THURSDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2012 BOVARD AUDITORIUM

THURSDAYFEBRUARY 16, 2012

All School Day Committee: Cherry Short: Chair, Hillary Chisum, Susan Cornwall, Mako Csapo, Alex Dee, Spencer Dunn, Annalisa Enrile, Ralph Fertig, Lorena Garcia, Julie Row, David Rudesill, Kristin Teti,

Yohey Daniel Tokumitsu, Gena Truitt, Darlene Woo, Debbie Winters, Josh Watson and June Wiley

For more inFormationAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) http://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights

Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) http://www.chirla.org

National Immigration Law Center http://nilc.org

USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) http://csii.usc.edu

USC Immigration Clinic http://lawweb.usc.edu/why/academics/clinics/immigration

MYTH: Immigrants are a drain on our social services. FACT: By paying taxes and Social Security, immigrants contribute far more to government coffers than they use in social services.

MYTH: Immigrants have a negative impact on the economy and the wages of citizens and take jobs away from citizens. FACT: Immigration has a positive effect on the American economy as a whole and on the income of native-born workers.

MYTH: Immigrants—particularly Latino immigrants—don’t want to learn English. FACT: Immigrants, including Latino immigrants, believe they need to learn English in order to succeed in the United States, and the majority uses at least some English at work.

MYTH: Immigrants don’t want to become citizens. FACT: Many immigrants to the United States seek citizenship, even in the face of difficult requirements and huge backlogs that can delay the process for years.

MYTH: Immigrants don’t pay taxes. FACT: Almost all immigrants pay income taxes even though they can’t benefit from most federal and state local assis-tance programs, and all immigrants pay sales and property taxes.

MYTH: Immigrants send all their money back to their home countries instead of spending money here. FACT: Immigrants do send money to family members, making it possible for more people to stay in their home countries rather than migrating to the United States. Importantly, sending remittances home does not keep immigrants from spend-ing money in the United States.

MYTH: Immigrants bring crime to our cities and towns. FACT: Immigrants are actually far less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts. Even as the undocu-mented population has increased in the United States, crime rates have decreased significantly.

MYTH: Most immigrants are undocumented and have crossed the border illegally. FACT: Two thirds of immigrants are here lawfully—either as naturalized citizens or in some other lawful status. Moreover, almost half of all undocumented immigrants entered the United States legally.

WELCOMELorena Garcia and Spencer Dunn, Student OrganizationCherry Short, Assistant Dean, Global & Community InitiativesMarilyn Flynn, Dean

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS The Honorable Gilbert CedilloCalifornia State Assembly, 45th District Gilbert Cedillo is a champion for California’s working, middle class and immigrant families. From organizing to save 25,000 Los Angeles County jobs to assimilating immigrants into the state’s social and economic fabric and expanding access to health care for working families, Cedillo has been one of California’s most forceful progressive advocates. His commitment to working families grew out of his life

experience and 14 years with the largest workers’ union in Los Angeles County. In one of his early campaigns, he organized a 150,000-person march, one of the largest in Los Angeles history, to oppose Proposition 187, California’s 1994 initiative to ban health care and education benefits for undocumented immigrants. Cedillo is widely known for his attempts to reinstate driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants and as the author of the California DREAM Act to grant undocumented im-migrants access to student financial aid benefits.

Manuel Pastor, PhDUSC Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity

Manuel Pastor focuses on issues of environmental justice, regional inclusion, and the economic and social conditions facing low-income urban communities. His most recent book, Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future with Angela Glover Blackwell and Stewart Kwoh, documents the gap between prog-ress in racial attitudes and racial realities, and offers a new set of strategies for both talking about race

and achieving racial equity. Pastor speaks frequently on issues of demographic change, economic inequality and community empowerment. Currently, he directs the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity and co-directs the USC Center for Study of Immigrant Integration. He is also the founding director of the Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

COMMUNITY PANELNiels Frenzen, JD, an attorney and clinical professor of law, oversees the USC Law Immigration Clinic. He has represented hundreds of asylum seekers and other immigrants, and has litigated numerous federal court cases challenging the mistreat-ment of noncitizens. A past president of the Program for Torture Victims and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, he has also contributed his expertise to Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and the Haitian Refugee Center.

Ange-Marie Hancock, PhD, an associate professor of political science and gender studies and associate director of the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, is a globally recognized scholar of intersectionality – the study of the intersec-tions of race, gender, class and sexuality politics and their impact on public policy. Her current book, Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics, uses popular culture and survey data to analyze the contemporary challenges of immigration and same-sex marriage.

Angelica Salas is executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and a leading spokesperson on immigration policy. Among her accomplishments, she has helped win in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant stu-dents, established day laborer job centers and led the effort to allow all California drivers to obtain licenses. Salas is also a founding member of the Fair Immigrant Rights Movement and the Reform Immigration for America, two national organizations working to win fair and humane immigration reform.

SPECIAL GUEST KB Solomon, a world-renowned opera singer known for his prominent basso profundo voice, pays tribute to American patriot Paul Robeson and his profound influence on civil rights.

ALL SCHOOL DAY 2012

Several states have passed local “immigration reform acts” aimed at identifying,

prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants. The laws make the failure to carry

immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone

suspected of being in the country illegally simply based on their appearance. Critics

of the legislation say it encourages racial profiling, while supporters say the law

prohibits the use of race as the sole basis for investigating immigration status. The

National Association of Social Workers strongly opposes such laws that criminalize

immigrants, endanger human rights and threaten the civil liberties of citizens and

immigrants. The current political context of immigration makes the job of social

workers much harder. We must present a united front to ensure equal protection

from discrimination for all immigrants who come to live in the United States.

To do nothing is to ignore the core of who we are and what our profession stands for.

All School Day is an educational forum co-led by students and faculty to discuss how we can better communicate across differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, social class and disability. Born out of Los Angeles’ civil unrest in 1992, All School Day has become an annual event recognizing and celebrating diversity through an exchange of ideas and discussions that unite participants in an atmosphere of cooperation, respect and inclusion.