My first week of LINK was very eye opening. On the first day my mentor told me his ideas for a project, one he admittedly said would be a challenge that he was not quite sure how to solve. And I, knowing much less about the world of adult life and immigration law started out not having a clue what to do. His idea was to calculate the cost to the community of La Plata County and the government as a whole for deporting one unauthorized immigrant, who would have a spouse and children dependent on him or her.
To start this off, I inserted the expected wage of an immigrant (according to my mentor) into an excel spreadsheet to calculate the monthly and yearly salary of this hypothetical individual. I then calculated how much this family would spend on food, apartment rent, gas, and taxes. If this individual were deported they would no longer be spending money on any of this and therefore the community would lose that contribution to their economy.
I also found the average cost for detaining an immigrant and the average amount of days that an immigrant is detained before he/she is deported. This would directly cost the government money. Other direct costs to be taken into account include court order, and cost of transportation.
I still do not know how I am going to incorporate all this information into one document accurately, but I am working on ways to do so. I have started writing an op-ed to defend my calculations with rhetoric as well. I hope that my work will help people who are undecided on immigration to decide that our current immigration laws including deporting non-criminals is both morally incorrect and inefficient.
Another project which I have been working on is creating a contact list for non-English speakers in the community. I have also included phrases which may serve as useful when trying to find someone who speaks your own language and processes to find these people for particular places in town.
On a daily basis there are immigrants finding help at Los Compañeros. Many people are trying to obtain a driver’s license, file their tax returns etc. I have also seen people come in asking for help because their boss lied to them, in one instance two workers were told that they would be paid by the hour for their work and after they finished the job were told that they were going to be paid by contract. Another time, a mother came in trying to find a scholarship for music lessons for her child. Once, I also saw a man come in looking for a copy of a newspaper from his original home in Mexico. The reason was that he needed to prove to the government that returning to his old home would be impossible, the city is suffering from constant violence and is too dangerous to return to.
I always try to converse with people when they come in, if there are a couple minutes of conversation between my mentor and the immigrants looking for help. I can already tell that my Spanish has greatly improved for only one week. My listening and reading skills have improved the most, but I continue to work on my ability to speak as well. If I have not made it apparent already, language is something that is indescribably important to me and is one of the main reasons I pursued this internship.
I hope that reading my updates is of interest to you, and I continue to look at my project in new ways, I know that I will be able to finish it, but it is going to take some hard work. I will keep you all posted on what happens during the rest of my internship.
To start this off, I inserted the expected wage of an immigrant (according to my mentor) into an excel spreadsheet to calculate the monthly and yearly salary of this hypothetical individual. I then calculated how much this family would spend on food, apartment rent, gas, and taxes. If this individual were deported they would no longer be spending money on any of this and therefore the community would lose that contribution to their economy.
I also found the average cost for detaining an immigrant and the average amount of days that an immigrant is detained before he/she is deported. This would directly cost the government money. Other direct costs to be taken into account include court order, and cost of transportation.
I still do not know how I am going to incorporate all this information into one document accurately, but I am working on ways to do so. I have started writing an op-ed to defend my calculations with rhetoric as well. I hope that my work will help people who are undecided on immigration to decide that our current immigration laws including deporting non-criminals is both morally incorrect and inefficient.
Another project which I have been working on is creating a contact list for non-English speakers in the community. I have also included phrases which may serve as useful when trying to find someone who speaks your own language and processes to find these people for particular places in town.
On a daily basis there are immigrants finding help at Los Compañeros. Many people are trying to obtain a driver’s license, file their tax returns etc. I have also seen people come in asking for help because their boss lied to them, in one instance two workers were told that they would be paid by the hour for their work and after they finished the job were told that they were going to be paid by contract. Another time, a mother came in trying to find a scholarship for music lessons for her child. Once, I also saw a man come in looking for a copy of a newspaper from his original home in Mexico. The reason was that he needed to prove to the government that returning to his old home would be impossible, the city is suffering from constant violence and is too dangerous to return to.
I always try to converse with people when they come in, if there are a couple minutes of conversation between my mentor and the immigrants looking for help. I can already tell that my Spanish has greatly improved for only one week. My listening and reading skills have improved the most, but I continue to work on my ability to speak as well. If I have not made it apparent already, language is something that is indescribably important to me and is one of the main reasons I pursued this internship.
I hope that reading my updates is of interest to you, and I continue to look at my project in new ways, I know that I will be able to finish it, but it is going to take some hard work. I will keep you all posted on what happens during the rest of my internship.