Social work students at Nebraska Wesleyan University have completed a study of undocumented immigrants with a call for more attention to that subject in the state's university curriculums.
ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, May 7, 2007 7:00 pm
Social work students at Nebraska Wesleyan University have completed a study of undocumented immigrants with a call for more attention to that subject in the state’s university curriculums.
The students did eight case studies of immigrants as part of a semester-long project called “Immigrants: A Forgotten Population.”
The results were made available this week at the university’s Callen Conference Center.
One of their findings from their interviews with residents of Lincoln and nearby communities was that people are waiting four or more years for action on their applications for legal residency status.
“It’s absolutely horrible that we allow that sort of thing to happen in the United States,” said student presenter Abbie Locken, a junior from Lincoln.
Presenter Mandy Gwirtz of Manhattan, Kan., said the project, presided over by Jeff Mohr, director of the social work program at the university, helped her recognize the differences between what minorities experience as citizens of the U.S. and what undocumented immigrants experience.
“How am I able to help somebody,” Gwirtz said as she looks ahead to a social work career, “if I don’t know what they’re facing?”
Many of the report details offered Monday came from a week’s worth of interviews in which the subjects were identified only by first names.
The interview candidates and other background information came from the Lincoln-based Equity in Nebraska, a nonprofit group that began providing legal assistance to low-income immigrants and refugees in 2001.
One of those interviewed said she was an abused child whose mother gave her up for adoption. She later narrowly avoided deportation as she reached age 18. She now has legal status and is a student at Southeast Community College in Beatrice.
Another interview subject, a mother of a 5-year-old, divorced her abusive husband. Still without legal residency status, she doesn’t dare visit her mother in Mexico and needs medical attention for a back problem.
“She found health care is very hard to get when you don’t have residency,” said NWU student Ashley Larson, also of Lincoln.
A third interviewee came to the U.S. from Mexico speaking fluent English and with health insurance.
She now has a four-year degree and a work visa. But students learned that even she would need to have future employers pay thousands of dollars in sponsorship costs for her if she changed jobs.
Mohr said NWU students do get some information about immigrants in a social welfare policy class. But in the view of the seven juniors and seniors outlining their project Monday, he said, “it’s not addressed to the extent that they think it should be.”
Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.