Come out to the screening of the documentary “Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth” on Tuesday, October 23 at 7:00 p.m. in Mayo Concert Hall. The documentary presents the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. The immigrant children featured in the film were brought to the United States when they were very young, and have since been successful students, but now they can’t attend college, they can’t even work at McDonalds; they have nowhere to go.
The event will also feature a question and answer session with the director of the documentary, Anne Galisky, and founder of the NJ Dream Act Coalition, Marisol Conde-Hernandez, following the screening of the film. Light refreshments, including cookies and lemonade, will be served.
Marisol Conde-Hernandez is a 25-year-old undocumented immigrant that was born in Mexico but has lived in New Jersey since she was 18 months old. She recently graduated from Rutgers University with a 4.0 GPA, but was forced to pay international tuition because of her undocumented status, which she paid for by waitressing 80 hours per week. Now that she’s graduated with such high credentials, however, she is unable to work legally in the United States without a green card or work visa, which she has been unable to obtain, so she is still stuck waitressing.
Dr. Ann Warner-Ault, Assistant Professor of Spanish who organized the event, says, “we thought it would be interesting and compelling to bring all these stories together, about things that you maybe never thought about before…I think people often treat it like it’s a black and white issue, but it’s not. There are a lot of nuances and gray areas.”
This presentation is also extremely timely with the upcoming election, in which immigration is a main topic of concern, and because the a piece of legislation drafted in 2000 called the DREAM act, which provided a plan for granting immigrant children and students conditional permanent residency—i.e. green cards—if they joined the United States military or completed at least two years of college, was recently turned down by the Senate.
Hope to see you there for this eye-opening and informative event!