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Thursday, Februar y 23, 2017 | Vo l u m e 1 2 1 | I s s u e 4 6
Lujan Grisham talks immigration with students By Brendon Gray @notgraybrendon
John Acosta / Daily Lobo / @DailyLobo
U. S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., addresses a question from UNM professor Jose Palacios on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017 at the UNM SUB. The congresswoman addressed many questions that international students had about President Trump’s immigration executive orders.
ABQ protests ICE raids By Celia Raney @Celia_Raney Hundreds of fists were raised into the air over the past week as Burqueños came together to show support for undocumented immigrants nationwide. At three separate events, protesters showed support for their undocumented neighbors, friends and family, with chants like “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” and “Raise a hand, make a fist, undocumented people will resist.” It wasn’t all love and acceptance, however, with the event on Tuesday evening ending in a fight. Spurred by several raids conducted over the course of the last two weeks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Donald Trump’s aggressive rhetoric toward immigrants, Albuquerque activist groups including Indivisible Nob Hill, Power Through Peace and Working Families New Mexico took a stand against what many are calling injustice. A rally at the Bernalillo County Courthouse and a vigil held for families affected by recent ICE raids were held Friday, kicking off a weekend filled with both unity and anxiety. Wrapping up the weekend hype, former New Mexico Senator Eric Griego, now a member of New Mexico Working
On Wednesday about 70 international students filled a SUB conference room to listen to U.S. Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, and receive answers regarding recent executive orders, visa issues and other related concerns. The Democratic congresswoman, who represents UNM’s congressional district, responded to questions presented by a handful of UNM students and faculty. All of the students and many of the faculty were immigrants, and the congresswoman’s presentation was centered around students’ questions and stories. “I can take these stories back to Washington, D.C.,” Lujan Grisham said. Like other congressional representatives from around the U.S., Lujan Grisham pledged she would escort visa holders and immigrants through airport customs to ensure
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Nick Fojud / Daily Lobo / @NFojud
Families, addressed a crowd of more than 500 people at an antiICE protest Tuesday afternoon at Albuquerque Civic Plaza. Griego explained that under former President Barack Obama’s administration, more illegal immigrants were deported than under any other administration thus far. “However,” he said, “Obama also passed executive orders to protect DACA, and (orders) for a lot of young people who weren’t born here but who grew up here, and for dreamers — these raids in people’s houses, courthouses, schools, all these places that
On the Daily Lobo website SALAS: What will new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos mean for schools?
they’re doing it now, that’s not what Obama was doing.” Albuquerque activist Joel Gallegos spoke at Friday’s courthouse rally and the event at Civic Plaza Tuesday. “We have to keep in mind that it was a democratic president who had the largest amount of deportations under that presidential administration,” Gallegos said. Gallegos’ father, who owned a business in Albuquerque, was deported under the Obama administration in 2012. “He contributed so much to
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Proposed bill aims to simplify credit transfers By Sarah Trujillo
Sally Davis swings an American flag on the steps of Civic Plaza during an anti-ICE rally on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017 in downtown Albuquerque. The Tuesday rally was in direct response to recent deportation incidents locally and nationally.
their safe return, if needed. “I will go the extra mile,” she said. Madagascar native Rijasoa Andriamanana, a graduate student who attended the presentation, questioned how much power President Donald Trump had over immigration policy. “How far can he go?” Andriamanana asked. “He can go very far,” Lujan Grisham responded, “and I find that very troubling.” Andriamanana explained she had experienced the last three presidential elections and previously “didn’t care who was president.” That changed in 2016 when she began attending “all the rallies and everything, because I thought (the Trump campaign) was a joke.” “This is not the America I know,” Andriamanana said. “I’m starting to lose my hope.” Andriamanana said she was concerned about the Jan. 27 executive order barring citizens from seven predominantly Muslim
The credit transfer process at UNM may see a drastic change with two proposed bills that would make it much simpler. It’s no secret that students have experienced issues when transferring to UNM from other universities and colleges around the state and nationwide, with many seniors anticipating graduation only to learn they have ended up taking more classes than required. According to a report from Complete College America, a national nonprofit aimed at increasing the completion of career certificates and college degrees, New Mexico college students are taking 154 credit hours on average, when only 120 are required for graduation. Consequently, students are taking two years longer to complete a bachelor’s degree program, wrapping up their studies in six years instead of four. Barbara Damron, the cabinet secretary for the New Mexico Higher Education Department, said the present process is significantly inefficient in part because of how often students transfer. According to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the national rate
of students transferring even once within six years of their college career is around 37 percent. “Courses often transfer, but they end up not counting toward a student’s degree,” Damron said. “The reforms in SB103/HB108 will create a system that will allow students to know, before they take a course at any of New Mexico’s public higher education institutions, whether that course will transfer and count toward their degree, preventing loss of time, credits and money.” If passed, HB108 and SB103 — which are duplicate bills with bipartisan sponsors — would enable the New Mexico Higher Education Department to create a common course numbering system, produce and cultivate meta-majors, and alter the general education core. Damron said NMHED is aligning roughly 10,000 lower division courses spanning across 31 public higher education institutions, all with the same common course number. “This is a feat no other state in the Union has accomplished, and which the New Mexico higher education community was asked to do 22 years ago,” Damron said. “This means that when a student transfers, the course will be accepted as
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