Immigration Panel in Eau Claire

The League of Women Voters of the Greater Chippewa Valley, Association of University Women, J.O.N.A.H, Literacy Chippewa Valley, and Wisconsin Farmers Union presented a panel discussion on May 13 at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Eau Claire. The discussion was wide-ranging and covered the legalities of immigration as well as the experiences of immigrants in the Chippewa Valley as well as the new challenges for immigrants being imposed by the Trump administration.

Immigration has been a key issue in America since the founding of our country and continuing today. The League of Women Voters of Greater Chippewa Valley offered this discussion for people who have questions about our immigration system, want to use this information to have their own discussions with politicians and community members, and would like to hear directly from those who work with immigrants about their experiences.

Amanda Gennerman, an immigration attorney from Madison, spoke on the legalities of immigration. She was joined by a panel of local residents; John Rosenow, farm representative, Dave Anderson, church representative, and Elizabeth Hart, educational community group, who shared their experiences connecting with our immigrant neighbors

The following is an AI-generated transcript of the first portion of the meeting. It very likely contains errors in transcription.

SPEAKERS

Lori Miller, John Rosenow, Dave Anderson, Amanda Gennerman, Speaker 2, Ellen Ochs, Elizabeth Hart, Speaker 1

 

Lori Miller 00:09

We are excited to see a good turnout tonight. I am Lori Miller. I live in peppin County, and I'm a member of the League of Women Voters. The league, as you might know, is a non partisan organization, and what does that mean? It means we don't endorse candidates and parties, but we do look at and are concerned about questions in the political sphere. So that would mean empowering voters civic engagement and helping people with the voting process. This is when we are putting together this program. We thought there is such a huge topic, lots of interest, where do we even start? And there was three things that we really wanted to do, and that was one, be educational, to give you some facts. Number two, as wonderful as facts are, give you some stories and then also provide what seems to be the biggest tripping point, at least for me personally, and that is the legalities of immigration. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where I get into it and we get stuck with but can you do that? Is allowed? When did that happen? Is that really changing? And then the conversation stops right there. So tonight, with this format, what we would like to do is be able to give you that information so that you can have good conversations about immigration, with your neighbors, with your friends, with your family, with your elected officials. And we wanted you to get that information directly from people who work with our immigrant communities, and that is why we have the panel that we do up here today. And we also wanted to provide a format where you can sit and listen and absorb it, think about it, and then be able to form your own questions to ask the panel and get them answered in real time. So the one other little bit of philosophizing that I will come up with, before I just give you the nuts and bolts, is I think everyone here has at least two things in common, and that would be, you're interested in immigration, and probably somewhere in your family tree, you have an immigrant to this country. Also you love your community. And if you if those two things are not true, you would not be here. You'd be at home. So as I urge you to think about that link that you have to each other as you listen and talk and ask questions. Okay, so some of the logistics, we have snacks. We have handouts. And if we run out of handouts and you would like some more, there is a sign up sheet. We can email them to you, and then bathrooms. When you go back out into the lobby and you're heading toward the edge of the front door, just turn to your right and there's men's and women's bathrooms there. We will be doing questions once all the speakers get done speaking, we've given you index cards to write those questions on, and volunteers will collect them. We just find that that's a better flow so that the speakers can say what they need to uninterrupted, and we'll answer as many of your questions as we have time to do that tonight. I'd like to thank the co sponsors for this event, the American Association of University Women, the ACLU literacy, Chippewa Valley, the Wisconsin Farmers Union and Jonah and I also want to very much thank Emmanuel Lutheran Church for providing this space for this event. This is very nice. No steps, nice, big parking lot. They're They're wonderful community partners. There's just a few people from the league. I want to point out. One is our league, local league chapter president, and that would be Ellen Holtz, if she would stand up. You'll hear from her a little bit later. And then the planning committee. Marilyn Hagan, if she would stand up or just wave your hand, whatever you want to do.

 

04:37

Marilyn Connie, Connie Russell

 

Speaker 1 04:40

and Joan jeffson Berger, thank you to

 

Lori Miller 04:46

them. We are recording this event, and we will put it on our website, and if you want to watch it later on or share it with somebody else, the link to our website is at the bottom of the agenda. There's also a QR code. Would you know if that's a better way for you to get to the website? So let's get into it. We're going to start with Amanda jennerman, and she is going to talk about the legalities of immigration, the thing that I just stumble over all the time, and she has more than 20 years experience as an immigration lawyer for the firm Hans Bach in Madison, and I'll let her, as well as all the other speakers, when it's their turn, give as much personal information about herself as she would like. So thank you, Amanda.

 

Amanda Gennerman 05:38

Okay, good evening. I guess it's an early today to spend time in Eau Claire, it's becoming a second home to me, and I really take every opportunity I can to be here. So invite me back and and I will happily come so. So my name is Amanda get Herman, and yes, I am an immigration attorney. I have been practicing immigration law exclusively since I graduated in 2003 it's a lot for me to say, and it is one of those things that if I didn't love what I was doing, I wouldn't do it, because law school was awful and and so, yeah, I really found I found my home in law school when it came to immigration, it was an area that I had no experience with prior to coming to law school, I went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As an undergrad, I studied Women's Studies and African American history, and saw the crossover of law and social justice. And I said, this is something I need to figure out and how I'm going to practice. And so in law school at the University of Denver, I had an opportunity to represent a young woman from Sierra Leone who had witnessed her family murdered in the streets of her home community, fled to another West African country and boarded a plane and came to the United States seeking refuge, and So, Long story short, she actually got placed into deportation proceedings. And as the law school didn't have an immigration clinic at the time, they said, We see what your interests are. We know what kind of your background is in social justice and violence against women and sexual abuse history, we'd like you to represent this young woman. And so I did knowing nothing about immigration law. And that was it that sealed the deal for me. I was like, This is what I want to do for the long haul. And so to say that I've been doing it since 2003 really holds dear to me. I've seen many administrations go through the area of immigration law. And when I thought things couldn't be worse. Here we are, and I say that because not all the administrations have been have been great on immigration. I haven't found the perfect administration yet, whether it's a Democrat or a Republican in in the in power, it's the rhetoric right now that just feels so daunting and so painful and very aggressive that feels very different from what I've experienced in the last 20 years. And so I do want to go through this handout and talk about immigration law. I go to conferences, and these are week long conferences, so anything I talk about here today could be a four day conference on its own. And so my goal is to really provide some overview, be here to answer questions and make it relative to what's going on here in Wisconsin. And you know, somebody was up here speaking to some of the panelists before saying, you know, I listen to the news and every day it's something else. Yeah, it is. And so I looked at my notes, and this was prepared for a February presentation I gave. And I was like, okay, that doesn't matter anymore. That doesn't apply. And so the reality is, things are changing on the ground so quickly that as a practitioner, that's one of the greatest challenges I face. So it's hard enough for me to digest what I think I've understood for 20 years, and then to relay that to the communities that I'm working with through language, through interpreters, people crying, people afraid, right? This is the reality of the communities that we are working with, whether it is from Central America, West African, South African, Middle Eastern China, the Philippines, every community is feeling this in a very different way. And my job is to try to digest that and explain it along the way. And sometimes it's not the easiest thing to do, so immigration is run through a process called the Immigration and Nationality Act. That's the major act that controls immigration law. We call that the INA. And there are rules and there are provisions, some allow individuals to come to the United States and determine. What you have to establish to enter the United States. We call that admissibility. And then there are other aspects of immigration law that address deportability or removable acts. So how do we say no, we don't think you can stay and now we have grounds to remove you. So those are kind of like the large provisions. And I think people get confused because they don't understand that there are distinct actions and distinct acts that allow somebody to enter the United States, to be present, and then certain acts that, if conducted, can get you removed from the United States. So those are, those are just kind of like large concepts to think about, and I think people get wrapped up in the concept of, well, why can't people just do it the right way? If you had to understand the system that is broken, you would very clearly understand why people attempt to do it the right way. And when they are told they will wait 20 years to be reunited with their family, they make other choices. Okay? So the idea of this is a system that, if we just get in line and follow the rules, it would be very orderly. It's a broken system. It has been for 20 years. And so how we maneuver through that system and how we create executive actions and policies to interpret. The way the INA is in is enforced, is one of the issues we have to look at. So the Immigration Nationality Act, that's the overarching law that impacts, that I have to interpret. Then we have these regulation policy manuals and memorandum so regulations are things that Congress can write and say, This is how we are going to implement different areas of the INA, or this is our interpretation of how this works through the INA, and then we have policy manuals. So I think about affirmative applications. So this would be a situation in which somebody is present in the United States, and let's say they came as a student, so they traveled from their home country, got a visa at their home consulate outside of the United States, entered the United States, a custom and border officer reviewed their passport and said, Okay, welcome. You can stay for your four years to study at the University of Eau Claire. Okay, great. Well, while studying at the University of Eau Claire, they found madly in love with, you know, the person of their dreams, and now they want to stay in the United States because they're married to now a US citizen, so that US citizen can start a petition for that individual who is present prior on an f1 student visa. That application requires an interview to show that the marriage was entered into good faith and that while you were a student, you didn't break any rules, you didn't break any laws. You didn't you acted in a way that we think is respectable to obtain your residency. So policy manuals from the USCIS, which is the immigrant United States, Citizenship and Immigration Services office, they adjudicate affirmative applications. So if you're applying for a green card or your residency based on marriage, you often have to appear at a USCIS office in the state of Wisconsin. Our main office is down in Milwaukee, although the state of Wisconsin is split kind of at a diagonal, so individuals who are living more in the Chippewa Valley may go to Minnesota, to their local USCIS office in in the Twin Cities to have an interview before an immigration officer. And so again, policy memos and memorandum are internal documents that use the Immigration and Nationality Act to interpret and apply the law to these different types of applications. And then there's memorandum so then you have the Department of Justice, you have the Department of Homeland Security, you have all these other agencies that write memorandums, again, interpreting how they want the law to be impacted and how they want it to be adjudicated. Then we have this thing called executive orders. This is the hot topic, right? So when I did this presentation in February, there were 122 executive orders. So from january 20 until february 14, 122 executive orders directed at immigration policy or some aspect of immigration policy, and I was sitting at the fabulous coffee shop today in Eau Claire called shift, which I love. 284 executive actions have been thrown down that impact Immigration and Customs Enforcement and. And the rule of the Department of Homeland Security. Again, these are from as simple as saying we are no longer going to call individuals applicants for immigrants or non citizens. We are going to revert to calling them aliens. This is an executive action so, right, harmful, hurtful, but that's one one tier other executive actions we are seeing include the actions of basically criminalizing or deputizing the IRS to look at individuals who are filing taxes and paying taxes with their itin numbers to determine whether or not we should be deporting those individuals. So again, executive orders are coming down hard, heavy and fast, and I think that's the game, right? Because it's hard for us to stay on top of the changes if they're coming at us at such a rapid fire experience and creating fear, because what we hear is what we hear in the news, and not always, about the litigation that is going on to stop some of these actions. I am not a litigator. I am an affirmative I do a lot of affirmative applications. I don't do a lot of federal litigation. I suddenly had to pick up the Constitution again and go, What are the rights again of individuals who are coming in at the border? Is their device safe? Is it not as an immigration lawyer? Am I going to be leaving with a burner phone, or am I bringing my laptop with me? There are so many things that are happening that are cross pollinating within within law that where I didn't think I had to be a constitutional scholar, and nor do I consider myself one. It is something that I have to take into consideration when I am talking to my clients about traveling outside of the United States birthright citizenship, right? That was one of his big games. Right off the bat. Well, you know, if you're born in the US, maybe you're not a US citizen. Well, the Constitution says you are and the judges kind of said you can't do that, and we know that that's going up to the Supreme Court. So these are really, again, intense legal issues that we're trying to communicate with our communities who are having children in the United States and saying, Can I get a passport even though I'm not documented, but my child was born here, there was an executive order to tell the Department of State to not issue passports to individuals if their parents could not establish their status in the United States. That had never happened before. And so again, communities are trying to figure out, well, if I have to go back, whether I self deport, which is a whole problematic concept, but if I return, or if I am returned against my will, what about my US citizen children, if they don't have us passports, how are they going to travel back and be reunited with their loved ones in their home countries. So again, the area of what we know about immigration law and how I've practiced it in 23 years has really been thrown a major curve, and trying to stay up on that is one of the greatest challenges I have as a practitioner. So executive orders, again, these are powers that are not law. They are policies. And again, luckily, we have amazing litigators nationally that are saying you can't do that. ACLU says you can't do that. And we have people fighting and watching, really the campaign promise that he said he wasn't connected to the 2025 project. He's taking it right out of their their playbook. And I was at a national conference last year in Chicago before the election, and we started digesting that and going, Okay, where are we going with this? If we are not successful in overcoming this, this administration. And so our next conference is in Denver, where, again, a lot of heat is coming down as far as their practices and protocols, and we are trying to focus on wellness. I'll be very honest, that is one of the key themes that immigration lawyers are trying to incorporate into our practices is, if we are not all well, how can we help those that we are trying to protect and provide support for? So the fact that you are all here today makes me like breathe the sigh of we are going to be okay, all right. So thank you for being here today and showing up for your community, because that is what we have to do, because people are relying on us to do that. Again, major tracks of immigration, we have family based immigration, sort of a real quick sniff I showed you, as far as marriage to a US citizen, a fiance based petition. And yes, the 90 day fiance, that's a real thing, bringing somebody in and having to marry that individual within 90 days, following the rules to make sure that you meet all of the marks to get your loved one here in the United States. What I think people don't understand is that just because you marry a United States citizen, you don't get any status, there is application. There are processes. What if you came to the United States without permission and you fell in love and started a family? That hurdle is extremely challenging to overcome. And just because you married a US citizen or just because you have four beautiful US citizen children, those individuals don't keep you in the United States, if a removal proceeding is started against you, and to just petition and start to try to secure the status of your loved ones is extremely challenging. There are waivers that applications and families can apply for to overcome their immigration infractions. You'll note that I really stay away from the word illegal, because I think it's a misuse of the term. We are talking about a civil process. These are civil infractions. They are not criminal and in that sense, when somebody is placed into deportation proceedings while they have the right to hire an attorney. They do not have the right to a court appointed representation, where in criminal courts you get that right, right? You have the opportunity to have a public defender or somebody that you can afford to represent you. But if you think about the consequence of a removal proceeding, deportation for some individuals, is a death sentence, and it's very serious, but no right, no right to have an automatic attorney assigned to you, and we're seeing this with unaccompanied minors, right? I mean these horrific stories and visuals of three year olds sitting with headphones on, talking to a judge, having no idea what is happening, have come miles and miles to survive, and now have to defend themselves because the unaccompanied minor programs have been slashed in funding. It's heavy. This is, this is this is I'm gonna, I'm gonna find some bright spots. I promise I will. So family based trees. I think what is also hard to kind of conceptualize that what we identify as family is very nuclear based, and so it has to be either the parent of a United States citizen, the spouse of a United States citizen, those are deemed or a child of United States citizens, those are immediate relatives, and that means there's not supposed to be a backlog, Okay, gotcha so that can still be a two year separation when trying to connect families. But what about my sibling? Sometimes I feel like siblings are closer relationships than any other person in a family. But for example, when a sibling who is here in the United States, let's say from Mexico, because they have their own distinct preference category number, if a sibling is applying for a benefit for an individual living in Mexico based on that biological relationship, the petition itself takes 20 years to be adjudicated. So again, we're talking about a system where there are designated numbers each year that Congress has to that can be filled and and when those backlogs develop, that's when we have 20 year waits countries that are subject to their own preference category numbers include Mexico, China, the Philippines and India. So if you're coming from one of one of those countries that are not identified, maybe things only take 15 years or maybe six years. And families are, you know, trying to make make the best of those circumstances, but aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews, grandparents, they are not included in these petitioning processes. Then there's a whole KT camp of employment based visas. And this is something that never really was of interest to me, and my former spouse is like, and that's why you make no money. But again, the employment side are really right. Maybe the tech jobs, maybe the high industry, extraordinary ability, professors, doctors, scholars, people who are working for NASA, people who are working on nuclear science, things of that nature. You can get specialty visas based on employment. We're gonna let John talk a little bit more about what does that look like on a farm, and where does this fall with agriculture, which is the bread and butter of so many of our communities. But. Particular type of visas are just not available, nor are they created. And so how do we value labor in the United States? How do we value manufacturing? How do we value all of the things that keep us going on a regular basis, and there just aren't enough employee employees for them, and so we look to other labor sources. But again, immigration law doesn't value those individuals to the same level as they do high level scholars. And I'm not taking anything away from high level scholars, because they bring a lot of really positive aspects to innovation and tech and science and things of that. And I don't want to lose that, but we are going to lose that. This is part of the problem. Is that when we tell students who have a voice on their campuses that their voices should be silenced, and we start to take their their visas and their status away from them, we're going to find less and less students coming to the United States to bring their brains. And I do think in long term, we are going to have an impact on where I think we are number one in a lot of things we're gonna we're gonna feel the impact of not encouraging international students to come and be present and learn from from the best, because we're not going to be the best anymore. Student visas, tourist visas, ESTA program. So an ESTA program is where if you and I have a passport in the United States, I can get on a plane and go to Spain without any visa. This is a reciprocity based relationship, and so we recognize certain countries in the in the community of the global community that we don't have to go and get a visa to go and visit. And there are certain countries that then can send their individuals here to visit the United States for up to 90 days, and then they return to their home countries. It's a glorified tourist visa, but it's one opportunity for people to travel internationally, then there's this whole aspect of humanitarian visas. And this is where my passion was when I got into immigration law. So it started with deportation defense, and I was able to represent individuals that were seeking asylum or people who had experienced internal violence within their relationships here in the United States, and that's called the Violence Against Women Act, not not defined only by women, because they actually work with many men who have experienced interpersonal violence against them. And so the Violence Against Women Act, refugees, asylum, you visas, being a victim of a crime here in the United States, that's probably the largest thing that I do. I work with families who have experienced violence here in the United States have reported that violence have cooperated with law enforcement to make our communities safer. Another thing about a U Visa is that it brings people out of the shadows, and this type of administration puts people back in the shadows, and so I'm guaranteeing that we will see an increase in domestic violence. I'm guaranteeing we're going to see an increase in child abuse. We are going to see things go terribly wrong because people don't want to report they're afraid. Are there local police and their sheriffs? Are they on board with ice? What are these directives? There was a rally today in Madison just for this purpose, because they're trying to say, sheriffs, you have to play by the rules of the Department of Homeland Security. And many sheriffs in many communities are saying, we are going to take care of our communities. We are not going to participate in ice enforcement. So Right? It's, it's, it's top heavy in, in the enforcement actions that are, that are going on right now, Temporary Protected Status, again, just kind of going down the line here. This is one of the pieces that we have to start scratching off countries, in particular Afghanistan. So for all of those individuals who helped us fight a war for 20 years, that got refuge, that were able to climb onto a plane and evacuate, if you remember that from two years ago, we safely landed and went to Fort McCoy, those individuals who were able to seek temporary protected status. The government misnomed has now told me and us that Afghanistan is safe for women. They can, they can go back the Taliban has got this under control, and so no more TPS for those who have had that with being from Afghanistan. I believe Cameroon is probably the next country that is going to be seeing that eliminated Venezuela. That will continue for a little bit, because there was some legal battles around that, and Haiti as well. So again, TPS, while temporary in nature, and I understand the definition of temporary. You know, sometimes things don't get better, and sometimes we. Have to continue to look at what draws people to the United States, and why are people fleeing their homes? I think it's a misunderstanding and a myth that people are coming here to invade our country, to harm us and engage in criminal activity. Yes, there's a small component of that, and there are many people who are born in the United States who engage in criminal activity. So all of that being said, you know, I think we have to shift how we are talking about these issues and what draws people here. I have to tell this story that my 15 year old who's playing a baseball game right now, and he's like, you're not gonna be there tonight, mom. I'm like, you put it on video, and I'll watch it when I get done. You know, he did a presentation on global migration to to the Dane County Overture Center in Madison, and he talked about what draws people here and climate change, why things are drying up, why people can't farm the way that they need to. What does violence look like in their home communities when they hear about being safe in the United States and they come through the Darien pass? If you have not heard this article and this piece in The New Yorker about the Darien pass, where people come from Columbia, up through Central America, lives are lost along the way to make it here, I have worked with middle school students, and we do an experiment, or I, you know, try to talk to them about if you only had one thing, if you only had a backpack and it's all you could bring from your home, what would you put in it? And it really helps kids connect to their neighbors and their new students and their new arrivals who don't speak the language next to them, but smiling at these new family members who are present in their communities, saying, you know that must have been really hard for you, even if they don't understand the language, to show compassion, but to hear a 12 year old talk about that and talk about why people come, like, if a 12 year old can figure it out what's what's going on, right? And I think that we have to continue to talk about what draws people here and want to be in the United States, D, E, D, that's a program that the President can use. It's kind of a watered down version of temporary protected status. But what makes it different is that it's a presidential it's a power within international law that says, if there's something in the community in which you're in and we don't think we can return you, we can keep you safe. And so we did actually identify individuals who were present in United States from Palestine. They were able to obtain DD, and folks who were able, who were present in the United States from Lebanon. Parole programs again, have been slashed. I think parole has become a dirty word for this administration, and they think that all of the people who are coming here on parole, again engaged in fraud and are here to harm us. And so the Cuban, Nicaraguan, Haitian, Venezuelan program has been eliminated, united for Ukraine has been eliminated, HP, or humanitarian parole for Afghans has been eliminated again. It's just, it's a chopping block for these programs which actually created orderly entry into the United States. So if the idea was that people are coming in mass surges, and we just don't know who they are, these programs were trying to eliminate that by having a sponsor in the United States say, I will take some responsibility for this individual. And those individuals were vetted before they came to the United States. I think again, that is lost is that people who apply for visas to come to the United States massive background checks go on Interpol. I don't know anybody gets here, to be honest, sometimes I wonder about the security checks and how somebody manages to make it through some of these rigorous expectations. Daca still alive. Okay, so we still have DACA. Unfortunately, it's only a two year program. I'm hoping that it, that it manages to stay. I hope that Congress can figure this one out and create a plan to make individuals who have been here since they were young adults and young children, really, who are the fabric of our community, make them feel secure. But as of right now, daca has not been, has not been attached citizenship. What I can tell you, is where I am finding individuals who, for so long, should probably have become US citizens, who are now applying. We are going back and reviewing applications from when they first came to the United States, because this administration is about unraveling. They want to establish that something along. Along the way was not done, right? So I have individuals who are making that decision between renewing their green card because there's a little bit less scrutiny and applying for citizenship when they know what is the value of being a US citizen, is that, supposedly you can't be deported anymore. And two, you get to vote, right? Like the power for all of us to be here and vote and have a say in who's writing these rules and who's running these administrations. That is a power that they have nothing to say when you were a permanent resident or a visa holder, but you're subject to all of the rules that apply to you. And resources, I'm happy to talk about resources, and I will do that at the end and talk to you about resources, as Dave and I were chatting about, I am part of a community group out of Dane County who has now expanded into Southwest Wisconsin, and we're doing quarterly walk in clinics for individuals who are documented or undocumented, and they get a free consultation with an immigration Lawyer. We're trying to bring that north, so stay tuned. And again, there are ways for us to connect and get this information out to the communities. So I think I'm at 30, so we're good,

 

36:12

okay,

 

Lori Miller 36:21

we did bring that last ray of sunshine in. Thank you very much. So we're going to go to our panel of local speakers right now, representing farms, faith and community, education, and up first will be John rose now, who is the owner of Rosen home dairy in Wandy, Wisconsin, I can vouch for the wonderful compost that he makes, and we will be contacting you to get some more John. So each of our speakers will have 12 minutes, and the time keeper will help keep you on the rails here. So I'll turn this over to John.

 

John Rosenow 37:00

Thank you. I'm just going to tell three stories. The first one when I went to Mexico the first time to learn the language, and I failed miserably. But I went and we had a speaker called Nellie Salgado who came and spoke to us nearly has done a lot of research on on the people that are left behind in Mexico, that their spouses or their family heads north, and they're there, they remain in Mexico. And so she traveled up into the mountains, and she created a relationship with this lady. And the lady had a son and a daughter, and they were very small at the time, and Nelly got what she needed up there and went back to Mexico City, and also to Austin, Texas, where she also teaches at the University of Texas. And a few years later, a couple years later, she went back to the same village and and and saw the lady that she had befriended, and she noticed the lady only had a son following her around. And so she asked the lady what happened, and where's your daughter? And the lady said, I had to they both got sick, my son and my daughter got sick, and I only had money to choose to take one of them to the doctor. So I took the boy to the doctor because he was he maybe someday will go up north and we'll be able to have a better life. So she had to make a decision that none of us ever want to make, and I'm sure she wouldn't want to either. The second story is about Roberto tech pile. He's in the book melt along with his brother or son, Kevin, both of them work on our farm, and Roberto and I have become close friends, and he's also my golf partner. When Roberto was very young, he lived with his parents conception in Gerardo, and Roberto is like the oldest of about nine children. When he was about five or six years old, they lived in a kind of a small shack, his words, and it was covered with a blue tarp as a roof. And being six years old, he enjoyed that because he could see the stars and he could see the moon. And who really enjoyed that? But one night, a storm came through, and it hailed, and it hailed the blue tarp, and the whole house was inundated with hail and rain. And Roberto could see that his mother was very, very sad, as you can imagine, and he went up to his mother, and he said, when I get old, I'm going to build you a house. That has a roof, a concrete roof, so that you don't never have to go through this again. And so then we flash flash forward. Roberto came to the United States the first time when he was, I think, in his teens, late teens, and worked at different places. Eventually, after a number of years, he found a work in Blair, Wisconsin, on a dairy farm, and eventually came to our farm about 10 years ago. And during that time that he's working up north, he sent money home to his wife, Veronica. Veronica built them themselves a home, and at one time, they were supporting 17 people in this village. And from the money that Roberto was making on our farm, and now today, he did build a house for his mother and his father, Gerard, own conception, and they now have a concrete roof, and a hailstorm comes, they're going to be good. So Roberto did what he said, and he's like one of the best people that you'll ever know. The third story is a person named Severo. He's worked for us for about 25 years, and he milks from two. He starts at two o'clock. 230 in the morning comes and milks till about 10, with a break in between. Comes back and does other things, and he's been doing that for about 25 years. A great guy. He does not read, he does not write, but he sends money home to his wife, Maria primativa. Maria primativa is a no nonsense type of person, but she's taken these 1000s of dollars at severo as sent home. She's helped her sons Juan in Federico, who also worked on her farm, as well as Herman Hilde, who's also working right now, and raise them basically by herself, because severely, was saving the money, Maria, proven to you, was doing the work at home and raising the family. And along with raising the family, she built a home for Federico. She built a home for one now she's building one for herself and for sub arrows with a garage. And these people are so they've taken 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars and been good stewards of it. The reason I know this story is because another person that works for us, Omar. Omar, when he was very young, his mother went oligaria went to the United States. So he was he didn't have a mother, and so Maria primativa raised Omar as one of her own, and when Omar talks about Maria primitiva, he can't look up because he has such respect for her. So those are my three stories. I Yeah.

 

Lori Miller 43:26

Thank you, Jen. All right, next on our panel is Dave Anderson, who I assume a lot of people in this room. He was the pastor here, and he is currently a member of the immigration Task Force for Jonah, okay, are you take away?

 

Dave Anderson 43:45

Good evening. There's three people back there who I'm not going to name, because this will be broadcast, who could also all be up here doing this, but I want them to raise their hands. Have helped with our immigration Task Force for 15 years. Have helped settle Afghan refugees, been involved in all, all of these things. We started getting working in immigration about 15 years ago. So if I dedicate one minute to each year, I think I'll do okay. We got involved because my wife was at a meeting and met a dairy farm worker's son heard how terrified he was when his mother would drive to get groceries, because he was afraid she would be pulled over by the police and arrested for driving without a license. He was a high school student, and he teared up. He was so was so worried, and we were like, what's that about? Do you know about the driver's license situation? After 911 the Congress passed the REAL ID Act and asked the states to come up with a timeline and a plan to require an ID that reflected you. Citizenship. Before this, people who were here without documents could obtain a driver's license and drive legally. When Wisconsin adopted that, I think in 2013 they couldn't get licensed. They couldn't renew licenses or get licenses anymore. That meant everybody that had to drive, and that's everybody in Wisconsin just about so the grocery store, to the doctor, to school, to work, constantly felt afraid that they would get pulled over once, okay, twice, okay, the rumor at that time was three times and you might face deportation. That isn't exactly right, but that was what people believed in. So we saw all this fear, and we went out to talk to people about this. You know what is before we jumped in with both feet, we wanted to know what the Spanish speaking community said was their first fear. And this was what came back to us all the time. So our first work was to to work to get the legislature in Wisconsin to pass an exception. There's a real with three the REAL ID Act is that states can issue another kind of driver's license or ID that allows people without the documents to drive, but it specifies that they can't vote. They can't use it to fly in a plane. Last I looked 18 state states have passed this. It's failed every time that it's come up before the Wisconsin legislature. So that was causing a lot of fear, and obviously we've been extremely unsuccessful in our efforts to get that changed. So then we said, what else can we do? How can we address the fear? And we began to talk to local law enforcement and to Latino community, and said, Let's just get them in the same room together to address the so that law enforcement knows what's going on with the fear, and people know just what will happen. And so it was in this room that we had the first of our meetings and lots of questions, and we were assured at that time that our local law enforcement is not interested in immigration status. They see concern with immigration status as being very unhelpful in terms of trying to protect people. People don't want to be witnesses, people don't want to report crimes. They still felt obligated to pull you over if you were doing something and discovered that you didn't have a driver's license, but we began to create understanding. Then we decided that we're with the Spanish speaking community. We need to have a fiesta. So we brought the police together with the Spanish speaking community out in this parking lot to have a Fiesta and just get to sit down at a table and talk to one another. That's been one of our goals all along, is talk to someone who's from a different country. Get to know them. You can't dislike them anymore or suspect them if you talk to them. That grew into what now is the Chippewa Valley multicultural festival down at Spark. I don't know if anybody's ever been to that. We have five ethnicities, we try to get people to understand each other's culture, understand each other and talk to one another. That's been a really fun, a fun kind of thing. One of our big benefits because talking to immigrants that are living here is we get invited to key seniors. We get invited to baptisms and wedding confirmations. And I'd say it's a lovely community. If you have a chance to sit down with someone that is from the Spanish speaking country or any country for that matter, get to know them. The other thing that we got much more involved in was safety. We began hearing stories the last you know, Trump 1.0 began hearing stories of people that would would come up to adults in the playground, children that would come up to adults in the playground and say, If my parents are taken, would you take care of me? And you know, so we, I think I just lost. Hello. There it is. You know how to address these kinds of fears and how to keep help people feel safe in a time that's designed to make them feel unsafe and unsure of themselves? We let me backtrack, so we've kept up relationships with the sheriff's department, the police department, the Altoona Police Department, who all have assured us within the last two months, we are not interested in immigration status of anyone. We that we stopped for any reason. We are not interested in cooperating with ice that would go against everything that we believe we're in this community for it's not true everywhere, but we live in a pretty good island of safety in those terms. So protect people. We started realizing that we needed to teach people about their rights, and so we began distributing red cards. We began having the first. First time around, we had meetings in places like this. Now we don't want to draw people together, so we try to distribute information through Mexican grocery stores, through different websites about how to protect your rights. Another thing we're interested in doing is helping families prepare for some member being deported. And have worked with family practice lawyers to prepare guardianship sorts of documents. All these things that we do are scary for people to do. And so it's you walk a fine line between scaring people and saying, maybe what you know is going to keep you safe when there's a rumor that ice is present, everything goes crazy. Here, kids don't go to school. We got phone calls from people saying, I'm afraid to go to the grocery store. Is there anyone that can go to the grocery store? For me, I am afraid to pick up my kids at school. And so we're working on developing a group that will try to keep track of ice presence and report back. Is this a serious threat? Is this just a rumor that's going around? Because we get lots and lots of rumors, I think people like to stir those things up on their own. We got we got a picture one last time we heard that ice was here, of a convoy of ice vehicles on Cameron Street, it turned out, was from Waukesha. Somebody just wanted to scare people around Eau Claire, so we develop a group that will try to affirm, to confirm or or disprove whether there is a threat or not in the community. Everything we've done, how much time do I have left one all right. Another thing that happened is we heard that the Mexican consulate was looking for some place to have a mobile consulate. They're located in St Paul, and so we said, let's, let's bring them to this church, because it'd be nice to have some place that people identified as safe, and it's right by the interstate and highway 93 and highway 53 is easy to get to. So far, I think about 13 years with the Mexican consulate has come here once a year, I help people do with paperwork, renew passports, renew their identity cards, and articulates registered births and things like that, and we've tried at times, but it felt safe to bring people from this community into what we do best serve coffee and cookies and see that we have this wonderful population of Spanish speaking people there. So safety information and working in driver's licenses is us.

 

Lori Miller 52:50

Thank you, Dave. Keep those questions coming. I see we have a nice little handful there. So if you do have a question, just, you know, wave it in the air your card, and somebody will come and pick it up. All right, our last speaker on the panel is Elizabeth Hart, and she is the executive director of literacy Chippewa Valley.

 

Elizabeth Hart 53:12

Well, thank you for inviting me to speak. I'll tell you a little bit about what we do at LCV, literacy Chippewa Valley has been in existence since 1986 so it's a long time. I think we're over 35 years now. And we originally started to help the Hmong refugees that came in the 80s, and then they didn't really need us anymore, and then we started seeing a lot of Spanish speakers, and now we're seeing lots of war refugees. And so it's been a real privilege to be in this organization and provide a haven for people to come and improve their education skills. And so what we do for immigrants is we have an English language learning class in the morning from nine to 12, and then we have one in the evening from six to 730 both are with child care. So if a person has young children that prevents them from getting English skills. We can take care of that, and it's a real tower of battle in our English language learning class, I think right now, we have eight different languages. But it's also really nice to see people interact with each other and find a way to understand and find some common ground and some community in their attempts to learn English. But along with learning English, what we also do is try to teach people how to live in this community, and that's all very indirect. It's things that come up that that people need assistance with, for example, getting a driver's license. Well, first of all, getting to class. Eau Claire is not an easy community to get around. We do have a bus system, but the bus doesn't go everywhere, and so getting people to class is one thing. Getting them to a high paying job is another thing. So the first challenge for a lot of people after starting. Work on their English is to try to get a driver's license, and even that poses lots of barriers, because you need learning materials in the language that the person speaks. They also have to find drive time. They have to find a vehicle to practice on. All those things are barriers for people. So then they work on their driver's license, get their driver's license or get a job where they can take the bus. And there have been some real great places where that have taken a lot of immigrants to work. Walmart is an example. That's a great entry place for immigrants. Not easy to get to. They usually have to work the night shift stocking shelves, and then people try to get over to Menards. Menards has also taken a lot of immigrants, and it's also a great place to work, because they have benefits. So bit by bit, everybody's finding their way into the community. And then parents of young children have to get into the school district. We have a wonderful school district or wonderful staff that I think almost all of the elementary schools, all the schools now have an ELL specialist that's really new. I mean, it wasn't I grew up here in Eau Claire, and it wasn't that way when I was growing up. And so I do feel this is a really welcoming community. And so eventually it's amazing to see the kids how fast they pick up on English, especially little kids, they'll go to one year of kindergarten and come back and be more fluent than their parents. Young, Young people can learn languages so quickly. So that's kind of nice to see. And so we just really do what we can and try to figure out what people's needs are, if they're if they're trying to find a home or a better home or a better living situation. You know, we just try to keep our ears open and provide different needs for people, and then maybe after seven years, people start working on their citizenship and try to get become citizens in this country. Now, we can't really do much about immigration law. I mean, we can only deal with the people that come in our door. So we don't always know if people are afraid to come to our class. We suspect it. We've got our regular students, and then, of course, we have students who do have refugee status, who have an i 94 they come in and they're basically already citizens, they have work permits, they can get a job. They still have a lot of those cultural barriers that they have to get through, but we do have to keep very particular track of every class they attend, everything they do is marked in a database, and that's how we get our funding. So it wasn't always that way either. I think some of the initial groups that came in, for example, Ukraine, a lot of Ukrainians came in at first, and nobody knew where they went. And so I think after that, when we started seeing other people, other ethnic groups, coming in, then they, they really wanted us to keep track of what was, what was happening with them, and if they received services, that's, that's what we do. So it's, all really bittersweet. We hear a lot of tough stories, but we also see people having success and integrating into the community, getting jobs, getting vehicles, getting their kids into school, seeing their kids and hearing how well they speak English. And so from that, we take pride and we feel success and we feel happiness for for these people, but we know that there's a lot of things that we can't control and that we don't know about, people that came for a while but then sort of disappeared. And so we just, we don't track people down, we don't ask too many questions either. We don't we just serve whoever comes in. So we tend to have, you know, our economic migrants, and then we have our refugees, and then we still got a lot of Hmong people coming over, even though they were there in their third generation now. And there's a really beautiful community that people can integrate into. So it's interesting to see people come over, usually young brides who come over and marry someone. So we have whoever comes in and whoever needs English and education services, we're happy to provide them. And this year has been a really big year for us. We had a lot of refugees because World Relief was in town, although now that that office has really decreased in size. They've had to cut their staff because they're just, they just cut those, all those pipelines, and there won't any new refugees coming in, as we are told that could change. We just don't know. So anyway, but we're here, and we serve whoever comes in. So thanks for being a good community.

 

Lori Miller 59:42

Applause. Thank you, Elizabeth, all right, we will now answer the questions as you've written down on the cards when we've gotten through all of those. Is that a question in your hand? Okay, great. Then we'll go to. Questions from the floor. So I'm gonna yes anybody else, as long as they walk in this way.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:00:09

I think you said, Lori, that we have 20 minutes for the questions.

 

Lori Miller 1:00:12

At least 20 minutes.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:00:16

Okay, so we have a little more time. And there are so many questions here that I'm going to have someone draw one of these questions. So I'm going to start it. Okay, start with that one. I think I'll read the question and then look at the four of you to see who would like to answer it, rather than assigning you a question that you have no background in so that might be more fair this one. Oh, come on. Is anyone under 50 who is here under 50? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Answer that is yes. For attorney gentlemen, any suggestions? Oh, for a strike force, when someone is picked up, I'm only reading what's on the card. Yeah. You

 

Dave Anderson 1:01:27

want to

 

1:01:31

get a group together so that when someone's picked up, we can deal with it

 

Ellen Ochs 1:01:35

immediately. You don't mean you're going to punch out the person who picked them up. You we're going to stay on the legal side.

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:01:53

That sounds good. So definitely being present when something like that is happening is important on Who are you sending right making sure that you're sending individuals who have status, who are US citizens, and making sure, I think the goal is always to if you're recording that, you are recording the officer, and trying to focus On that remaining calm so most of de la frontera is again, the organization out of Milwaukee that does all of these different trainings. And if you haven't connected with them, you should, if you are awesome, Luis and their team, go around and talk about this type of protocol exactly and how to have community response. And I do think being present and verifying what day was saying is because it creates such chaos, is making sure that you have that that line of attack so you know who's going to go out and see to confirm whether or not this is happening. And then a lot of organizations are using signal or other encrypted apps to communicate with organization, with with the community, to say this is verified, this is what's going on. So definitely, I'll hand this over to Dave. But I think working collectively and making sure the message is the same is really important, and I think messaging is really important that everybody's getting the same message that this is how we're going to respond. Because if you have too many pots in the kitchen, right, and it gets a little murky, and you want to make sure you have a direct line of how you're going to respond appropriately, to remain as calm as possible when that's happening, as emotional as that might be.

 

Dave Anderson 1:03:40

There are actually some volunteers in this room that have volunteered to go and see where ice is and confirm what they're doing. And we'll be having, we'll be having to have periodic training on how to keep yourself safe in those situations, because that's this is one thing that isn't for the faint hearted, that they can be a very threatening presence. We also are looking at trying to get a people, a group of people, that would file habeas petitions immediately after someone has taken which gets tell me if I'm wrong, make sure that a person appears in court and doesn't just disappear. One of the things that happens when people appear in court is that they they get on a docket, and they can wait for four years and be here for a little for a little while and not disappear. Who knows? Maybe things will change in four years. That we also want to, want to start putting together teams that stop by where there's a family and how do you contact someone in detention. Where do you get community resources, those kinds of things? And we did a little of that in 2017 so we've had a little experience, but we need to build some teams.

 

1:04:55

Thank you. Okay, how about you pick one? I.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:05:04

Does it make sense to encourage and provide access to citizenship education materials for those on temporary status, and how can we get the money for these materials? I I'll

 

Elizabeth Hart 1:05:25

take that question just because it's what we do. I think that is, it is very important for people to have the materials to study for even if they're on temporary status, because it teaches a lot of history about the government in the United States, people have to learn about 100 questions that can be randomly picked during their tests to see. And they're not easy. Sometimes, when we we do presentations, we provide a mock exam for everybody, and it's interesting to see how many answers people don't know, but just about about our government and things that you would want to know. And I just, I think knowledge is power, and just even if you're not, if you're have temporary status, it's important. To know the rules of the country that you're living in and how to get citizenship, I guess. And we have those resources.

 

Speaker 2 1:06:16

Okay, how do you get some money for those materials?

 

Dave Anderson 1:06:22

I also let me I can

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:06:25

ask that. So actually, a lot of this stuff is free. The materials depend. I mean, I know that teaching is not free, and I'm not asking that to be free, but what I'm saying is that the citizenship application test and questions, all of that is on uscis.gov which is their website, and you can download those questions in different languages. So to to prepare for citizenship, there are things online that are free, so that is positive, so that that's what I would say. And there are now apps that have it. And so again, these are these things are becoming more accessible under the circumstance. If you are applying to become a US citizen, it's currently $760 so we also talk about that with my clients. Unless you are at a certain level within under the poverty guideline, then it's 380 so we always evaluate tax returns when we are moving forward to try to reduce fees for individuals who qualified.

 

Speaker 1 1:07:29

Question, how about volunteering to be a teacher? For some of these people, is that something you looking

 

1:07:42

for? Of the

 

Elizabeth Hart 1:07:44

things that literacy Chippewa Valley does. We provide one to one tutoring on any topic, really. So if you are interested in teaching citizenship, we can do it one on one or in small groups. Sir, what was your question? In the red? Did you have a question? Oh, okay, yeah. And if someone asked where the money comes from, like, LCV is a nonprofit, so we receive our funding from largely community donations and grants. So then it's divided up amongst our three programs, and we just make it work. But if we if someone wants a teacher, would be a volunteer, so that community, community members come in and volunteer

 

Ellen Ochs 1:08:25

next time Steve write it down, take your chances. How are the current actions of our government going to impact farmers seeking workers and other employees? So I know who has to answer this one?

 

John Rosenow 1:08:47

I don't know. So far, there's been one enforcement action in the country on dairy farms, and that was in Vermont, and they it was right on the border at the largest dairy farm in Vermont, they picked up eight people, three of them have been deported. The other five. We don't know the status of them. That farm had approximately I just figured it out from how many cows you have and how many employees you have, about 60 or 60 employees, and most of them, if it's typical, of all farms in the United States, were immigrants, and probably most of them undocumented. So why they took eight and then take the 60, I don't know, but being an optimist, I'm hoping that this will be a trend that they're going to do much with us, but we'll see last time nothing happened, so last time he was president,

 

Speaker 2 1:09:56

who will pick a card here? Could I add something to that? So

 

Dave Anderson 1:10:06

there is no legal path to full time farm work. You can get temporary farm work, picking berries or things like that, returning after six months. But there's no no full time path for and 70 to 80% of our milk is harvested new at Wisconsin. Isn't that right by immigrant labor?

 

Ellen Ochs 1:10:30

It's very clear that neither party wants to solve the immigration problem. How can that be changed?

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:10:50

I absolutely agree with that statement, and I think that this has become an extremely polarized issue. I think it's a misunderstood issue, and it serves both parties to not fix it, and that's a really hard place for me to sit because I would like to believe that comprehensive immigration reform that I've been saying out loud for 20 years would eventually happen by now, but we just don't have the temperament for it, and I think that what we need are representatives who are not afraid to highlight the contributions of our immigrant communities. And I think that is where the Democratic Party failed this time around. I think that we got bought into, I should say we. I think the Democratic Party was unable to separate the rhetoric, and instead of highlighting the positive qualities and the needs that we need and have and the contributions, I mean, I think that's what's frustrating to me, is that there's no recognition of the positive pieces that our society gets when we incorporate different opinions, different cultures, different views. I think Trevor Noah said it best, like there's nothing more American than tacos. Like there's something about that. And I just right, like I have to find space in in that to say we have to start putting these communities and the individuals that we love and that we are connected to, and start showing what these positive contributions are, and then we have to have representatives who are willing to stand up and do that. And I think that unfortunately, that is where the fail has been, and I think it will continue to be a left, right issue, and I think it's problematic, absolutely,

 

Dave Anderson 1:12:54

part of that is, is just changing the narrative. And so kind of like we would, we would talk to Republican legislators about the driver's license Bill frequently point out all the advantages of having people knowledgeable about the cars that they drive, the fewer hit and runs people buying insurance. Law enforcement likes it because they have good identification piece of information. And very often from legislators, we'd say, well, we understand that we agree with you, but our constituents would hang us up to drive.

 

Speaker 2 1:13:27

And who taught their constituents to have that attitude?

 

Ellen Ochs 1:13:36

Okay, there are two questions here on this one card a day or two ago, we witnessed Afrikaners receiving a fast track to America. For me, this appears wrong. Please comment and the second question, when I see ICE officers handling people, I think of mid 1930s Germany. Are my observations with merit.

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:14:09

So that was a two part question, and I can't remember the first part. Oh, the africanas. Okay, so you address the refugee populations. And the reality is, yes, as of January 20, all refugees who were already vetted and getting on airplanes were told they could not get on the airplanes to come to the United States to enter into the refugee resettlement program. So 100 heat, I believe the initial response, or the initial position, was 120 days, and then we will re evaluate the situation. And then the administration got wind that there was a community in South Africa that seems to be disproportionately harmed by post apartheid situation, and therefore we welcome. Are South African individuals who are of European descent, and so a large amount of them just arrived, and many communities are not like the refugee resettlement programs are saying, we're not working with these individuals. This is this is an abuse of the process. It is a misuse of the concept of refugee. And I just want to distinguish when we talk about refugee versus asylum, because I think that's something people sometimes get confused about, is that refugee status is when you are present outside of the United States and you are fleeing a circumstance based on one of five grounds of national origin, political opinion, membership in a social group, religion or national or race. And so if you are being targeted because of that outside of the country, you go to kind of a vetting area to try to come into the United States as a refugee, versus individuals who are present already in the United States or presenting themselves at the border, that's when somebody is seeking asylum. The concept itself is the same, the analysis is the same, but it just is where you are asking for that benefit. But sometimes I think people get confused about that, so I think it's an important distinction to be made. And then there was a second part of that, oh, the 1930s Okay, right. So I think one of the most disturbing things, and there's a lot of disturbing things to reflect upon, but watching the young woman in Boston, the Turkish student who has been freed, and that is a colleague of mine who represented her, and it's just an amazing fight in that, in that sense, but to watch somebody with half mast, mean, USCIS DHS officers are wearing half masks. Why? What is that about? Right? Because, what are they doing? In that sense, they are detaining somebody on the side of the street, not telling the individual who they are. I mean, it's frightening. And so, I mean, I had an opportunity to speak to PBS about this in Wisconsin, and the last question was, you know, do you think students should be staying at home? Do you think they should be looking over their shoulder. And my response was, yes, we have set them up to be afraid, and we are showing them that we are willing to take them off the street in this manner. And so again, this is not what ice looks like. The last administration. This is not what ice has ever really looked like. And yet, more people have been deported under the Biden administration up to this point than this Trump administration. And I think we have to, kind of like hold responsibility where it is. But again, the tenor and the approach of removing people has been extremely different.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:18:02

Isn't that because it's a demonstration to the country. John, how are your farm workers treated by the community at large? I

 

John Rosenow 1:18:24

I mean, over the last 25 years, we've had incidents where they weren't treated very well, but I think by and large, so we're getting more and more people understanding the situation. We have people this time of year, we're selling a lot of compost and potting soil, and people come to our farm to buy it from us, because that's one of our businesses. And people come, I can tell that they probably voted a different way than I voted and but they always comment that we need to get rid of the the drug people. We need to get rid of the gangs and stuff like that. And my comment as well, we always wanted to do that. Every president wanted to do that. We don't want to touch your guys. And so there's an understanding of that. And I don't know, like we talked before that, somebody mentioned before that the cars driving through town that probably were ice people, but they really were from Waukesha. I think we need to be really concerned as individuals, of spreading these rumors and creating fear where the fear shouldn't exist and so I may be naive, or I don't get out in the community as much as I should, or whatever like I want to, but people are getting to know the robertos and the Kevins and. Kevin deals with almost all the customers that come to our farm to deal with compost, and I make a point of that, and he knows a little bit of English, and everybody leaves with a positive experience. And I can only do it change, make changes in this world one person at a time. That's what we're trying to do. I

 

Ellen Ochs 1:20:25

Okay, since the USA needs so many workers, why can't people just get a worker permit and be able to go back and forth from their countries without worry? Hearing about people not seeing their families for years is so tragic.

 

John Rosenow 1:20:53

Normally, when I come to something like this, Roberto comes along. Roberto take peely and he tells his story, and he tells the story of leaving home when his daughter Megan was six months old, and now she's 10 years old, or 11 years old. We were there in Mexico in February, and she sang the national anthem of Mexico in Nawa to us, which was incredible, and it's quite long, and she did a great job, but people ask him, now, when are you going to go home? When are you going to go home? And of course, that's an important issue for Roberto, but it is a million or $100,000 question. So if he leaves the income that he's sending home is taken away from their family. So their family goes from middle class back down to less than middle class someplace. He's probably, he probably makes about $45,000 a year, plus a place to stay, plus plus electricity and heat so, and he has very few expenses, so he's probably sending $30,000 a year home. So is his son, Kevin. So they live a good life down there compared to what they used to. And so I think, I think we need to understand that this is a special relationship, a special marriage where there are two roles. Roberto's role is to make the money, and his wife Veronica is to take the money and build a family. And we've had a lot of experience where people have really done that. One of the things that the puentes organization, which I'm involved with, and Mercedes Falk, who's here somewhere, are doing is we've created an exhibit where we have taken the stories of the women back in Mexico, The Veronicas, the oligarias, the Marina primativas, the conceptions, the Fatima. They each have a story, and so we've taken a photo of them and created a exhibit which will be at the UW Eau Claire McIntyre library this October, with their story on one side in English and the other story in Spanish. In their photo in the middle, there were some real heroes.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:23:37

This question is for Elizabeth hunt, is literacy Chippewa Valley, the newer name for literacy volunteers, and there are two short questions to follow,

 

Elizabeth Hart 1:23:50

yes, it is okay. They renamed it. I think they renamed it because they wanted people to understand that while we okay, they changed it to literacy volunteers because they wanted people to understand that while we utilize volunteers, that there are also paid staff with education and credentials in the area that they're working. So they wanted to upgrade, I think, the public perception i Okay, are individual tutoring sessions available? Yes, there are. I'm not sure. What if this means training for the tutors. All of our tutors do go through a training, and you can tutor an individual, and we do have small group tutoring as well. And the second question is, are the group lessons focusing on conversational English, reading or something else all of the above? They really are. The curriculum that we use is contextualized for the work. Force, and also just practical life we but we also, in addition to teaching English, we're trying to teach people how to live in this community. And there are lots of things that are different, because being struggling with low literacy affects all aspects of your life. It affects your ability to find work and keep work, and it affects your health because you can't always communicate well with your medical professionals. It affects your children's lives because you can't always communicate well with your children's teachers and the whole school system. There are many things that we do different here, as as I mentioned before, you know, just transportation, just lots of things that we do. One thing that came up that struck me was just our use, or the frequency with which we have cesarean births as opposed to natural birth. I mean, that's a big deal. And just just the way that we do things is very different. And so we try to teach in English that's conversational. Most people really need to learn our just myriad expressions, the way we say things, a lot of idiom and colloquial expressions, but also our accent, the way that we crunch words together and don't finish our consonants, it's just really hard to understand. And so that sort of practical application is what we try to do, too, and that's where the individual one to one tutors are really nice, because in addition to teaching English, they also kind of show them around the town and help them figure out how to live here.

 

Ellen Ochs 1:26:34

I have spent some time teaching English as a second language. I know what you're talking about, and I spent some time in another country for two years, and it's very strange how in another country, people talk so fast and run all their words together, but Americans, Americans don't do that. They just trail off. Dave, how many actual ice interactions have there been in the greater Chippewa Valley? One that

 

Dave Anderson 1:27:10

we know of in 2017

 

Ellen Ochs 1:27:17

Elizabeth, how difficult is it for immigrants or refugees to find housing? Is that something that you know?

 

Elizabeth Hart 1:27:28

I know, I know a little bit about it just because I we work very closely with World Relief and other refugee resettlement organizations, and they've approached us and asked if we knew any low cost housing, of any low cost housing. So I know it is kind of difficult, although I think that they things have gotten better, and they do have some inroads made into the housing. But as you all know, the whole community of Eau Claire, we do have a dearth of little or low cost housing for everybody, not just refugees provide any help, no, no. An organization like World Relief has a certain amount of money to work with, and then with that, they can provide housing for a certain period of time. And then once that runs out, they really want everyone to be self sufficient. It's not as long as you think it would would be. It really isn't. It's about three months, sometimes six months. It just depends. The county helps in that. If people qualify for public assistance after that runs out, then they can apply for that.

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:28:32

But the whole, the whole idea, is to get people

 

Elizabeth Hart 1:28:35

self sufficient in a very short period of time, probably about three months. So that means getting housing, in transportation, getting the kids in school, getting some English, and getting a job and starting to put money in the bank. Can I

 

1:28:50

address one more thing in addition to

 

Amanda Gennerman 1:28:55

that, and I think what Elizabeth is really talking about is important to distinguish, is that these are individuals who have refugee status, and so programs are created and benefits are available. But when we're talking about other new arrivals, individuals who have come to the to the US, either on detected or have been in the United States for a really long time, one myth I really like to make sure that people understand that you can go out and repeat to other people is that public benefits are not accessible for individuals who are undocumented. Okay, they're not accessible for individuals who are undocumented. If they have children who were born in the United States, those children, because they're US citizens have access to food assistance, have access to badger care or forward care to state assistance, but the parents themselves, when they fill out the applications, they do not qualify. And even if you are present with permission in the United States, even as a green. Card holder or a resident, you don't qualify for public benefits for five years. So again, these are not programs that are being filled with fraud and abused because individuals don't qualify for them. The refugee program does get very specific benefits, and it is unfortunately, really short lived, and people can't always get on their feet in the time in which they have access to it. But just to have that understanding