Rodrigo Arriaza (far left), a Richmond magazine intern, is shown with fellow members of PLUMAS, a Latin-American student advocacy group at VCU. Other members include (from left) Jubi Antayhua, Camille Brenke, Harold Claros, Saira Ramos, Gabby Segovia, Vicky Padilla, Jess Moreno-Caycho and Joel Zeballos. (Photo courtesy PLUMAS)
Editor's note: Rodrigo Arriaza, a fall-semester intern at Richmond magazine, reports on student reaction to proposed changes in immigration policy from his perspective as a leader of PLUMAS at Virginia Commonwealth University. Arriaza, a senior at VCU, was born in Bolivia and grew up in Northern Virginia.
Latin-American college students watched the presidential election closely for the last year and a half with mixed feelings. While some viewed Republican Donald Trump as posing an immediate risk to their quality of life in the U.S., others felt that Democrat Hillary Clinton’s track record of supporting certain regimes in Latin America during her time as secretary of state didn’t make her much better. In the aftermath, local students are organizing to counter the effects of policy changes that President-elect Trump proposed throughout his campaign.
The main concern for many Latin-American students is DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The executive action by President Obama in 2012 is a program for which undocumented students can apply and, if they’re accepted, they are eligible to receive benefits such as in-state tuition at colleges and universities. This makes it possible for undocumented students to avoid paying out-of-state or even international fees, which can be three or four times higher than the in-state rate. Although the students are still prohibited from receiving federal financial aid, being able to pay in-state tuition makes higher education a realistic possibility in their lives.
DACA recipients also receive a work permit, allowing them to legally work and pay off their tuition; get a driver’s license, enabling them to drive to classes and work; and, most important, receive deferred action on the part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, meaning that, for two years, they are given a form of legal protection to live and study in the United States.
Trump has announced that he plans to dismantle DACA. But this week, mayors of 15 cities signed a letter asking him to continue the program until further decisions on immigration policy are made, and in a recent interview with Time magazine, Trump indicated an openness to accommodating young migrants.
Meanwhile, students around the country have begun organizing and campaigning for sanctuary campuses. Similar to the idea of sanctuary cities — which Trump also promised to end, while tripling the number of ICE agents — that have pledged not to assist with deportation efforts, the push for sanctuary campuses asks universities to pledge not to allow ICE into their facilities.
At Virginia Commonwealth University a student organization called PLUMAS is leading the effort to declare the school a sanctuary campus. I’m vice president of this group, whose name stands for Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society. (“Latinx” is an inclusive term used to refer to members of the Latin-American diaspora without indicating gender.) PLUMAS has been active on VCU’s campus for more than a year, advocating for the rights of immigrants and the undocumented community.
In the immediate aftermath of the presidential election, the group organized an event called “Next Steps,” at which Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, a Northern Virginia-based immigration lawyer, fielded questions from students and community members on what Trump could and could not immediately enact upon entering office.
PLUMAS has an ally in Antonio Espinoza, an associate professor of Latin American history at VCU, who worked with us to start an online petition asking VCU to become a sanctuary campus after seeing other similar efforts at schools around the country. To date, the petition has received over 700 signatures from students and faculty.
“We have a general responsibility to show solidarity with the most vulnerable members of our university community,” Espinoza says. “I think that among the most vulnerable members of our community are the immigrants and the undocumented students.”
PLUMAS joins other social justice student organizations around Virginia petitioning for sanctuary campuses, including Virginia Tech’s Tech DREAMers, the University of Virginia’s DREAMers on Grounds and George Mason University’s Mason DREAMers.
Our group plans to meet with VCU President Michael Rao next week to talk about the petition, which asks him to “issue a statement declaring that our university will oppose any anti-immigrant policies, and that it will stand in solidarity with members of our community threatened with unfair deportation and any form of anti-immigrant intimidation.” The petition also urges Rao to make arrangements for VCU to assist DACA students who may lose their status through means such as financial support for immigration application fees, legal services and scholarships.
Rao already has joined a list of more than 500 college and university presidents who have expressed support for the continuation of DACA, according to an article posted by Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Camille Brenke, founder and president of PLUMAS, says that it’s essential for VCU to come out as a sanctuary campus.
“It's important at VCU, especially because our campus prides itself on diversity and inclusion,” Brenke says. “We are in the capital of Virginia, minutes from the General Assembly, and it's important because we can’t ignore the Latinx community that exists just beyond our campus.”
