All School Day: Do I Look Illegal?
Sponsor:
USC School of Social Work
All School Day was initiated after Los Angeles’ 1992 civil unrest resulted in acts of lawbreaking compounded by existing racial tensions.
Since then, social work students, faculty and community leaders have gathered each year to celebrate diversity through an exchange of ideas and to learn how to better communicate across differences in race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, social class and disability. This year, we look at the implications of immigration reform on civil liberties and the social work profession.
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 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, which 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.
Keynote Speakers
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 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, which 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.
Keynote Speakers
- Gil Cedillo, California state assembly member
- Manuel Pastor, professor of American studies and ethnicity at USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
- Niels Frenzen, clinical professor of law at USC Gould School of Law
- Ange-Marie Hancock, associate professor of political science and gender studies at USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
- Angelica Salas, director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
Schedule
8:15 a.m.
Check-In
9 a.m.
All School Day
12 p.m.
Lunch
1:15 p.m.
Student Organization-Sponsored Event, "Immigration and Social Justice: Social Work Applications," in the Hamovitch Research Center (MRF). There will be limited space for this event. You can also watch online: http://tinyurl.com/ASDstudent. Send questions for the speakers to swstuorg@usc.edu.
This event is open to USC School of Social Work students, faculty and staff only.