Public forum set in Santa Rosa to offer information on U.S. immigration policy

It might surprise some that a sixth of the roughly half-million residents in Sonoma County were born outside the United States. Tens of thousands are believed to be undocumented immigrants.

Yet few residents know what a “Dreamer” is or understand President Barack Obama’s recent executive order that’s expected to provide temporary deportation relief and work permits to an estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, said Susan Parkinson, a member of Santa Rosa’s American Association of University Women. The group is teaming up with the AAUW’s Petaluma and Healdsburg chapters and the League of Women Voters to educate residents about laws and policies that affect local immigrants.

The coalition is set to hold the “Perspectives on Immigration” forum at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Santa Rosa’s Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave. The event is free and open to the public.

“It’s important for the general public to be informed about the facts, considering the lives of immigrants, their contributions to our society and the effects of immigration law,” Parkinson said, noting that immigration policy changes also impact the rest of the population.

Forum panelists will include local immigration attorney Christopher Kerosky, Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Socorro Shiels and Jesus Guzman, a Graton Day Labor Center organizer who previously received a reprieve from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Although schools don’t ask about immigration status, Shiels said it’s clear that some students are dealing with the fallout from deportation of family members, including parents.

“If all of those issues are consistently being talked about at home, it creates stress for everyone, especially children,” she said. “Those conditions affect learning.”

Such issues also show themselves in other ways, Shiels said. For example, she said, a student might not get a pair of glasses because of his or her parents’ fear of being put in a database and having their immigration status exposed. Other families regularly turn down after-school programs and events.

“The condition of all our families are important for us as a community to investigate, to explore, to problem solve,” Shiels said. “If any of us struggle, we are all struggling.”

Kerosky said his firm has handled hundreds of applications from those seeking deferred deportation in Sonoma and Napa counties. He said the program had “transformed” lives, alleviating fear and anxiety for many immigrants.

The impact is set to be greater under the latest presidential executive order that extends deportation reprieve to undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

“It’s hard to comprehend how meaningful that is unless you see these folks every day,” Kerosky said.

GOP leaders have criticized President Obama over the move, arguing he’s out of step with public opinion on immigration reform and is putting only a temporary Band-Aid on a broken system. Republicans say he should wait to work with Congress to bring about a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

On Thursday, Kerosky plans to show a short film to highlight the personal story of an immigrant, Diego Jimenez, who graduated from Sonoma State University in 2012. Jimenez was brought to the U.S. illegally from Mexico when he was a year old. Also featured in the film is Jimenez’s longtime friend Giovanni Albertolli, whose parents are immigrants but have legal status.

Jimenez and Albertolli both work in Kerosky’s law firm and are expected to attend the forum.

“There are lot of misperceptions - that they (immigrants) are uneducated, don’t go to school, don’t go to work,” Kerosky said. “The whole purpose of the forum and our video series is to try to reach those people.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misnamed Diego Jimenez.