DACA Seminar Series: The Impact of the TPS Repeal on Campus: Harvard Workers' Stories

Date: 

Monday, February 26, 2018, 3:00pm to 5:00pm

Location: 

Emerson Hall Rm. 305, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA

Join us for a conversation with workers directly affected by the TPS repeal:

• Martha Bonilla, UNITE HERE Local 26
• Doris Reina-Landaverde, 32BJ SEIU
• Julio Perez, Comité TPS Massachusetts

Excerpt from a letter delieved to President Drew Faust on February 1, 2018. The letter was signed by a coalition workers, faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students across the university:

The Department of Homeland Security announced between November 6, 2017 and January 8, 2018 that TPS would be terminated for Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador. These decisions affect 5,300 Nicaraguans, 59,000 Haitians and about 250,000 Salvadorans with potentially more terminations coming in the future, such as for Hondurans and others. Haitians and Salvadorans, who are the majority of TPS workers at Harvard, also have, respectively, 27,000 and 195,000 children who were born in the United States. 

Since the devastating earthquakes in 2001 in El Salvador and 2010 in Haiti, these hardworking immigrants, many who arrived here 8 to 17 or more years ago as kids, have become very connected in their local communities. Most Salvadorans have been here much longer, for 20 or more years since fleeing the Civil War, and we all should remember America’s role in this conflict. The Boston area is a center of Salvadoran and Haitian community, and we Harvard workers are also part of the University community. Between feeding Harvard students and cleaning Harvard offices, we are the first to greet the students at breakfast and the last to see departing researchers each evening. Like many from Haiti and El Salvador across the country, we cook, clean and provide for American children that dream of more opportunity than we had back home. We also actively contribute to the economy: we buy cars and take on mortgages, start businesses and pay into Social Security. However, opportunity is not our only concern. We will be targeted for violence and could even be killed if we return to what, for many of us, are unfamiliar countries. We are Americans who deserve permanent residency here in the United States.  

Read the full letter to President Drew Faust from the Harvard TPS Coalition.

All DACA Seminar events are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. No registration is required.

 

DACA Seminar is an event series around questions related to the termination of DACA and TPS, deportations, the current state of immigration policy and practice and implications for young people, parents, families, communities, scholars, artists, workers, policy makers and practitioners.

The seminar is co-organized by History Department faculty Walter Johnson and Kirsten Weld in partnership with Roberto G. Gonzales of the Ed School.