Event Date
🌟 Presented by Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate for Inclusive Excellence
The Office of Advancing Mentoring and the Professoriate presents Engagement & Research Seminar Series
Bureaucracies and Borders: Indigenous Immigrants and the Limits of Legalization
Michelle Vasquez Ruiz
UC President's Postdoctoral and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
As Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) increases brutal enforcement of immigration laws nationwide, border security advocates still promote the myth of merit-based immigration. The claim that there is a “right way” to immigrate ignores the historical function of immigration laws in restricting access to citizenship for racialized communities. For Mexican Indigenous immigrants, the system is even more restrictive, with anti-Indigenous practices and policies creating a bureaucratic labyrinth of complex requirements, documentation hurdles, and language barriers that make legal entry to the US far more difficult.
This talk examines the specific impact of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on Zapotec and Mixtec immigrants, considering how the path to “legalization” can be slow and fraught, sometimes exposing Indigenous immigrants to employer abuse and criminalization. By centering Indigenous experiences, this talk challenges dominant narratives of legality and merit and reveals how immigration law operates as a site of anti-Indigenous colonial violence.
Lunch served starting at 11:30am, research talk with Q&A from 12:00 - 1:00pm.
Everyone interested is welcome.
About
Michelle Vasquez Ruiz is a UC President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow within Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. She holds a BA in Political Science and Chicano Studies from the University of California, Irvine and an MA in History from California State University, Los Angeles. Her research examines the ways restrictive immigration laws govern the mobility of Mexican Indigenous communities across settler-colonial borders. Her work has been published in American Quarterly, Ethnic Studies Review and Mobilities.
Future Seminar Series Presentations:
DEBORAH SOUTHERN
Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
April 29 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.
OLUMAKINDE ADESIJIBOMI OGUNNAIKE
Postdoctoral Scholar, Physics, University of California, Berkeley
May 27 • 12:00pm • Student Community Center, Room D
More information soon.