With the impending presidential election, the conversation surrounding immigration policy has circulated campus.
Undocumented and international students are two groups most impacted by potential policy changes from both sides of the political aisle.
Diana Cervantes, co-executive director of Undocumented Trojan Success Assembly and business of cinematic arts senior, said she feels anxious ahead of Tuesday’s outcome.
“With any election, regardless of the politicians, it’s just disheartening to see that they use our community as a way to get votes,” Cervantes said. “It’s very frustrating and scary that someone who is unable to vote will be directly affected by the outcome of the election.”
Undocumented Trojan Success Assembly is a campus organization that offers support to undocumented students and increasing resources and networks for this community according to its website.
The assembly currently has 51 registered members and approximately 100 students regularly attend various meetings and events according to Cervantes. Undocumented students, students with undocumented loved ones and allies all participate both in the group and in conversations surrounding the uncertain future of immigration policy and their position on campus.
“When I was first a student at USC, I lived in fear. I did not want anyone to know about my status,” said Alexa Hernandez Diaz, co-executive director of Undocumented Trojan Success Assembly (UTSA) and journalism senior.
While Hernandez Diaz now discloses her undocumented status publicly, not everyone feels safe while speaking on immigration without the support of this organization.
“If it wasn’t for this organization, I would not feel safe on campus,” Cervantes said. “I genuinely would feel othered. I would feel unsafe and just alone.”
Cervantes also is transparent about her undocumented status because of UTSA. She said she was inspired by another member that was forthcoming about her status and advocated within the community.
With this uncertainty resurfacing with each election season, undocumented students finding a supportive community is pivotal. While undocumented trojans have a voice on campus, many don’t have a voice in the polls.
“We encourage everyone to vote, because individuals like us don’t have the privilege to vote but it is something that we want to advocate for,” Hernandez Diaz said. “People’s voices matter, and communities like us are at risk during this time.”
The conversations surrounding the immigration policies will remain hypothetical until the presidential candidate is elected and enacts them, but the legal concern is considerable.
Niels Frenzen, USC professor of law and director of Gould School of Law Immigration Clinic, said that temporary statuses protecting students might be under threat of termination with a new administration headed by former President Donald Trump.
“Those individuals with those two forms of temporary status, TPS and DACA, would lose their ability to work in the United States and would be subject to possible removal proceedings,” Frenzen said.
TPS, or temporary protective status, was created by Congress with the Immigration Act of 1990 and is granted to individuals from nations that are unsafe or difficult to deport them to.
Deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) is a renewable action enacted by the Secretary of Homeland Security in 2012 that delays actions such as deportation for individuals that immigrated to the country as children. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, this action must be applied for, lasts two years and the individual must meet a list of qualifying conditions.
Trump’s administration is not the only campaign focused on changing current immigration policy.
“The Harris administration is definitely proposing ramping up increased immigration law enforcement,” Frenzen said.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ immigration policy focuses on increasing border security and creating a pathway to citizenship according to an Oct. 31 Forbes article.
While individuals with the undocumented community are concerned about deportation, the international student community is interested in employment implications with the new administration.
“I think the biggest concern for documented status has to do with postgraduate employment opportunities,” said Morgan Ma, health administration masters student and USC International Student Assembly board senior advisor. “I know that based on which candidate ends up happening, it might be harder to get things like green cards through the lottery.”
The International Student Assembly is a USC organization that acts as an umbrella to various cultural groups on campus. According to ISA, it focuses on promoting and communicating interests of the international student community to the university.
Ma said that much of the international student community is focused on the feasibility of staying in the United States after graduation to seek employment, which could be difficult depending on the accessibility of work visas to foreign individuals.
“I think the US is pretty open, typically, about having F1 visa and having students come in from international countries, but then having them stay afterwards is the much larger problem I think a lot of my peers face.”
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a F1 student visa allows individuals to enter the country to study at an accredited academic institution that has been authorized to accept international students. This study must move towards the acquisition of a degree, diploma or certificate.
Not all students within the ISA organization have a pulse on American political races.
Lucas Sumartha, co-executive director of the ISA Board and Indonesian international student, is focused on politics at home.
“There are just so many more aspects of life that we have to manage here, especially with documentation, especially living here, that’s just kind of taking up our purview right now,” Sumartha said.
Political atmospheres in home countries is not the only issue holding international students back from having conversations surrounding the presidential election. Some are purposefully taking a non-confrontational approach.
“We’re in this new country, in this new place, and that can kind of be daunting, especially with the uptick of violence we’ve seen in the past,” Sumartha said. “Especially with Asian-hate or just untimely sentiments toward immigration, I think that non-confrontation stems from the fact that we don’t want that to happen again.”
Even if some students are passionate about the presidential election and immigration policies, many do not have the privilege to express it beyond these conversations.
“It’s very hard to be politically engaged in the US, especially when you don’t have very much of a vote or say in these actual elections,” Ma said.