Conversations around immigration can be difficult to have when there is so much misinformation around the subject. Few people have the time to keep up with constantly changing language, laws, and processes that affect undocumented students while still working full time. This confusion can lead to well-meaning supporters engaging in hurtful but normalized language. UndocuAdvocate Workshops can help.
UndocuAdvocate Workshops (also called undocu-ally trainings) have been great resources for campuses across California. At their core, they help administration, faculty, and staff have a shared base knowledge of their undocumented students. But they do so much more than that.
By contextualizing some of the lived experiences that undocumented students share, UndocuAdvocate Workshops help align UndocuEfforts across a campus. When students hear the same respectful language at the Financial Aid Office as they did in their classroom, it helps them affirm that their campus is a supportive environment as a whole.
Learning about long-standing and emerging barriers faced by students in this population also humanizes the extra effort required for undocumented students to graduate. This can inform future retention interventions from departments that would otherwise be unaware of said barriers.
Although Undocu-Professionals have stepped into significant positions throughout educational institutions, there are still not enough of us in decision-making spaces. Most likely, interventions to help retain undocumented students will come from spaces with few-to-zero undocumented people. This is why we need UndocuAdvocates to be informed.
UndocuAdvocate Workshops also offer supportive spaces for emerging allies to safely “mess up.” It’s bound to happen through no fault of our own, and it’s safer to ask uncomfortable questions to a trained professional than to a student.
Healing relationships between educational institutions and their students is one of our driving goals. Allyship workshops help campuses engage with previously neglected student populations with more confidence. They also help students see their schools are actively working to be better. Therefore, UndocuScholars LLC strongly advocates for Equity Advocacy Trainings for other previously neglected groups like disabled, transgender, and unhoused students. We know first-hand the difference these efforts make in the educational journey of students.
