June 25, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode of the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, host Victoria Ballesteros sits down with Kika Matos, President of the National Immigration Law Center.
Kica Matos is a social justice advocate, lawyer, and national immigrant rights leader. Kica gets to the heart of America's immigration issues, sharing personal stories and professional insights.
From the historical context of immigration laws to the human resilience Kica witnessed firsthand at the border, this episode sheds light on the urgent need for reform and the incredible work being done to support immigrant communities.
Tune in as we explore the past, present, and future of immigration in the United States, and highlight the ongoing fight for justice and dignity for all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
When my parents were children in Mexico, they weren't allowed to go to school.
At an age when most of us are learning our ABCs, they were already working.
In the 1960s, my parents came to the United States so that we,
their children, could have a better life than they had.
Their biggest dream was that we could get an education, something they were never able to do.
My parents, like so many immigrants, came to this country seeking the freedom to thrive.
(00:24):
And in that respect, they weren't different than the people we see on the news
today, people at the border seeking refuge in this country.
What was different is that when my parents came to the U.S.,
there was an actual system, a clear process for them to immigrate and establish residency.
Today, we're living under an immigration system that hasn't been reformed since 1986.
(00:46):
In 1986, we were using floppy disks and VCRs were cutting edge.
Everything has evolved since 1986, except for our nation's immigration laws.
Don't we owe it to ourselves and to the people coming here from other countries
to provide a clear pathway for residency like we used to have?
What's getting in the way? Why hasn't any progress been made since 1986?
(01:10):
My guest today is going to help us make sense of the moment we're in.
She's a national leader, a lawyer, a mom, a badass fighter for justice,
and she's the president of the National Immigration Law Center.
Today, I'll be talking with Kika Matos, and I can't wait to hear what she has to say about all this.
This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
(01:36):
I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
Immigration Law Center.
Excited to welcome to the podcast,
the National Immigration Law Center's president, Kika Matos. Kika, hi.
Hi, Victoria. Thank you for having me on your show. Thank you for being here. Welcome.
Kika, can I just jump right in? Because as you know, immigration is such a tough, challenging issue.
(02:02):
What drew you to work in this space?
That's a really good question. I did not gravitate towards immigration in a
really intentional way. what happened was that I relocated to New Haven,
Connecticut in the early 2000s.
And I moved into a neighborhood called Fairhaven, which is a largely immigrant neighborhood.
(02:23):
Over the many centuries in New Haven, every single wave of immigrants arriving
to the New Haven shores settled in Fairhaven.
And I moved to Fairhaven and I'm a lawyer.
I was a lawyer then. I had relocated from Philadelphia to New Haven.
I'm a criminal defense lawyer by background. I used to represent people on death
(02:47):
row and I end up in this neighborhood of immigrants.
I realized that the death row population in Connecticut was really small,
that it was not in the cards for me to continue to do death penalty lawyering
and that I had to do something else.
And so I was looking for a job and a friend of mine, Rafael,
reached out to me and said, hey, there's this organization, It's highly respected.
(03:10):
It's called Junta for Progressive Action, an organization founded by Puerto
Ricans to help Puerto Ricans migrating to the mainland. They're looking for an executive director.
Would you apply for the position? And so I was, I agreed to apply and I'm sitting
in the waiting area, waiting for them to call me for this interview.
(03:30):
And I started observing people coming in through the doors and they were all
Spanish speaking immigrants, not Puerto Ricans looking for help.
And I was really struck that so many people were coming to this particular organization for help.
The long and the short of it is that I did my interview.
(03:51):
They offered me the job. I stepped into the role of the executive director at
Junta and realized that the population of immigrants that were most pronounced
in New Haven at that particular time in my neighborhood were undocumented immigrants.
(04:11):
Who needed help and support in this particular institution.
And Junta was created to support Puerto Ricans.
And the agency needed to change its way of thinking because some of the solutions
that we were offering were not solutions that were well suited for undocumented immigrants.
And that's how I started working with this population.
(04:32):
Until that time, Victoria, I knew I knew nothing about undocumented immigrants.
I didn't know their stories. I didn't realize that it was an issue.
I knew very little about immigration.
But when I came to understand and when I came to engage with people in my neighborhood,
I realized that this was really part of my calling.
(04:53):
And that's how I made the pivot. it. It's so interesting.
I think a lot of people probably don't think of Connecticut as a place that
has a lot of immigrants, right? People think of immigrants and immigration, think of the border.
But so here you are. And by the way, thank you, Rafael, wherever you are,
for encouraging Kika to apply because Kika has become one of our country's leaders
on immigrant rights. And so we are all so grateful.
(05:15):
Kika, so now you're leading the National Immigration Law Center,
which is one of this country's oldest and leading organizations working to advance
the rights of immigrants.
And for people who maybe aren't familiar with the organization, how does NILC work?
What does NILC do to make a difference in the lives of immigrants?
(05:35):
So NILC, our acronym, National Immigration Law Center, we love to call ourselves NILC.
And we talk about the NILC-y way, which I think is a really cool way of referring to our organization.
NILC is 45 years old. We are a law and advocacy organization that is unique in a number of ways.
So what will I say about NILC and
(05:57):
what was it that drew me to work towards NILC? Here's what I would say.
NILC's reputation is equal to none. NILC has a reputation for being fearless
and for not being afraid to tackle the big issues.
So when people ask me what NILC does, my answer is usually when you think about
those big issues around immigration, just know that NILC is fighting somewhere
(06:21):
tackling those big issues. So we're not afraid to take on the big issues.
But how do we do it? We do it in a way that's really different.
So we fight for laws and policies that benefit immigrants.
Our mission is really simple.
We advocate for the opportunities and the rights of low-income immigrants throughout the United States.
We do it by changing laws and trying to change policy.
(06:46):
So we're not afraid to fight against laws that we think are racist and unconstitutional.
We're also not afraid to fight for laws that advance the rights of immigrants.
But we do it in partnership with what we know so fondly as the immigrant rights movement.
If you look at history, every significant social justice struggle has been fought
(07:09):
and won because people who are most impacted have been leading the way.
Think about the fight for abolition of slavery in this country,
for women's rights, the civil rights movement, marriage equality.
All of those fights have been fought and won because people most impacted have
been courageous enough.
(07:29):
To create a movement and collectively fight for justice. So we situate ourselves in the movement.
We are not these aloof lawyers who see people as plaintiffs.
We are deeply steeped in movement.
And then the last thing I would say is we engage in narrative change work,
which is really a fancy way of saying that it is important to us that we tell
(07:51):
the stories of people who are most impacted because that is the way that we
change the hearts and minds of Americans.
And you are the person at NILC who is leading the way in our narrative change work.
So you, more than anyone else, are able to tell us those stories and figure
out how to tell the stories that really impact Americans and have them understand
(08:15):
the issues around immigration and why we should support immigrants.
Yeah, that's really what this podcast is about, right, is we need to tell our stories.
So are there any wins or any successes or any highlights over the NILC 45-year
trajectory of the past that you would want to share or talk about?
Yeah, there's so many of them. I will start with a big win that NILC had a lot to do with in 2012.
(08:43):
So 12 years ago, when Obama was president, he announced this executive order
that is known as DACA. And I hate acronyms, so I'm going to ask you to bear with us.
So DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which breaks down
to protection from deportation and a right to work or go to school for people who are DREAMers.
(09:07):
DREAMers are young people who came to this country undocumented.
And so Obama announced that he was going to protect this group of people through DACA.
Yeah. This executive order has benefited hundreds and thousands of young people
who all of a sudden went from being in despair, trying to figure out what do
(09:28):
I do with my life? I'm undocumented.
I can't in many places get a driver's license. I can't go to school. I can't work.
But this is the country that I know as home. Some dreamers came to this country
when they were months old. Many of them didn't even discover that they were
undocumented until they said to their parents, hey, I want to apply to go to college or hey.
(09:50):
I need my birth certificate because I want to get a driver's license or something
that people with privilege of having legal status in this country don't even think about.
And so Dreamers got DACA. We have seen Dreamers flourish. No cut of hand in
making sure that DACA was advanced.
But since then, we have been also active in protecting DACA. Why?
(10:13):
Because when Trump came into power, one of the first things he did was to strike
down DACA. He said, no more.
This is, as we know, a president whose platform was deeply anti-immigrant,
and it was shattering to hundreds and thousands of young people who had turned their lives around.
So since DACA was struck down, we have been fighting in the courts and in partnership
(10:36):
with DREAMers to make sure that we do everything we can to protect DACA.
So that's a longtime victory that we fought and won.
Most recently, I said earlier that we're not afraid to take on the big fights.
We sued Texas. And let me just say, we sued Texas.
And why did we sue Texas? We sued Texas because they passed this law that is
(11:00):
racist, and it's unconstitutional.
It's known as SB4. And this law empowers law enforcement to be able to arrest
anyone in Texas that they think is undocumented.
What do we think that's all about? It's about racial profiling.
How can you tell somebody or suspect somebody is undocumented, right?
(11:22):
We know those code words. So this law says anyone in law enforcement,
local or state in Texas, can arrest anyone they suspect of being undocumented,
and judges can deport anyone who is undocumented.
And to be clear, the United States immigration laws are part of the domain of
(11:44):
our federal government. Right.
So Texas decided that it was going to try to make a mad power grab.
Right. And announced that they were somehow authorized to engage in immigration
enforcement, which is not within
the constitutional bounds, to put it in a lawyerly way. So we sued Texas.
And that was really cool. The litigation is now ongoing and we will stay the
(12:08):
course. And then most recently in Indiana, we sued Indiana. Why?
Because Indiana passed a law that said that anybody who had humanitarian parole
and humanitarian parole is simply a way that people are able to legally remain in this country.
So lawmakers said, we're going to pass this law that says that anybody in Indiana
who has humanitarian parole can have a driver's license, but only if they're from Ukraine.
(12:33):
And we said, oh, no, no, no, no, no. That is unconstitutional and that is illegal.
So we sued Indiana and we actually won in court.
But the terrible thing is that the legislature then went back and struck the law down.
And so now nobody who has humanitarian parole in Indiana is able to get a driver's
license. So that's a little bit of a flavor and a taste of some of the litigation
(12:56):
that we have been engaging in.
That's amazing and powerful work.
And I'm curious, when you speak of SB4 in Texas, is NILP tracking these other
laws that are popping up in other states?
Because it seems like SB4 in Texas maybe was the beginning or maybe it started in Florida.
I don't know, but it seems like there's a whole bunch of other states that are
(13:18):
starting to pass these kinds of laws. Yeah, we call them copycat laws.
And let me say that we sued Texas, but our lawsuit in Texas is built on anti-immigrant
laws like that that have been passed over the course of the last several decades.
And so, for example, we were also very active in Arizona over a decade ago when
(13:39):
Arizona passed a similar law.
It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled in our
favor and said that Arizona had overstepped its bounds, right,
and had tried to make a mad power grab over issues that it had no business making laws around.
And so we've seen that before. We've been active. We have fought against it.
(14:00):
Now with Texas, Texas has been really one of the states that's been leading
the way in terms of really advancing outrageously offensive and racist anti-immigrant
laws that make people suffer.
Imagine you being undocumented, a person of color in Texas and facing this tremendous hostility.
(14:22):
We're there now. We were there in Arizona over a decade ago.
And so now what's happened is since Texas passed its laws, all of these other
states are now trying to copy Texas and we will stay the course.
And so we see it our business to not just fight in Texas, but to fight in those
other states where we've seen these illegal laws passing.
(14:45):
I love it. And thank you for that reminder about Arizona, because that was a
really important and critical victory. So, okay, I want to shift gears a little bit.
Immigration is the number one issue for millions of Americans right now. It's top of mind.
And for many people, when they think about immigration, they think about the border.
Most of us only know what we see on TV when it comes to the border, right?
(15:08):
So, but you've actually been to the border and you've met with immigrants and
talked with immigrants.
What was your experience like there?
It was heartbreaking. Let me share with you a little bit of what my experience was like.
I went with a delegation of civil rights and human rights organizations at a
critical moment when the Biden administration was trying to implement these
(15:30):
new policies that would really restrict the ability of people to come to the U.S. to seek asylum.
And let me say something about asylum because I think there's a real misperception about asylum.
The laws of asylum are such that if you enter U.S.
Soil, whether you cross the border or you fly into the United States,
(15:51):
and you believe that you have a case for asylum, you have a legal right to ask for asylum.
So many of the people who are coming to the border are people who qualify under asylum.
They have a well-founded fear of persecution based on five different categories.
(16:12):
I just didn't name a few. Your race, your ethnicity, your national origin.
There's five different religions. There's five different categories, right?
So what's happening in the border is that many people are coming and seeking asylum.
Now, not everybody who who comes to the United States seeking asylum qualifies,
(16:34):
but you have a legal right to do that.
We have seen this massive global wave, and it's not just specific to the U.S.,
it's all over the world of people having to flee.
Their home countries. And why
are they fleeing? They're fleeing because they're asylum seekers, right?
They're facing danger in their home countries. And they're afraid that if they
(16:55):
stay in their home countries, they could be killed or tortured by the government.
Some people are fleeing because of climate change, right?
Because the conditions in their country are such that they can no longer literally
live where they are living.
And so they are forced to move. Some people are fleeing for economic conditions.
They can no longer afford, right, to live. They can't feed themselves.
(17:17):
They cannot feed their children. But this global migration pattern is not specific
to the U.S. People are fleeing all over, all over the world.
Some are making it to the United States.
When I went there with this delegation,
it really was to learn about the experiences of Black migrants. Why?
Because the host, the person who invited us was the Haitian Bridge Alliance,
(17:39):
and they do advocacy for Black immigrants.
So I went to Matamoros, Mexico, and I went to Reynosa, Mexico,
and I interviewed and talked to mostly Black migrants, but not exclusively Black migrants.
And here's the thing that breaks my heart, right? The conditions,
first of all, were wretched.
People living in open-air camps, some of them with not even a tent over their
(18:02):
heads, without access to basic hygiene, right?
Open areas where where you use the bathroom, people really struggling.
The basic necessities were not there.
The stories of suffering, some of them had actually come through the Darien
Gap, which is that really dangerous crossing in the border of Colombia and Panama.
(18:25):
And they come with stories of deep trauma, their loved ones being killed.
Some of the women had terrible stories of sexual assault, terrible things being
done to them or to their children, tremendous loss and tremendous grief and tremendous trauma.
But this amount of resilience and determination that they were going to do whatever
(18:48):
they could to protect themselves and protect their children.
Those are the stories that I heard in the border. Now, when you look at TV and
you see Fox News and you hear some of this really toxic language from anti-immigrant legislators,
you see a very different, terrible, inaccurate picture of who these folks are.
(19:10):
When I left, I was heartbroken.
It was very moving. But here's the thing that I want people to understand.
And the qualities that I saw in many of people, many of the people who were
there are the kinds of qualities that we as Americans actually uphold.
It is a commitment to family. It's courage. It is bravery.
(19:36):
It is resiliency. It's a desire to create community because there was one very
wretched camp that really where I,
you know, quietly broke down and I had to leave because I was so upset by what I saw.
But even within that camp, even amongst the terrible conditions,
(19:56):
there was a sense of community.
And there was this woman, Alicia, who I will never forget.
Alicia was a community organizer in that camp. She'd been there. She was from Venezuela.
She left her two young sons behind because she said she could no longer survive in Venezuela.
She came all the way to the border by herself.
(20:16):
She told the story of being in a bus and having the military come in and kidnap
all of the women except for her.
And she told that story. And she'd been in that camp for three months,
desperately trying to use her phone to be able to get that app that allows you
to have an interview to come to the United States.
And for three months, every day for hours, she was using her app.
(20:39):
But when she wasn't using her app, what was she doing? She was welcoming new
arrivals into to that camp.
And she knew which tents had been emptied out, right? So I saw her say,
these tents are empty for you and your family. There's the clinic.
And there was a woman whose children were really sick. So she showed them the clinic.
And so those are the stories that I was left with, stories of resilience and
(21:02):
human dignity and a sense of belonging.
And that's what I want people to understand about what's happening in the border.
Thank you. Thank you for amplifying the humanity of immigrants.
And people think about this broken system or the system, but they're not thinking
about the people, that there's people here who are suffering.
I hope all the best for Alicia. I hope she's reunited with her children and
(21:27):
for everyone who is. So I have a good, happy story.
I need to hear it. Yes. After five months of living in these wretched conditions.
One day I just got a text from her and it was a photo of her standing in front
of this giant sign in Texas. And she said, I made it.
So she got on a bus and she made her way to New York City.
(21:50):
And she is now in New York City doing what she did at the border,
which is helping other Venezuelans get acclimated in the city.
And so Alicia now is in the United States. I love it. I love it.
See, now you're going to make me cry, Kika.
Okay, so okay, well, let me ask you this then.
What could or should the Biden administration be doing today to improve the
(22:13):
system so that people like Alicia and the many, many more like her don't have
to go through this kind of suffering to seek safety and refuge?
There's a lot that the Biden administration could do that it's not doing.
Let me, I don't want to sound wonky, so please forgive Forgive me if I sound
wonky, but there's something that I want to make sure that folks who are listening
to this podcast are watching it understand, which is that our immigration laws
(22:37):
in this country are hopelessly broken.
The last time we had comprehensive immigration laws passed in the United States
was in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president.
Imagine how much has changed.
And some people listening to this podcast weren't even alive in 1986.
(22:57):
How much has happened in the decades since then? Our world has changed.
Our country has changed. And yet, because of the nonsense and the politicking
in Washington, D.C., our legislators are simply unwilling to change our laws.
And so our laws are antiquated and they're not the kinds of modern laws that
(23:18):
we need to respond to the situation today. So I will just start off with that.
I will also say that the Trump presidency had a terrible impact on the lives
of immigrants. And so under the Trump years, what did we see?
We saw really terrible policies being advanced.
(23:40):
There were over 400 executive orders that were deeply anti-immigrant.
People suffered the climate and the messaging. We talked about narrative change.
We saw a lot of terrible, nasty stereotypes put into place about immigrants.
And we are still suffering from that today.
And today, the political climate is such that both Democrats and Republicans,
(24:04):
sadly, are now embracing anti-immigrant policies, which to me is quite frankly
a disgrace. What do I want from Biden?
I want Biden to put forth a bold vision of immigration.
I want Biden to create more opportunities for immigrants to be able to legally
come into the United States, because we have very few opportunities for people
(24:28):
to be able to legally migrate into the United States.
And so that is why we see what we see at the border with so many people asking for asylum.
It is because there's just not enough opportunities.
I want Biden to shift us away from this toxic, racist, deeply anti-immigrant
narrative that we're hearing. And I want him to uplift the contributions that
(24:52):
immigrants are making to this country.
And I want him to be a part of that changing leadership that reminds people
that unless you're Native American or you are part of the history of enslaved
Africans like me, that's my legacy and that's my history.
You came into this country as an immigrant.
(25:12):
And so that is what I want from Biden. I want him to move forward boldly with
a vision and to create more pathways for people to be able to come into the
United States and live really fulfilling lives that benefit all of us.
I want to highlight something that you mentioned, this hopelessly broken immigration
system and and not having been touched since 1986.
(25:37):
A lot of what we hear, a lot of what I hear when I'm looking at,
you know, sort of public sentiment is that people feel like they support immigrants and immigration,
but they support immigrants who do things the right way, who come to this country
the right way. I hear the right way millions of times.
And I feel like there is no right way. There is no line.
They say, get in line. I support immigrants who stand in line.
(26:00):
It doesn't sound like there is a line or a right way.
No, that's the myth. I hear it too. Why can't they just get in line?
They're just breaking the law and they're breaking the law because they just
don't care or they want to cut in line.
There is no line. There are not enough pathways.
(26:20):
There are not enough opportunities for people to be able to avail themselves
of a way to change their status from undocumented to documented or to be able
to come to the United States.
That is one of the biggest systemic problems that we have right now.
What are the ways you can come to the United States?
(26:41):
The biggest ways are through family, right? We have a history and part of the
laws are shaped such that one of the biggest ways that people are able to legally
come to the United States is through family.
Your family, you get status and then you petition.
Your family members to come. Then there's work visas. Those are limited in numbers.
(27:01):
And then there's the lottery visa, which is random and random opportunity for
people who live in countries where we don't see significant numbers of migrants
coming to the United States to be able to apply.
And it literally is like winning the lottery.
You put your name in and maybe you'll be lucky and then you'll be able to come into the United States.
(27:22):
And then for those who are seeking asylum, and those who benefit from our refugee program, right?
Really, that is the extent of maybe a few more ways, temporary protective status.
I'm not going to get into them, but they're very, the bottom line is that there
are not enough opportunities for people to come to the United States or to legalize their status.
(27:46):
And there's no such thing as getting in the back of the line,
because I can guarantee you, right, that people more than anything else,
people who are undocumented in this country, they want legal status.
They want to figure out a way where they can get, they want a line to be able
to get into when there is no line.
(28:06):
If there was a line, people would be standing in it. Yeah. Exactly.
So I'm going to shift gears again. With all of this dysfunction in Congress
and inaction from the White House, who or what inspires you to keep going in
the face of so much adversity?
I have been incredibly privileged to work with and fight alongside Alongside
(28:35):
many people whose stories are stories of courage and resilience.
And these are people that you might see on the street and not think twice about.
People who work in the kitchens in our restaurants,
(28:57):
people who are the ones who clean up our hotel rooms when we go stay there,
the people who feed us because it is their sweat and their labor that allows
us to have the meals that we're able to have at the table.
And I am constantly humbled and inspired by those stories.
(29:20):
And the stories of courage when people who have next to nothing make that extra
sacrifice to help others or who, you know, you do this a lot at NILC, Victoria,
you remind us of the freedom to thrive, right?
People who make it their business to try to thrive despite the fact that the
(29:44):
odds are against them. And I'll give you a story.
There's a woman, and this again, I don't want to traumatize us by going back
into the Trump years, but I want to talk about Nuri Chavatia,
because Nuri Chavatia is a woman who continues to inspire me.
Nuri lives in Norwalk, Connecticut.
She's originally from Guatemala. She's lived in the United States now,
I would say probably for about 30 years. years, she has four U.S. citizen children.
(30:08):
And under the Trump years, her youngest was nine years old.
And during the Trump years, people who she had applied for asylum and she was denied asylum.
So every year she had to go to her immigration officer to check in and they
would stamp her papers and say, OK, you're good for another year.
They wanted to make sure she wasn't breaking the law and everything was on the up and up.
(30:30):
During the Trump years, when people went for for those routine visits,
what usually happened is what happened to Nuri, which is that her immigration
officer said, give me your ankle and put in front of Nuri's nine-year-old child,
put an ankle bracelet on Nuri and said, you have 30 days to leave this country.
And that was the end of that visit. Imagine you've been here for over two decades.
(30:55):
Your four U.S. citizen kids are here, and you were told you have to get the
hell out of here, and you got 30 days.
And so Nuri decided that she was going to fight to stay.
And there were some of us in Connecticut that were working with faith-based
institutions to offer sanctuary.
And so we offered Nuri sanctuary, and she said yes. And so Nuri,
(31:18):
with her youngest child, she found guardians for her three older children.
And she and her youngest child sought sanctuary in an institution,
faith-based, a Pentecostal church across the street from me.
She gave everything up and she sacrificed everything she had to fight for her
right to stay in the United States.
It's people like Nuri. And I remember intensely working with Nuri.
(31:43):
And because she was so close to me, I would visit her every day.
I would visit her child and the amount of courage that I saw in the,
in that woman blew me away.
She had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
And she fought with so much dignity and that she was a picture of grace under fire and she prevailed.
(32:05):
And so the good story, cause I do like, I do like stories that have the endings.
She got relief from the courts and now she is back in Norwalk with her children.
And every now and then I'll see her because what she does every year is that
she goes to the church that offered her sanctuary and she goes to one of their
services and she spends time with a pastor and the congregation,
(32:28):
especially the leaders in the congregation who protected her.
And when she does that, she'll come over and ring my doorbell to say hello and thank you. Beautiful.
Thank you. Thank you. That's really inspiring.
And as you mentioned at NILC, we do believe in a vision of this country that
lives up to its promise and potential.
And we're all of us, no matter how much money we have, what we look like or
where we were born, have the freedom to thrive.
(32:50):
So now I'm going to give you a magic wand, Kika. So you have your magic wand
and you can wave it over this country.
What would your ideal or reimagined country in the United States look like? Okay.
It would be a place where people would not only have the freedom to thrive,
but the freedom to live lives that are free from want.
(33:16):
I dream of a country where we put our tremendous resources into play such that
everybody has the fundamental right to health, to an education,
to housing where there is no need, where there There is no violence,
where every community that we go to is a community of people who thrive.
(33:41):
I want people who look like me, right, Black people, brown people,
people of color, to not ever have to suffer the indignities of racism and oppression.
I'm a big supporter of culture. I want this country to be a country where you see culture manifest,
(34:03):
right, where music and art and culture is accessible, no matter,
like you just said, Victoria, where you live or how much money you have.
And I want the budget for this country to reflect a deep commitment to the people
who live in this country.
That is, if I could wave my magic wand overnight, that is part of what I would
(34:25):
want to see for all of us. Yeah.
That is a country that I would love to live in. And I'm honored to be working
with you to do what we can, whatever we can to try to make that a reality for
all of us. And right back at you, Victoria.
Thank you for the amazing work that you do at NOC. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your story with us today. I feel like I could talk to
you all day about immigration and just your personal story is incredible.
(34:49):
And I really appreciate you sharing it with us.
And again, it is just so important for us to keep telling our stories and sharing
our immigration truths.
I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
(35:10):
I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.
When my parents were children in Mexico, they weren't allowed to go to school.
At an age when most of us are learning our ABCs, they were already working.
In the 1960s, my parents came to the United States so that we,
their children, could have a better life than they had.
Their biggest dream was that we could get an education, something they were never able to do.
My parents, like so many immigrants, came to this country seeking the freedom to thrive.
(00:24):
And in that respect, they weren't different than the people we see on the news
today, people at the border seeking refuge in this country.
What was different is that when my parents came to the U.S.,
there was an actual system, a clear process for them to immigrate and establish residency.
Today, we're living under an immigration system that hasn't been reformed since 1986.
(00:46):
In 1986, we were using floppy disks and VCRs were cutting edge.
Everything has evolved since 1986, except for our nation's immigration laws.
Don't we owe it to ourselves and to the people coming here from other countries
to provide a clear pathway for residency like we used to have?
What's getting in the way? Why hasn't any progress been made since 1986?
(01:10):
My guest today is going to help us make sense of the moment we're in.
She's a national leader, a lawyer, a mom, a badass fighter for justice,
and she's the president of the National Immigration Law Center.
Today, I'll be talking with Kika Matos, and I can't wait to hear what she has to say about all this.
This is the NILC Freedom to Thrive podcast, powering pro-immigrant narratives, one story at a time.
(01:36):
I'm Victoria Ballesteros, Executive Vice President of Narrative at the National
Immigration Law Center.
Excited to welcome to the podcast,
the National Immigration Law Center's president, Kika Matos. Kika, hi.
Hi, Victoria. Thank you for having me on your show. Thank you for being here. Welcome.
Kika, can I just jump right in? Because as you know, immigration is such a tough, challenging issue.
(02:02):
What drew you to work in this space?
That's a really good question. I did not gravitate towards immigration in a
really intentional way. what happened was that I relocated to New Haven,
Connecticut in the early 2000s.
And I moved into a neighborhood called Fairhaven, which is a largely immigrant neighborhood.
(02:23):
Over the many centuries in New Haven, every single wave of immigrants arriving
to the New Haven shores settled in Fairhaven.
And I moved to Fairhaven and I'm a lawyer.
I was a lawyer then. I had relocated from Philadelphia to New Haven.
I'm a criminal defense lawyer by background. I used to represent people on death
(02:47):
row and I end up in this neighborhood of immigrants.
I realized that the death row population in Connecticut was really small,
that it was not in the cards for me to continue to do death penalty lawyering
and that I had to do something else.
And so I was looking for a job and a friend of mine, Rafael,
reached out to me and said, hey, there's this organization, It's highly respected.
(03:10):
It's called Junta for Progressive Action, an organization founded by Puerto
Ricans to help Puerto Ricans migrating to the mainland. They're looking for an executive director.
Would you apply for the position? And so I was, I agreed to apply and I'm sitting
in the waiting area, waiting for them to call me for this interview.
(03:30):
And I started observing people coming in through the doors and they were all
Spanish speaking immigrants, not Puerto Ricans looking for help.
And I was really struck that so many people were coming to this particular organization for help.
The long and the short of it is that I did my interview.
(03:51):
They offered me the job. I stepped into the role of the executive director at
Junta and realized that the population of immigrants that were most pronounced
in New Haven at that particular time in my neighborhood were undocumented immigrants.
(04:11):
Who needed help and support in this particular institution.
And Junta was created to support Puerto Ricans.
And the agency needed to change its way of thinking because some of the solutions
that we were offering were not solutions that were well suited for undocumented immigrants.
And that's how I started working with this population.
(04:32):
Until that time, Victoria, I knew I knew nothing about undocumented immigrants.
I didn't know their stories. I didn't realize that it was an issue.
I knew very little about immigration.
But when I came to understand and when I came to engage with people in my neighborhood,
I realized that this was really part of my calling.
(04:53):
And that's how I made the pivot. it. It's so interesting.
I think a lot of people probably don't think of Connecticut as a place that
has a lot of immigrants, right? People think of immigrants and immigration, think of the border.
But so here you are. And by the way, thank you, Rafael, wherever you are,
for encouraging Kika to apply because Kika has become one of our country's leaders
on immigrant rights. And so we are all so grateful.
(05:15):
Kika, so now you're leading the National Immigration Law Center,
which is one of this country's oldest and leading organizations working to advance
the rights of immigrants.
And for people who maybe aren't familiar with the organization, how does NILC work?
What does NILC do to make a difference in the lives of immigrants?
(05:35):
So NILC, our acronym, National Immigration Law Center, we love to call ourselves NILC.
And we talk about the NILC-y way, which I think is a really cool way of referring to our organization.
NILC is 45 years old. We are a law and advocacy organization that is unique in a number of ways.
So what will I say about NILC and
(05:57):
what was it that drew me to work towards NILC? Here's what I would say.
NILC's reputation is equal to none. NILC has a reputation for being fearless
and for not being afraid to tackle the big issues.
So when people ask me what NILC does, my answer is usually when you think about
those big issues around immigration, just know that NILC is fighting somewhere
(06:21):
tackling those big issues. So we're not afraid to take on the big issues.
But how do we do it? We do it in a way that's really different.
So we fight for laws and policies that benefit immigrants.
Our mission is really simple.
We advocate for the opportunities and the rights of low-income immigrants throughout the United States.
We do it by changing laws and trying to change policy.
(06:46):
So we're not afraid to fight against laws that we think are racist and unconstitutional.
We're also not afraid to fight for laws that advance the rights of immigrants.
But we do it in partnership with what we know so fondly as the immigrant rights movement.
If you look at history, every significant social justice struggle has been fought
(07:09):
and won because people who are most impacted have been leading the way.
Think about the fight for abolition of slavery in this country,
for women's rights, the civil rights movement, marriage equality.
All of those fights have been fought and won because people most impacted have
been courageous enough.
(07:29):
To create a movement and collectively fight for justice. So we situate ourselves in the movement.
We are not these aloof lawyers who see people as plaintiffs.
We are deeply steeped in movement.
And then the last thing I would say is we engage in narrative change work,
which is really a fancy way of saying that it is important to us that we tell
(07:51):
the stories of people who are most impacted because that is the way that we
change the hearts and minds of Americans.
And you are the person at NILC who is leading the way in our narrative change work.
So you, more than anyone else, are able to tell us those stories and figure
out how to tell the stories that really impact Americans and have them understand
(08:15):
the issues around immigration and why we should support immigrants.
Yeah, that's really what this podcast is about, right, is we need to tell our stories.
So are there any wins or any successes or any highlights over the NILC 45-year
trajectory of the past that you would want to share or talk about?
Yeah, there's so many of them. I will start with a big win that NILC had a lot to do with in 2012.
(08:43):
So 12 years ago, when Obama was president, he announced this executive order
that is known as DACA. And I hate acronyms, so I'm going to ask you to bear with us.
So DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which breaks down
to protection from deportation and a right to work or go to school for people who are DREAMers.
(09:07):
DREAMers are young people who came to this country undocumented.
And so Obama announced that he was going to protect this group of people through DACA.
Yeah. This executive order has benefited hundreds and thousands of young people
who all of a sudden went from being in despair, trying to figure out what do
(09:28):
I do with my life? I'm undocumented.
I can't in many places get a driver's license. I can't go to school. I can't work.
But this is the country that I know as home. Some dreamers came to this country
when they were months old. Many of them didn't even discover that they were
undocumented until they said to their parents, hey, I want to apply to go to college or hey.
(09:50):
I need my birth certificate because I want to get a driver's license or something
that people with privilege of having legal status in this country don't even think about.
And so Dreamers got DACA. We have seen Dreamers flourish. No cut of hand in
making sure that DACA was advanced.
But since then, we have been also active in protecting DACA. Why?
(10:13):
Because when Trump came into power, one of the first things he did was to strike
down DACA. He said, no more.
This is, as we know, a president whose platform was deeply anti-immigrant,
and it was shattering to hundreds and thousands of young people who had turned their lives around.
So since DACA was struck down, we have been fighting in the courts and in partnership
(10:36):
with DREAMers to make sure that we do everything we can to protect DACA.
So that's a longtime victory that we fought and won.
Most recently, I said earlier that we're not afraid to take on the big fights.
We sued Texas. And let me just say, we sued Texas.
And why did we sue Texas? We sued Texas because they passed this law that is
(11:00):
racist, and it's unconstitutional.
It's known as SB4. And this law empowers law enforcement to be able to arrest
anyone in Texas that they think is undocumented.
What do we think that's all about? It's about racial profiling.
How can you tell somebody or suspect somebody is undocumented, right?
(11:22):
We know those code words. So this law says anyone in law enforcement,
local or state in Texas, can arrest anyone they suspect of being undocumented,
and judges can deport anyone who is undocumented.
And to be clear, the United States immigration laws are part of the domain of
(11:44):
our federal government. Right.
So Texas decided that it was going to try to make a mad power grab.
Right. And announced that they were somehow authorized to engage in immigration
enforcement, which is not within
the constitutional bounds, to put it in a lawyerly way. So we sued Texas.
And that was really cool. The litigation is now ongoing and we will stay the
(12:08):
course. And then most recently in Indiana, we sued Indiana. Why?
Because Indiana passed a law that said that anybody who had humanitarian parole
and humanitarian parole is simply a way that people are able to legally remain in this country.
So lawmakers said, we're going to pass this law that says that anybody in Indiana
who has humanitarian parole can have a driver's license, but only if they're from Ukraine.
(12:33):
And we said, oh, no, no, no, no, no. That is unconstitutional and that is illegal.
So we sued Indiana and we actually won in court.
But the terrible thing is that the legislature then went back and struck the law down.
And so now nobody who has humanitarian parole in Indiana is able to get a driver's
license. So that's a little bit of a flavor and a taste of some of the litigation
(12:56):
that we have been engaging in.
That's amazing and powerful work.
And I'm curious, when you speak of SB4 in Texas, is NILP tracking these other
laws that are popping up in other states?
Because it seems like SB4 in Texas maybe was the beginning or maybe it started in Florida.
I don't know, but it seems like there's a whole bunch of other states that are
(13:18):
starting to pass these kinds of laws. Yeah, we call them copycat laws.
And let me say that we sued Texas, but our lawsuit in Texas is built on anti-immigrant
laws like that that have been passed over the course of the last several decades.
And so, for example, we were also very active in Arizona over a decade ago when
(13:39):
Arizona passed a similar law.
It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled in our
favor and said that Arizona had overstepped its bounds, right,
and had tried to make a mad power grab over issues that it had no business making laws around.
And so we've seen that before. We've been active. We have fought against it.
(14:00):
Now with Texas, Texas has been really one of the states that's been leading
the way in terms of really advancing outrageously offensive and racist anti-immigrant
laws that make people suffer.
Imagine you being undocumented, a person of color in Texas and facing this tremendous hostility.
(14:22):
We're there now. We were there in Arizona over a decade ago.
And so now what's happened is since Texas passed its laws, all of these other
states are now trying to copy Texas and we will stay the course.
And so we see it our business to not just fight in Texas, but to fight in those
other states where we've seen these illegal laws passing.
(14:45):
I love it. And thank you for that reminder about Arizona, because that was a
really important and critical victory. So, okay, I want to shift gears a little bit.
Immigration is the number one issue for millions of Americans right now. It's top of mind.
And for many people, when they think about immigration, they think about the border.
Most of us only know what we see on TV when it comes to the border, right?
(15:08):
So, but you've actually been to the border and you've met with immigrants and
talked with immigrants.
What was your experience like there?
It was heartbreaking. Let me share with you a little bit of what my experience was like.
I went with a delegation of civil rights and human rights organizations at a
critical moment when the Biden administration was trying to implement these
(15:30):
new policies that would really restrict the ability of people to come to the U.S. to seek asylum.
And let me say something about asylum because I think there's a real misperception about asylum.
The laws of asylum are such that if you enter U.S.
Soil, whether you cross the border or you fly into the United States,
(15:51):
and you believe that you have a case for asylum, you have a legal right to ask for asylum.
So many of the people who are coming to the border are people who qualify under asylum.
They have a well-founded fear of persecution based on five different categories.
(16:12):
I just didn't name a few. Your race, your ethnicity, your national origin.
There's five different religions. There's five different categories, right?
So what's happening in the border is that many people are coming and seeking asylum.
Now, not everybody who who comes to the United States seeking asylum qualifies,
(16:34):
but you have a legal right to do that.
We have seen this massive global wave, and it's not just specific to the U.S.,
it's all over the world of people having to flee.
Their home countries. And why
are they fleeing? They're fleeing because they're asylum seekers, right?
They're facing danger in their home countries. And they're afraid that if they
(16:55):
stay in their home countries, they could be killed or tortured by the government.
Some people are fleeing because of climate change, right?
Because the conditions in their country are such that they can no longer literally
live where they are living.
And so they are forced to move. Some people are fleeing for economic conditions.
They can no longer afford, right, to live. They can't feed themselves.
(17:17):
They cannot feed their children. But this global migration pattern is not specific
to the U.S. People are fleeing all over, all over the world.
Some are making it to the United States.
When I went there with this delegation,
it really was to learn about the experiences of Black migrants. Why?
Because the host, the person who invited us was the Haitian Bridge Alliance,
(17:39):
and they do advocacy for Black immigrants.
So I went to Matamoros, Mexico, and I went to Reynosa, Mexico,
and I interviewed and talked to mostly Black migrants, but not exclusively Black migrants.
And here's the thing that breaks my heart, right? The conditions,
first of all, were wretched.
People living in open-air camps, some of them with not even a tent over their
(18:02):
heads, without access to basic hygiene, right?
Open areas where where you use the bathroom, people really struggling.
The basic necessities were not there.
The stories of suffering, some of them had actually come through the Darien
Gap, which is that really dangerous crossing in the border of Colombia and Panama.
(18:25):
And they come with stories of deep trauma, their loved ones being killed.
Some of the women had terrible stories of sexual assault, terrible things being
done to them or to their children, tremendous loss and tremendous grief and tremendous trauma.
But this amount of resilience and determination that they were going to do whatever
(18:48):
they could to protect themselves and protect their children.
Those are the stories that I heard in the border. Now, when you look at TV and
you see Fox News and you hear some of this really toxic language from anti-immigrant legislators,
you see a very different, terrible, inaccurate picture of who these folks are.
(19:10):
When I left, I was heartbroken.
It was very moving. But here's the thing that I want people to understand.
And the qualities that I saw in many of people, many of the people who were
there are the kinds of qualities that we as Americans actually uphold.
It is a commitment to family. It's courage. It is bravery.
(19:36):
It is resiliency. It's a desire to create community because there was one very
wretched camp that really where I,
you know, quietly broke down and I had to leave because I was so upset by what I saw.
But even within that camp, even amongst the terrible conditions,
(19:56):
there was a sense of community.
And there was this woman, Alicia, who I will never forget.
Alicia was a community organizer in that camp. She'd been there. She was from Venezuela.
She left her two young sons behind because she said she could no longer survive in Venezuela.
She came all the way to the border by herself.
(20:16):
She told the story of being in a bus and having the military come in and kidnap
all of the women except for her.
And she told that story. And she'd been in that camp for three months,
desperately trying to use her phone to be able to get that app that allows you
to have an interview to come to the United States.
And for three months, every day for hours, she was using her app.
(20:39):
But when she wasn't using her app, what was she doing? She was welcoming new
arrivals into to that camp.
And she knew which tents had been emptied out, right? So I saw her say,
these tents are empty for you and your family. There's the clinic.
And there was a woman whose children were really sick. So she showed them the clinic.
And so those are the stories that I was left with, stories of resilience and
(21:02):
human dignity and a sense of belonging.
And that's what I want people to understand about what's happening in the border.
Thank you. Thank you for amplifying the humanity of immigrants.
And people think about this broken system or the system, but they're not thinking
about the people, that there's people here who are suffering.
I hope all the best for Alicia. I hope she's reunited with her children and
(21:27):
for everyone who is. So I have a good, happy story.
I need to hear it. Yes. After five months of living in these wretched conditions.
One day I just got a text from her and it was a photo of her standing in front
of this giant sign in Texas. And she said, I made it.
So she got on a bus and she made her way to New York City.
(21:50):
And she is now in New York City doing what she did at the border,
which is helping other Venezuelans get acclimated in the city.
And so Alicia now is in the United States. I love it. I love it.
See, now you're going to make me cry, Kika.
Okay, so okay, well, let me ask you this then.
What could or should the Biden administration be doing today to improve the
(22:13):
system so that people like Alicia and the many, many more like her don't have
to go through this kind of suffering to seek safety and refuge?
There's a lot that the Biden administration could do that it's not doing.
Let me, I don't want to sound wonky, so please forgive Forgive me if I sound
wonky, but there's something that I want to make sure that folks who are listening
to this podcast are watching it understand, which is that our immigration laws
(22:37):
in this country are hopelessly broken.
The last time we had comprehensive immigration laws passed in the United States
was in 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president.
Imagine how much has changed.
And some people listening to this podcast weren't even alive in 1986.
(22:57):
How much has happened in the decades since then? Our world has changed.
Our country has changed. And yet, because of the nonsense and the politicking
in Washington, D.C., our legislators are simply unwilling to change our laws.
And so our laws are antiquated and they're not the kinds of modern laws that
(23:18):
we need to respond to the situation today. So I will just start off with that.
I will also say that the Trump presidency had a terrible impact on the lives
of immigrants. And so under the Trump years, what did we see?
We saw really terrible policies being advanced.
(23:40):
There were over 400 executive orders that were deeply anti-immigrant.
People suffered the climate and the messaging. We talked about narrative change.
We saw a lot of terrible, nasty stereotypes put into place about immigrants.
And we are still suffering from that today.
And today, the political climate is such that both Democrats and Republicans,
(24:04):
sadly, are now embracing anti-immigrant policies, which to me is quite frankly
a disgrace. What do I want from Biden?
I want Biden to put forth a bold vision of immigration.
I want Biden to create more opportunities for immigrants to be able to legally
come into the United States, because we have very few opportunities for people
(24:28):
to be able to legally migrate into the United States.
And so that is why we see what we see at the border with so many people asking for asylum.
It is because there's just not enough opportunities.
I want Biden to shift us away from this toxic, racist, deeply anti-immigrant
narrative that we're hearing. And I want him to uplift the contributions that
(24:52):
immigrants are making to this country.
And I want him to be a part of that changing leadership that reminds people
that unless you're Native American or you are part of the history of enslaved
Africans like me, that's my legacy and that's my history.
You came into this country as an immigrant.
(25:12):
And so that is what I want from Biden. I want him to move forward boldly with
a vision and to create more pathways for people to be able to come into the
United States and live really fulfilling lives that benefit all of us.
I want to highlight something that you mentioned, this hopelessly broken immigration
system and and not having been touched since 1986.
(25:37):
A lot of what we hear, a lot of what I hear when I'm looking at,
you know, sort of public sentiment is that people feel like they support immigrants and immigration,
but they support immigrants who do things the right way, who come to this country
the right way. I hear the right way millions of times.
And I feel like there is no right way. There is no line.
They say, get in line. I support immigrants who stand in line.
(26:00):
It doesn't sound like there is a line or a right way.
No, that's the myth. I hear it too. Why can't they just get in line?
They're just breaking the law and they're breaking the law because they just
don't care or they want to cut in line.
There is no line. There are not enough pathways.
(26:20):
There are not enough opportunities for people to be able to avail themselves
of a way to change their status from undocumented to documented or to be able
to come to the United States.
That is one of the biggest systemic problems that we have right now.
What are the ways you can come to the United States?
(26:41):
The biggest ways are through family, right? We have a history and part of the
laws are shaped such that one of the biggest ways that people are able to legally
come to the United States is through family.
Your family, you get status and then you petition.
Your family members to come. Then there's work visas. Those are limited in numbers.
(27:01):
And then there's the lottery visa, which is random and random opportunity for
people who live in countries where we don't see significant numbers of migrants
coming to the United States to be able to apply.
And it literally is like winning the lottery.
You put your name in and maybe you'll be lucky and then you'll be able to come into the United States.
(27:22):
And then for those who are seeking asylum, and those who benefit from our refugee program, right?
Really, that is the extent of maybe a few more ways, temporary protective status.
I'm not going to get into them, but they're very, the bottom line is that there
are not enough opportunities for people to come to the United States or to legalize their status.
(27:46):
And there's no such thing as getting in the back of the line,
because I can guarantee you, right, that people more than anything else,
people who are undocumented in this country, they want legal status.
They want to figure out a way where they can get, they want a line to be able
to get into when there is no line.
(28:06):
If there was a line, people would be standing in it. Yeah. Exactly.
So I'm going to shift gears again. With all of this dysfunction in Congress
and inaction from the White House, who or what inspires you to keep going in
the face of so much adversity?
I have been incredibly privileged to work with and fight alongside Alongside
(28:35):
many people whose stories are stories of courage and resilience.
And these are people that you might see on the street and not think twice about.
People who work in the kitchens in our restaurants,
(28:57):
people who are the ones who clean up our hotel rooms when we go stay there,
the people who feed us because it is their sweat and their labor that allows
us to have the meals that we're able to have at the table.
And I am constantly humbled and inspired by those stories.
(29:20):
And the stories of courage when people who have next to nothing make that extra
sacrifice to help others or who, you know, you do this a lot at NILC, Victoria,
you remind us of the freedom to thrive, right?
People who make it their business to try to thrive despite the fact that the
(29:44):
odds are against them. And I'll give you a story.
There's a woman, and this again, I don't want to traumatize us by going back
into the Trump years, but I want to talk about Nuri Chavatia,
because Nuri Chavatia is a woman who continues to inspire me.
Nuri lives in Norwalk, Connecticut.
She's originally from Guatemala. She's lived in the United States now,
I would say probably for about 30 years. years, she has four U.S. citizen children.
(30:08):
And under the Trump years, her youngest was nine years old.
And during the Trump years, people who she had applied for asylum and she was denied asylum.
So every year she had to go to her immigration officer to check in and they
would stamp her papers and say, OK, you're good for another year.
They wanted to make sure she wasn't breaking the law and everything was on the up and up.
(30:30):
During the Trump years, when people went for for those routine visits,
what usually happened is what happened to Nuri, which is that her immigration
officer said, give me your ankle and put in front of Nuri's nine-year-old child,
put an ankle bracelet on Nuri and said, you have 30 days to leave this country.
And that was the end of that visit. Imagine you've been here for over two decades.
(30:55):
Your four U.S. citizen kids are here, and you were told you have to get the
hell out of here, and you got 30 days.
And so Nuri decided that she was going to fight to stay.
And there were some of us in Connecticut that were working with faith-based
institutions to offer sanctuary.
And so we offered Nuri sanctuary, and she said yes. And so Nuri,
(31:18):
with her youngest child, she found guardians for her three older children.
And she and her youngest child sought sanctuary in an institution,
faith-based, a Pentecostal church across the street from me.
She gave everything up and she sacrificed everything she had to fight for her
right to stay in the United States.
It's people like Nuri. And I remember intensely working with Nuri.
(31:43):
And because she was so close to me, I would visit her every day.
I would visit her child and the amount of courage that I saw in the,
in that woman blew me away.
She had everything to lose and nothing to gain.
And she fought with so much dignity and that she was a picture of grace under fire and she prevailed.
(32:05):
And so the good story, cause I do like, I do like stories that have the endings.
She got relief from the courts and now she is back in Norwalk with her children.
And every now and then I'll see her because what she does every year is that
she goes to the church that offered her sanctuary and she goes to one of their
services and she spends time with a pastor and the congregation,
(32:28):
especially the leaders in the congregation who protected her.
And when she does that, she'll come over and ring my doorbell to say hello and thank you. Beautiful.
Thank you. Thank you. That's really inspiring.
And as you mentioned at NILC, we do believe in a vision of this country that
lives up to its promise and potential.
And we're all of us, no matter how much money we have, what we look like or
where we were born, have the freedom to thrive.
(32:50):
So now I'm going to give you a magic wand, Kika. So you have your magic wand
and you can wave it over this country.
What would your ideal or reimagined country in the United States look like? Okay.
It would be a place where people would not only have the freedom to thrive,
but the freedom to live lives that are free from want.
(33:16):
I dream of a country where we put our tremendous resources into play such that
everybody has the fundamental right to health, to an education,
to housing where there is no need, where there There is no violence,
where every community that we go to is a community of people who thrive.
(33:41):
I want people who look like me, right, Black people, brown people,
people of color, to not ever have to suffer the indignities of racism and oppression.
I'm a big supporter of culture. I want this country to be a country where you see culture manifest,
(34:03):
right, where music and art and culture is accessible, no matter,
like you just said, Victoria, where you live or how much money you have.
And I want the budget for this country to reflect a deep commitment to the people
who live in this country.
That is, if I could wave my magic wand overnight, that is part of what I would
(34:25):
want to see for all of us. Yeah.
That is a country that I would love to live in. And I'm honored to be working
with you to do what we can, whatever we can to try to make that a reality for
all of us. And right back at you, Victoria.
Thank you for the amazing work that you do at NOC. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing your story with us today. I feel like I could talk to
you all day about immigration and just your personal story is incredible.
(34:49):
And I really appreciate you sharing it with us.
And again, it is just so important for us to keep telling our stories and sharing
our immigration truths.
I want to thank our listeners for spending time with us. For more immigration
truths, visit us at nilk.org and freedomtothrive.com.
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.
(35:10):
I look forward to continuing this conversation with all of you.
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