De la Fuente vs. Escalante

Flavia has been a good friend of mine since we first met online. Our online friendship has always been a bit… well, crazy to say the least. Based of Gchats, memes, and .gif sets - I only have but admiration for this passionate ally. 

Here is a recent interview she asked me to participate in for Distilled magazine. Check it out!

(yes, this is how we talk to each other - hence the laid back tone of the interview)

Interview in full HERE for Distilled magazine.

Flavia de la Fuente and Juan Escalante are both involved with immi­grant advo­cacy and pol­icy reform. So in order to get an inside per­spec­tive, Dis­tilled Extra won­dered what would hap­pen if one inter­viewed the other

Hello, Dis­tilled read­ers! My name is Flavia de la Fuente, and today I’ll be inter­view­ing Juan Escalante. You should Google him. Any­ways, Juan and I met on the inter­net on March 1st, 2010 when I joined Drea­mAc­tivist as the edi­tor. We dis­cov­ered we both have a mutual love for Star Wars. He made a “that’s what she said’ joke. I asked him whether gators are really every­where in Florida. And since that day we have met in per­son exactly once, and yet we are best buddies.

Hey Juan. What’s up?Not much, you know… won­der­ing why am I being inter­viewed like this. Are you teach­ing me? Are you try­ing to expand my cre­ative juices? Is this a way for you to teach me? Are you a teacher? OMG, I suck don’t I? I knew it, I let this sit too long and now you think I suck. SIGH…

So. You’re undocumaz­ing. I mean undoc­u­mented. How did that happen?

Well, it’s kind of a funny story. My par­ents applied for a pro­fes­sional visa, an L1, which pro­vided a pas­sage to become a Legal Per­ma­nent Res­i­dent (LPR, and even­tu­ally a cit­i­zen. We arrived in the United States on August 29th, 2000 and after six years of paper­work, lit­i­ga­tion, appli­ca­tion fees, lawyer fees, and wait­ing in the so called “line” that all immi­grants are expected to wait in, we came to the real­iza­tion that our lawyer filed the wrong paper­work at the wrong time. All those years, and all that effort — wasted. Our case was closed by United States Cit­i­zen­ship and Immi­gra­tion Ser­vices (USCIS), with no appeal.When peo­ple ask me about my immi­gra­tion sta­tus, when they hear this story, they often respond “Oh wow, so you are not like those other bor­der crossers who come mooch off our county!” I don’t respond, rather I stay silent — because rather than bury the igno­rance with my fact checked knowl­edge, I rather just con­vince myself that I ought to work even harder to achieve a com­pre­hen­sive reform to our cur­rent immi­gra­tion system.

When peo­ple ask me about my immi­gra­tion sta­tus, when they hear this story, they often respond “Oh wow, so you are not like those other bor­der crossers who come mooch off our county!” I don’t respond, rather I stay silent — because rather than bury the igno­rance with my fact checked knowl­edge, I rather just con­vince myself that I ought to work even harder to achieve a com­pre­hen­sive reform to our cur­rent immi­gra­tion system.

Read the rest HERE for Distilled magazine.

Sen. Leahy states the Immigration Reform will be “delayed” for a month.

Without legislative language, there is nothing for the Judiciary Committee to consider this week at our mark up.  The upcoming recess period would have allowed all Members of the Committee and the American people to review the legislation.  Now that process and our work will be delayed at least a month. 

-Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

(Source: leahy.senate.gov)