Ball State Latino students are joining other college and high school students from across Indiana in an effort to stop a proposed tough Arizona-style immigration law under discussion by the General Assembly.
The plan was at the top of the agenda at the 12th annual Latino Leadership Conference held at Ball State over the weekend. Students from Ball State said they would work with students from Indiana University, Purdue, Ivy Tech and other schools to stop Senate Bill 590, sponsored by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel.
"[SB 590] really just hit us like a ton of bricks," Alicia Nieves, an Indiana University student and member of Dream IU, said.
"We are trying to organize and using this [workshop] as a rallying cry for future unifying events and communication between all students interested in immigrant rights. This is really important for us."
Nieves said the issue is important to her family.
"My family, there's an immigration history there, and my friends, who were in a precarious situation, so that's why it was very important for me," she said.
This year was the first time the leadership conference has been held at Ball State. More than 400 Latino students attended. Along with immigration, other topics discussed at the conference included identity, culture and health among the Latino community.
The keynote speaker for the event was Gabriela Pacheco, who walked with a group of friends from their hometown in Florida to Washington, D.C., to advocate for reform to the federal immigration law last year. Pacheco told students the only way to be heard and to get support from others is by actively seeking the support.
"I'm just any one of you, and anyone of you can do the same thing in your community and in this country," she said. "You cannot wait for somebody out there to go represent you. Every single one of you has the potential to create a difference."
After listening to the speaker, students attended workshops to think about ways to let their representatives know their concerns with the bill. They talked about the possibility of holding rallies during visits of some of the legislators at their hometowns and ways to communicate among each other on other events going on.
Ball State junior architecture major Alejandra Lagunas said after the conference she will start working with students from other universities like IU and Purdue to form a coalition to educate students about recent issues that are of concern to Latinos.
Tatiana Nieto, a Ball State student that was a part of the conference coordinating committee, said she wants to reach out to the undocumented immigrants in her community by talking with her church for support and calling Indiana legislators to talk about her concerns with the current bill.
"People that are affected directly are going to care about this," she said. "If it doesn't affect you, you won't care about it."
The senior social work major said the current immigration laws already affect her family's lifestyle. Her sister-in-law was an undocumented immigrant who married to her brother and applied to become a citizen, but part of the process includes having to go back to her country of origin for a year. While her sister-in-law is likely to get her citizenship, she and her husband have gone through an economic struggle, trying to pay for bills and their daughter's needs. Nieto's niece was sent to Mexico with her mother for a short time.
"It really breaks up families," she said "My niece is everything to all of us and we would see them every day because she was the first grandchild of the family. Now she won't be here for my graduation."
Her sister-in-law, like many undocumented immigrants, faced some limitations that any U.S. citizen would take for granted.
"She wanted to go to school and she wanted to learn English and she can't do any of those things, because she isn't a citizen or a resident," she said. "We are lucky she still has family in Mexico, but if we didn't where would she go?"
Nieto said she hopes understanding can help people work to put a stop on it.
"College students are usually really happy to leave home, but they don't understand that there are some people that haven't seen their parents in 10 years because they can't travel," she said. "We always take things for granted, and we never think about how lucky we are to live with our parents, visit anyone anywhere. I feel like they should be able to see things through a different way and embrace the issue instead of ignoring it and fighting it."
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