A University class on immigration is spending the week at the United States-Mexico border learning first-hand about the experiences of those who seek to enter the United States both legally and illegally.
The class, founded by education professor Edward Olivos, left for San Diego Saturday for an intensive week of hands-on training with a local non-profit organization devoted to helping Latino immigrants.
“The class is really about experiencing what is happening and seeing what it is like down there,” Olivos said. “My hope is that students will be able to better relate to the immigrant population.”
During the week, students will spend time on both sides of the border, helping with relief efforts and interacting with immigrants.
“To be honest, I have no idea what to expect at the border,” pre-education major Brooke Fischer said. “I don’t think it will change my opinion on (immigration) too much, though.”
Fischer said the 15 students in the class, which began meeting last week for some preliminary discussions, all feel that the borders should be opened.
“We’re all pretty like-minded,” she said. “We’re against regulating immigrations and the new immigration laws. I don’t think we should close our borders.”
This week the students will alternate between field work with Border Angels, an organization devoted to minimizing unnecessary deaths of immigrants along the border, according to its website, and seminars at St. Rose of Lima Parish.
Olivos said the class has had an incredible experience thus far on the trip. Students have expressed themselves “through anger, guilt, many through tears, and some through determination and commitment,” he wrote in an e-mail to University officials.
Fieldwork expeditions include a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border fence. The students will also make trips into the Mexican desert to fill water stations that help prevent immigrants trying to cross illegally from dying of thirst in the heat. Students will work with relief efforts in both countries, Border Angels founder Enrique Morones said.
“I want students to see what the fence really looks like, and what the other side on Tijuana looks like… to get to feel what it is like to cross in these conditions,” Morones said.
At the fence, Morones hopes the students will have the chance to see the families who live on either side of the border but are not allowed to cross.
“There’s a wire fence (between) them, so families sit on both sides of the fence and have lunch together and see each other,” Morones said.
The students will also spend a day working at a house of refuge in Tijuana for people who are preparing to cross or have been deported from the U.S. and have nowhere to go, Olivos said.
Students will be spending the evenings attending various seminars at a local Catholic church. Olivos said the church, which has faced a great deal of criticism in the U.S. for supporting immigrant rights, will give several presentations to students about the Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform.
The campaign hopes to educate the public on the Church’s views of migration and immigrants, which is based on the premise that all humans are equal and deserving of the same opportunities.
“Our common faith in Jesus Christ moves us to search for ways that favor a spirit of solidarity,” the campaign’s website states.
Additionally, the Church hopes to see political reform that will benefit immigrants and potential immigrants, according to its website.
Olivos said the class is primarily designed to give the students enough background and first-hand knowledge on immigration to continue working in the field, or at least leave with a better understanding of the nuances surrounding the issue.
In addition to the field work, the students will spend roughly a week in class studying immigration globally – especially the changes seen since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed.
“The class is about understanding immigration under the context of the global economy,” Olivos said. “Not as a human choice that people suddenly woke up one day and decided to migrate, but as a necessity. The U.S. is not the only place getting immigrants.”
Olivos said the class will become a permanent fixture in the College of Education curriculum next year, but he does not know if or when it will head to the border again.
The class was able to take the summer trip this year because of a grant from the Wayne Morris Center for Law and Politics, which provided the students with a travel stipend to help cover some of the expenses at the border.
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