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Katrina Dizon
“One of the first campaigns I worked on (as the local DC president of APALA) that really resonates with me was: we were approached by these groups of Filipino teachers in PG county – they were basically trafficked into the country. They got their HV1 visas to work as teachers, but the county wasn't following guidelines in terms of how to pay them. As a result of that, they basically penalized the county and were going to strip [the teachers] of their visas and deport them back to the Philippines. At the end of the day, the teachers weren’t being paid back wages and they would be the ones to be punished and deported.”
“It’s easy to get Congress people to attend your events and your briefings, but actually getting them to act on it afterwards is always a challenge…It’s one thing to address us at a briefing, but how are you going to show up for us at the end of the day?”
“They [ICE] need to be showing face that they’re enforcing these immigration laws, and unfortunately, the communities that end up getting thrown under the bus are a lot of refugee communities, a lot of Southeast Asian Americans, a lot of Pacific Islanders.”
“Since many Southeast Asian Americans came here as refugees, they actually have their green card, so the barriers they’re facing are very different from those who are undocumented. But because of the circumstances they have – coming here as refugees, growing up in very impoverished neighborhoods, living in areas with high rates of crime and a lot of gang activity – it funnels them into the criminal justice system at a young age. So they are threatened with deportation as well.”
“One great thing that the Dream Act has done is being more vocal, getting it out in the public, and showing a lot of undocumented young people that it’s not something to be ashamed about. And in fact, in many ways, the more you talk about your status, the more you share your story, I think in some ways the more you’re protected from being deported.”
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