoric towards immigrants has skyrocketed with Trump. He’s the leader of that. The hiring of Steve Miller… I guess I don’t need to say any more than that. The readers are going to know what an evil crew that they have making all of these decisions. The lack of access to higher education was a very concrete thing that we could get involved with and help students find other places to go, help them afford the outrageous tuition that they have to pay if they are going to a school in Georgia. It really helped to have something I felt like I could do.
Fighting the ICE system and detentions and deportations is certainly more nebulous in terms of what we can do, but with SIFIC – Support for Immigrant Families in Crisis – we do what we can in that area by providing money for legal fees, for lawyers. As soon as someone comes to us if they’ve been detained and they’re trying to afford a lawyer, we make that a top priority. And that’s trying to keep the worst from happening. When the worst does happen and one of the adults in the family is detained or deported, then we’re doing the work of supporting the families that are left behind. So it’s already too late for us to be proactive, but we try to ease the pain and the fear that goes on when that happens.
For example, this is a Georgia case, it’s not a very local case, but came to us from Jubilee Partners, one of our partners with SIFIC… They let us know about a situation in which a man was put in detention, in Stewart detention center. He has two children. Their mother died of cancer two years ago. They are living with a friend who is also undocumented who is scared to death that because of his detention they will also become a target. And so here are these two children without a mother and now their father has been detained. It’s just the height of cruelty.
A lot of us are experiencing anxiety and apprehension looking at what’s happening. Have you found that volunteering and participating helps or is an antidote to some degree?
I think it helps on multiple levels. The kind of selfish one – there are two selfish parts maybe – one is that you’re with like-minded people and it keeps you from despairing because you are seeing a lot of people working against the cruelties that are occurring. There is strength in numbers and knowing that a small group of people can make a difference and can make a change. The second one that tends to fill many people up who do this work – I know everybody at U-Lead feels this way – we get inspired by our students. We get inspired by their parents.
We have a parent in U-Lead who’s daughter when through 8 years ago. She graduated from college 4 years ago. He just comes by almost every Thursday just to help, just to see what he can do, just to give back. Forming those relationships that are ongoing and being inspired by people who are under attack and being persecuted is just, as I said, truly inspiring.
I know that helping kids go to college has a positive outcome. So some of the things that we do because we have to, we don’t ever know if they do any good: writing letters to Republican senators and representatives feels like a waste of time, but a lot of people do it and I think, you know, somebody there is counting the pros and cons on any given piece of legislation. But that’s much more nebulous and delayed gratification than working directly work people.
What advice would you give to people who are thinking about volunteering?
Come to an AIRC meeting. There are so many different ways to get involved. All of the committees, all of the members of the coalition that are represented there. No matter what your interests are, you’ll find people with those same interests and with the zest and skills and intelligence to say “let’s do this, this, and this.” It’s not just sitting around wringing your hands; it’s people who are out there doing things that are making a difference.