By Jasmin Ramirez & Angela Cobián
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained and tested us. As board members and leaders in our districts, in Denver and the Roaring Fork Valley, we have seen firsthand the devastating impact of the pandemic on our students and their families. As first generation American leaders, we have also seen the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 within our own families and respective immigrant communities. From the urban core to the mountain valleys of Colorado, the burden of the pandemic has been even greater for many undocumented students and their families.
We will never forget moments like spending the summer working on college application essays with my cousin-constituent, Andrea, and being unable to answer when she asked, “What will happen to me if immigration reform doesn’t pass when I graduate this May (2022)? I don’t have a social security number.” Or the pleas of parents who are desperate to help their children through a renewal process and those who call to ask “What are our options?.”
Beyond the stress of the pandemic, Colorado’s 8,000 undocumented K-12 students and the 93,000 U.S. citizen children living in Colorado with an undocumented person deal with daily anxiety and fear of separation from their families and homes in Colorado due to congressional inaction on immigration reform. The only solution to keep these families safe and together is for Congress to finally provide Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, essential workers and all undocumented immigrants with an earned pathway to citizenship.
Many of Colorado’s undocumented students are classified as Dreamers, young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has provided temporary protections for many Dreamers, including 14,000 in Colorado, but these protections are limited, under threat, and the majority of current K-12 undocumented students are ineligible for the program due to arbitrary restrictions. This limits their ability for future success and, compounding on that, many undocumented students and their families who work in essential industries were denied state and federal aid because of their immigration status.
The personal, professional, mental, and financial stresses of the pandemic and being undocumented are immense.
This presents a unique and difficult challenge for educators, students, and parents across our state. How are we supposed to convince our students that they should invest in their future if our immigration system fails to provide them with opportunities to succeed?
Our students, if given the chance, have the potential to make incredible contributions to our communities. Further, their parents deserve citizenship not only because their essential labor kept Colorado going during the pandemic; but also, because of their inherent self-worth. Our students are the future of our country, their parents are our backbone, and by investing in and empowering them, we will ensure that we have a strong and healthy democracy for many years to come.
Congress must urgently recognize the challenges students are facing and their potential by establishing a pathway to citizenship. We were able to become public leaders because this country gave our parents a chance with the Immigration Relief and Control Act of 1987, the last time comprehensive immigration reform passed. Congress now has the opportunity to pass immigration reform through the budget reconciliation process to establish a pathway to citizenship for undocumented students and their families and begin fixing the many problems that have plagued our immigration system and contributed to the situation our students find themselves in today.
We are grateful that Colorado’s congressional leaders, Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, and Representatives Jason Crow, Joe Neguse, and Diana DeGette, have proven themselves allies of our immigrant communities. Despite the recent ruling from the Senate parliamentarian in opposition to initial proposals to enact reform via reconciliation, we remain confident that immigration reform can be passed through this process and that our legislators are working and remain committed to alternate proposals.
We stand firmly behind our elected leaders to keep up the fight for a pathway to citizenship and ensure that our students can begin looking to the future where they can pursue their dreams in the same way we have as daughters of immigrants.
Jasmin Ramirez serves on the Roaring Fork School District Board of Education. Angela Cobián is Treasurer of the Denver Board of Education.