The Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County has served more than 5K community members since 2005. Its mission is to expand access to reliable legal services for the immigrant community, to educate the immigrant population about U.S. law, and to educate the general public about legal difficulties encountered by immigrants in this country.
For Laurel Herndon – founder, executive director, and managing attorney of the Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County, a nonprofit law firm and grantee of the Community Foundation’s Community Trust – “this is an odd time in immigration.”
Indeed, according to the foundation’s Boulder County TRENDS Report, Latinos comprise the greatest minority population in our county, yet misconceptions about this growing population, immigration law, and temporary protection status persist.
“In Colorado, an estimated 1,000 DACA-eligible immigrant youths turn 15 years old each year,” says Laurel, who’s proficient in Spanish and specializes in immigration law. “The second Congressional District has an estimated 15%, or 150. And of those, we can estimate that one-third live in Boulder County.
“That means that 50 of our immigrant youths will be unable to apply for summer jobs this year, or to apply for programs that require them to present a social security number.”
Continues Laurel, “We’re at a crossroads on immigration efforts. People seem a little stymied by mixed messages and lawsuits going on. And the young people affected are really being hampered by a dysfunctional federal system.
“There’s no clear end-date for DACA, and it’s not clear whether DACA will ever end – that keeps people in a permanent cycle of not being able to make permanent plans.”
What also concerns Laurel is that court orders do not allow new people to apply for DACA. So anyone who’s turned 15 since the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was rescinded on Sept. 5, 2017, is being left out of the equation. “These are the exact young people who are maturing, who are wanting to hold down jobs this summer,” she says. “They have no recourse to at least get into a temporary situation.
“It’s an incredibly frustrating situation for this really compelling group of young people here who have gone all the way through our Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts. They need and deserve a clear path to permanent resident status.”
Adds Laurel, “We should stop focusing only on permanent citizenship, as permanent residency is really what most immigrants care about.”
The Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County has served more than 5K community members since 2005. Its mission is to expand access to reliable legal services for the immigrant community, to educate the immigrant population about U.S. law, and to educate the general public about legal difficulties encountered by immigrants in this country.
“There’s this idea that immigrants can bring distant family members here,” continues Laurel. “That’s not at all accurate. There’s no way to help a cousin or an aunt, and even those who try to help a very close family member do so with mixed results.
“We know a man who’s a U.S. citizen whose brother lives in Mexico – maybe that brother will get in line someday to apply for resident status, but the likelihood of that happening is 50 to 100 years because of how long the line is, and how slowly it moves. But our immigration policy has always allowed people to be reunited with their mothers, fathers, their immediate families – changing that to focus only on employment destroys the fabric of our family-based society.”
As a reminder, DACA protects those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, a group often described as “Dreamers.” Among the accepted applicants, Mexico is the biggest country of origin, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
“A big misconception among the public is that people from El Salvador have outstayed their temporary protected status following the 2001 earthquake,” explains Laurel. “The truth is, only those who came here before the earthquake have temporary protected status. For a great many of them, they’re here because they fled military violence and its aftermath in the 80s, and the violence that developed in their villages after those conflicts ended.
“The U.S. played a very large role in those wars. So we also need to focus on how U.S. foreign policy causes people to flee.”
That’s why, on June 9, the Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County will host a “teach-in” at the Boulder Public Library on the role of the United States in Central America, also featuring the stories of local immigrants from Central America who have protected status. The free community forum is bilingual and will be held from 3-5 p.m.
Hear more from Laurel – a recipient of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s “Peacemaker of the Year” award – on our monthly radio series in collaboration with KGNU Radio 88.5 FM. Tune in on Monday, March 26, at 8:35 a.m., or catch us later as a podcast on iTunes and other podcast apps.
