+Education and Immigration

PIC Team Project Summer 2015

Emily Riner-Costantino

Janit Saechao

Soledad Hernandez

+We Stand United

Our PIC team project was focused on immigration and education.

From our research we decided to create a GOFUNDME campaign on our blog to help raise awareness and money for immigrants to attend schools in the United States.

Over the course of this slide show you will see what we learned in relation to our topic.

+What if….

What if you grew up in the United States, believing that you were a citizen.

You attended your classes, and worked hard so you could get into college and make a better life for yourself.

Your parents worked hard everyday to give you things they never had, and you didn’t want to let them down.

You spent hours studying and even joined some sports teams in the hopes of getting a scholarship to lighten the load on your parents.

+Acceptance…Sort of

All your hard work paid off.

You got into college, and you have a scholarship.

Now comes the paperwork part, which in your mind should be no problem. Just dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s right?

WRONG

Your mom takes you aside and with tears in her eyes tells you that you don’t have a social security number. She fought to get you out of a bad situation. She wanted to make you safe and give you a life she could only dream about. She escaped a bleak future for you. But the government says that social security number is what stands between you and a college education.

+Dreams Crushed

DENIED

+After all what was our country founded on??

Surprise! It was founded on immigration.

In order to dehumanize the subject and turn these people into numbers, we call them illegal immigrants. How can a human being be considered illegal?

+What if…

What if we created a new world of acceptance?

What would that look like?

What would change?

+Our New World

Illegal immigrant becomes a phrase of the past.

You don’t need a social security number to attend college.

Everything you worked so hard for doesn’t vanish because of some numbers.

You get to make your parents feel proud instead of ashamed because they came to this country illegally.

You work hard in college everyday because you struggled and overcame a challenge. And eventually you pay it forward by donating money to help others like yourself attend college on a scholarship.

+How we were part of the solution

We created a blog that discussed the issues of immigration.

As a group we did research on the subject and watched some very influential and powerful videos that we posted on our blog to influence a change.

We set up a GOFUNDME portion of our blog and raised ninety dollars for our campaign to help support “illegal” immigrants who are trying to attend college.

We reached out into our community and shared our opinions and reasons to support our cause.

It may seem small, but everything worth doing starts with that first baby step.

+This is why we chose this topic

This is what we want the world to look like for our future children.

+How will this improve our world??

+We’ll Tell You!! Not only would we be saving lives, we would be

encouraging people who are new to this country to work hard and achieve their goals.

The best part is we as a country can help individuals to be successful in education.

Education is the key to a brighter future.

We would be sharing the American Dream with the rest of the world.

+Want to help make our dream a reality?

Vote for immigration reform.

Send a letter to your congressman or woman and encourage them to reform our policies on immigration and education.

Donate to causes that help to support immigrants in the school systems.

Vote with your dollar.

Support the places that support your ideals and especially the places that want to help immigrants.

+Be the Change You Want to See in the World.

One voice is small, but every voice matters.

The more people we can get to support our cause, the better the chances are that we will be able to see an actual change in our lifetime.

+Here’s a link to our blog where you can see what we’ve been up to this term.

https://pdxeducationandimmigration.wordpress.com

We also included a very powerful youtube video that makes our topic more real. It is one thing to read about something, but hearing and watching gives a whole new life to this idea.