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At commencement this Sunday, Dartmouth will recognize 20 undergraduate members of the Class of 2022 who have earned top academic honors in their class.

Each of the 13 valedictorians earned a cumulative 4.0 grade point average across their Dartmouth careers. These include Melissa Barales-Lopez, Clayton Bass, Keara Dennehy, Ana Julia dos Santos Furtado, Archita Nitya Harathi, Aaron Lin Lee, Mien Nguyen, Max Ashok Pumilia, Matthew Roth, Kristina Strommer, Kimberly Tan, Victor Wu, and Jason Zavras.

A committee representing the dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and the dean of the College selected Barales-Lopez to deliver the valedictory address to the Class of 2022.

These outstanding student-scholars exemplify the depth and scope of the liberal arts, saysElizabeth Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. On behalf of the faculty, I congratulate them on all that they have achieved at Dartmouth and wish them the best in all their future pursuits.

This years salutatorians, who each earned at least a 3.99 grade point average, include Twisha Bhardwaj, Matthew Gannon, Zachary LaPorte, Sophia Miller, Connor Morris, Ian Stiehl, and Andrew White.

Valedictorians

Melissa Barales-LopezEast Los Angeles, Calif.Government and Spanish double major; Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies minor; Phi Beta Kappa

The former co-director of the Coalition for Immigration Reform and Equality at Dartmouth (CoFIRED), Barales-Lopez says she hopes one day to practice labor law.

Barales-Lopez was community outreach director at the Golden Heights Project, which provides civic education to young children from underserved Los Angeles neighborhoods, a mentor for theFirst Year Student Enrichment Program, and an ambassador for College Match, which supports low-income students with the college application process. In 2019 she received the Katherine B. Brock Prize for her service to the Dartmouth community.

She served as a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar, a Politics and Law research assistant, an associate at the Novack Caf, and an academic tutor for Government 10all while earning four citations for outstanding achievement in her classes and finding time to enjoy cycling, running, and photography.

She also interned with the global investment firm D.E. Shaw, the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, and Solar United Neighbors, and was a policy fellow at the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California and a litigation legal assistant at Davis Polk and Wardwell LLC.

After graduation Barales-Lopez plans to return to D.E. Shaw as a legal and compliance analyst while applying to law school.

Clayton BassHarrison, N.Y.Mathematical Data Science major; Phi Beta Kappa

Bass says his primary academic interest is in predictive gamesapplying machine learning to finance, sports, and business decision-making. He also is passionate about how data science can help inform medical decisions.

As a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar with Assistant Professor of Computer ScienceSoroush Vosoughi, he developed machine-learning models to predict NFL games. He was an early inductee into Phi Beta Kappa and received 10 citations for outstanding performance in his coursework.

Among his Dartmouth activities, he was fundraising project leader forThe Dartmouthstudent newspapers business development staff, for which he won a business development award. He was also treasurer for the Dartmouth Mathematical Society, a member of the club squash team and Beta Alpha Omega fraternity, and a business development member of theAegisyearbook staff.

He interned at the hedge funds WorldQuant and Point72. After graduation, Bass will return to Point72 in New York City as a data scientist/quantitative analyst.

Keara DennehySimsbury, Conn.Geography major; Psychology minor; Phi Beta Kappa

Dennehy is interested in using data science to analyze resource distribution in urban spaces, with a focus on how environmental hazards and social inequities impact residents mental and physical well-being.

As a research assistant on three projects in environmental studies and geography, one for which she was a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar, she has built geographic information system databases of rice paddies in the Dominican Republic, analyzed gender representation and other measures of equity in humanitarian health evidence, and analyzed census data to calculate neighborhood racial change throughout the United States. She has earned six citations for excellence in her coursework.

Among her Dartmouth activities, she was a tutor at theRWIT peer writing centerand chair of RWITs inclusivity development committee. She also led a Dartmouth Outing Club first-year trip, mentored a younger student through SIBs, and served as assistant stage manager for several theater productions.

She has interned with The Nature Conservancy and TomTom, where she plans to work as a business analyst before pursuing a masters degree in GIS, urban planning, or geography.

Ana Julia dos Santos FurtadoSanta Rita do Passa Quatro, BrazilHispanic Studies major; Phi Beta Kappa

An undergraduate fellow and scholar withDartmouths Race, Migration, and Sexuality Consortium, Furtado conducted independent research under the supervision of Associate Professor of EnglishKimberly Juanita Browninto the cultural interplay between alimentary politics and nationalist projects of whiteness during the First Brazilian Republic.

As a Human Development Fellow, she conducted research with Associate Professor of AnthropologyMaron Greenleafon forest protection and carbon evaluation in the Brazilian Amazon, and helped Associate Professor of Spanish and PortugueseIsrael Reyescreate a syllabus for a course on Boricuan identity.

She was co-president of the Dartmouth Brazilian Society, programming coordinator and chair for the Visibility 2020 and 2021 Campaign, and student adviser for the women and gender program at the Office of Pluralism and Leadership. She also worked on theHistorical Accountability Project, participated in a foreign study program in Buenos Aires, served as a Spanish and Portuguese teaching assistant and drill instructor, and worked throughout all four years for Dartmouth Dining Services.

She received funding from theJohn Sloan Dickey Center for International Understandingto intern with the Launch Gurls and Global G.L.O.W; from theNeukom Institute for Computational Scienceto assist Neukom FellowJeremy Mikeczon a project reconceptualizing the early Indigenous experience after the Spanish invasion; and from theLeslie Center for the Humanitiesto explore the perpetuation of colonial violence on contemporary Brazilian sugar plantations.

Before graduate school, Furtado plans to spend a year working as a humanities research assistant or to return to Brazil to teach at the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes.

Archita Nitya HarathiPortland, Ore.Mathematics and Economics double major; Computer Science minor; Phi Beta Kappa

Harathi cites development and educational economics, mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics, machine learning, and law among her academic interests.

She received aJack Byrne Scholarshipto conduct research in mathematics throughout her time at Dartmouth. She was a UI/UX Designer and a Neukom Scholar at theDartmouth Applied Learning and Innovation Laband completed a presidential scholarship as a research assistant forNina Pavcnik, the Niehaus Family Professor in International Studies and a professor of economics. This past year, she joined her Economics 70 class on a winterim trip to Chile.

Among her Dartmouth activities, Harathi has been a member of The Sings a capella group and was a finalist in the Dartmouth Idol Competition. She is on the Raaz dance team and has taught Indian classical dance to local children in Hanover. She played on the womens club basketball team and the Dartmouth running team. She is also a member of the Palaeopitus Senior Society and the Shanti Hindu Society and served as a team captain of the Mock Trial Society, president of the Dartmouth Math Society, and risk management chair for her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma.

After graduation, Harathi will be joining Goldman Sachs as an investment banking analyst.

Aaron Lin LeeBerwyn, Pa.Mathematics and Economics double major; Computer Science minor; Phi Beta Kappa

Lees academic interests in pure math, macroeconomics, game theory, statistics, and machine learning converge around the theme of trust, he says. How can we ensure that our research findings are as robust and understandable as possible, especially when the models we use are difficult to interpret?

As a section editor and member ofThe Dartmouthdirectorate, he was responsible for data journalism and surveys, writing numerous stories covering student opinions on politics and College administrative decisions, among other topics.

A pianist who studied with Professor of MusicSally Pinkasthrough the music departmentsIndividual Instruction Program, Lee played with theDartmouth College Wind Ensembleand performed large-scale works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Ravel at a solo senior recital this spring.

He alsoaccumulated 15 citations across seven different departments.

He has completed internships with Amazon, Chubb, and Jane Street. After graduation, he plans to move to New York City as a full-time quant trader at Five Rings Capital.

Mien Josephine NguyenQuang Yen, VietnamComputer Science major; Phi Beta Kappa

During her Dartmouth career, Nguyen served as an ambassador for the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, working on projects to promote diversity and inclusion at Dartmouth and facilitating discussions about identity and social justice for various student organizations on campus. In addition, she was a teaching assistant and section leader for several computer sciences courses, and she was a peer tutor for Computer Science 1 with theAcademic Skills Center. She was also a research assistant working with Professor of LinguisticsJames Stanfordto process audio transcripts in Cantonese and visualize the relationships between tone mergers and the speakers various social factors, such as gender, age, and location.

Nguyen has earned numerous citations for excellence in her coursework in computer science and music and interned for two summers with Bloomberg LP working in software engineering and development. After graduation, she plans to join Bloomberg full-time as a software engineer.

Max Ashok PumiliaDenver, Colo.Religion and History modified with Medieval and Renaissance Studies double major; Phi Beta Kappa

With an interest in medieval Islamic history, Pumilia researched the Shiite Muslim sect known as the Ismailis, which developed in the 9th century, as a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar and completed a senior honors thesis titled Navigating Errancy: Ismaili Perspectives onDhimmisfrom the Fatimid Revolution to the Fall of Alamut.

As a sophomore research scholar, he studied the development of the middle class in modern South Asia. He was a member of the Dartmouth Undergraduate Research Association executive board, participated in several club and intramural sports, and served as president of his fraternity, Kappa Pi Kappa (formerly Tri-Kap).

He has interned with a national golf company and spent summers with a small investment fund and a small private equity shop, both based in Denver. Last summer he interned at Bain & Company in New York and will be joining their San Francisco office after graduation.

Matthew RothWilmette, Ill.Computer Science major; Phi Beta Kappa

With an interest in computer science, history, and economics, Roth has interned in business development with TripActions and business operations with Salsify. The summer after his junior year, he was a software development intern at Amazon.

Inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Roth has earned citations for academic excellence in his economics, physics, and computer science courses. He served as a teaching assistant in computer science.

Among his other Dartmouth activities, Roth played on the club baseball team and was a member of the Gamma Delta Chi fraternity.

He plans to join Amazon as a software engineer.

Kristina StrommerPortland, Ore.Spanish and Intercultural Rhetoric double major; Phi Beta Kappa

An aspiring attorney, Strommer is interested in immigration advocacy as well as Spanish literature, communications, and rhetoric.

She has earned eight citations for excellence in her coursework.

Among her Dartmouth activities, she was part of FUERZA Farmworkers Fund, a member of Chi Delta Sorority, a ski instructor, an admissions tour guide, a student assistant in the Dartmouth Library, an administrative assistant in the Student Employment Office, and a volunteer with Dartmouth Feeding Neighbors.

She completed a legal internship the Oregon-based Bend Immigration Group, as well as communications and marketing internships with the World Forestry Center, Little Love Organics, Arendt Consulting, and Kimberly Park Communications.

Before law school, Strommer plans to live in Yakutat, Alaska, and continue working remotely for Kimberly Park Communications.

Kimberly TanSingaporeEngineering Sciences and Philosophy modified with Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages double major; Phi Beta Kappa

With academic interests in mechanical engineering, physics, and Western and Chinese philosophical traditions, Tan received undergraduate research funding for leave-term research into the May Fourth Movement in China, where she investigated the relationship of Confucianism to modernity and the influence of American Pragmatism on Chinese thought. She also received funding from UGAR and a Neukom Institute CompX grant to research quantum music with Eleanor and A. Kelvin Smith Distinguished Professor in PhysicsMiles Blencowe.

Her faith communitiesincluding the Agape Christian Fellowship, the Christian Union (of which she was co-president), Edgerton House Episcopal Campus Ministry, and Daily Prayer Grouphave made up a large part of her Dartmouth experience, as has music. A violinist, she served as concertmaster and performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto as a soloist with theDartmouth Symphony Orchestra.

She won the Marcus Heiman-Martin R. Rosenthal 56 Award for her contributions to the DSO, Best Overall Performance in the 2022 Culley Concerto Competition, and the Macdonald-Smith Prize for her achievements in musical performance. She has served as treasurer and executive team member of Musical Empowerment of the Upper Valley and was a trip leader for the Dartmouth Outing Club first-year trips.

In 2019, Tan participated in the language study abroad program in Beijing. In the fall, as a Yenching Scholar, she will pursue a masters degree in China studies with a concentration in philosophy and religion at the Yenching Academy of Peking University.

Victor WuHercules, Calif.Government, Environmental Studies, and Quantitative Social Science triple major; Phi Beta Kappa

Wu, who will attend Stanford Law School this fall, plans to pursue a PhD in political science in addition to a JD, with the goal of becoming a law professor.

At Dartmouth, he coauthored publications on economic mobility and on correcting climate and COVID-19 misinformation. He earned high honors and the Downey Family Prize in Environmental Studies for his honors thesis exploring community choice aggregationsprograms that allow local governments to procure energy on behalf of their residents. He also received the Stamps Scholarship for a two-year research project on hydropower development in the Mekong River.

A member of the Dartmouth triathlon team who competed in the 2021 Olympic-Distance Triathlon National Championships, Wu says the sportwhich requires hours of training in the outdoorshas inspired his passion for the environment. And his experience as a policy debater, most recently with the Dartmouth Forensics Union, has helped him focused his interest on environmental policy and law. He participated in the fall 2021 environmental studies off-campus program, studying community-based natural resource management throughout New England.

Wu has completed internships with the Environmental Law Institute and the U.S. Department of Justices Natural Resources Division as well as the Dartmouth Sustainability Office and Bright Line Watch. Wu also participated in theRockefeller Center for Public PolicysGlobal Leadership and Management and Leadership Development programs.

Jason ZavrasDover, Mass.Quantitative Social Science and Biochemistry double major; Phi Beta Kappa

Zavras, who says his academic interests lie at the intersection of health, technological innovation, and economic policy, plans to work with a gene therapy research group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University while applying to graduate programs.

He received aStamps Scholarshipto study the impact of economic recessions on population health outcomes, and was also a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar. His honors thesis in quantitative social science focused on the social determinants of health.

He worked as an analyst at ClearView Healthcare Partners, as machine learning project leader at the Dartmouth Health EDIT Group, and as a technician in the Dartmouth Health ophthalmology clinic. He was also vice president of Psi Upsilon fraternity, a Class of 2022 senator, a member of Dartmouth Emergency Services, and a participant in the Dartmouth Cancer Scholars Program.

The salutatorians of the Class of 2022 also assembled for a group photo on Saturday. From left are Ian Stiehl, Andrew White, Twisha Bhardwaj, Sophia Miller, Zachary LaPorte, and Matthew Gannon. Not pictured is Connor Morris. (Photo by Eli Burakian 00)

Salutatorians

Twisha BhardwajHershey, Pa.Neuroscience major; Government minor; Phi Beta Kappa

At Dartmouth, Bhardwaj has been able to explore her academic interests at the intersection of medicine, ethics, and law. She co-founded and served as president of Dartmouth Generations, an organization connecting undergraduates with older adults in the Upper Valley.

As a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar, Bhardwaj pursued research with Visiting Associate ProfessorRobert Santulliin the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She designed an independent project examining attitudes toward dementia patient participation in nontherapeutic research. Her findings contributed to theDartmouth Dementia Directive, an advance care document that helps individuals indicate their care preferences should they develop dementia.

Further, she completed research internships at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Penn Memory Center and received the Eichler Fellowship for Health Care Leaders through theDartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

Bhardwaj has also served as a student leader for Dartmouth Healths Aging Resource Center, a volunteer for the Patient Support Corps, a co-coordinator and executive committee member for the Nathan Smith Society, a study group leader for neuroscience and biology coursework, and a youth mentor through theDartmouth Center for Social Impact.

After graduation, Bhardwaj plans to work as a research assistant within the Harvard Aging Brain Study at the Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston while applying to medical school.

Matthew GannonBethesda, Md.Film and Media Studies major modified with Sociology; English minor; Phi Beta Kappa

A documentary filmmaker whose workshown at a dozen film festivalsseeks to destigmatize people experiencing homelessness and incarceration, Gannon has received a Marshall Scholarship to pursue masters degrees in sociology and film directing at the University of Manchester and the University of Edinburgh, respectively.

My multimedia advocacy has focused on repealing unjust prison policies, reforming police practices, and ending the criminalization of homelessness, he says.

He has interned with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and Street Sense Media and was named a John Robert Lewis Scholar by the Washington-based Faith and Politics Institute.

At Dartmouth he was a sociology research assistant and served as a teaching assistant in three film and media studies courses. He also received funding from the Leslie Center for the Humanities, the Ethics Institute, and Dartmouth Partners in Community Service. He earned nine citations for excellence in his coursework and received the Maurice H. Rapf Award in film studies and the Andrew G. Truxal Memorial Award in sociology.

Among his other Dartmouth activities, he was vice president of the Dartmouth Cords a cappella group, a member of the Dog Day Players improv group, and a volunteer for DOC first-year trips.

Zachary LaPorteBaltimore, Md.Mathematics major; Phi Beta Kappa

An aspiring physician, LaPorte is co-director of the Pre-Health Peer Mentor Corps and has enjoyed shadowing clinicians at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and conducting clinical research, including with an organ transplant group and with a sports medicine group at Massachusetts General Hospital.

As a math major, he found himself most interested in theoretical mathematics, especially combinatorics, which he says helped me think about problems in new and interesting ways.

He has taught fifth-grade math with the Center for Talented Youth and is a volunteer emergency medical technician for a Baltimore-area fire department.

Among his Dartmouth activities, he served as risk manager for his fraternity, Phi Delta Alpha, and as a peer tutor and learning fellow for math, chemistry, and biology classes. He was a ski instructor, a member of the climbing team that won the 2019 bouldering and speed regional championships, and enjoyed playing intramural sports, including as a hockey goalie.

After graduation, LaPorte will conduct sports orthopedics clinical research at Massachusetts General Hospital while applying to medical school.

Sophia MillerGrantham, N.H.Chemistry major; Phi Beta Kappa

A chemistry major with interests in Middle Eastern studies and womens, gender, and sexuality studies, Miller hasaccepted a Fulbright Scholarshipto live in Jordan next year, where she will study Arabic and pursue an independent project to help expand access to hands-on chemistry education for female refugees.

After completing a language study abroad program in Morocco in 2019, Miller received funding from the Dickey Center to pursue a research internship in Amman, Jordan, where she helped develop a survey of the lived experience of gender.

She worked as a research assistant in the Associate Professor of ChemistryKatherine Miricaslab as a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar, and completed work toward her senior honors thesis, Towards Arrays of Metal-Organic Frameworks for the Detection of Ovarian Cancer from Exhaled Air, in that same lab.

Among her other Dartmouth activities, Miller is co-president of the Sexual Assault Peer Alliance, a teaching assistant and learning fellow for chemistry, and a member of Movement Against Violence.

Connor MorrisDayton, OhioBiology major modified with Chemistry; Phi Beta Kappa

With plans to pursue a career in medicine, Morris was a battery science intern at Xerion Advanced Battery, a research intern at the Wright State Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and a telehealth intern at Premier Health.

He earned six citations for academic excellence in his economics, chemistry, and biological sciences classes.

Among his Dartmouth activities, he played on the rugby club team and played keyboard and sang lead vocals for the band The Dandelions.

Go here to see the original:
Portraits of the 2022 Valedictorians and Salutatorians - Dartmouth News

The following editorial originally appeared in The Seattle Times:

The never-ending stream of divisive rhetoric around immigration and the southern border has long hindered comprehensive reform, as both Democrats and Republicans have made political hay out of a broken system.

The latest flashpoint is the end of Title 42, a Trump-era border-control measure that upended the legal rights of asylum-seekers under the guise of protecting public health during the pandemic. The matter is tied up in the courts but some U.S. senators seek to extend the order until 2025.

That would be unconscionable as well as counterproductive. Instead of swiftly deporting migrants and interfering with the legal process meant to protect those fleeing persecution, Congress should focus on solutions that not only tackle the factors that draw people to cross the border illegally but also address the labor needs of the United States.

One of those common-sense options is the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. It is the kind of clear-eyed, practical legislation that deserves attention.

Proposed by U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the legislation passed the House in 2021 with bipartisan support but has so far stalled in the Senate.

The act would give some immigrant workers without legal permission to be in the U.S. a path to legal status and streamline the visa-application process to make it easier for foreign workers to come here legally. It would also require employers to verify a workers identity and employment authorization.

Most farmers would agree that the No. 1 issue they face is the lack of labor. Crops dont harvest themselves, Newhouse, the states former agriculture director, said in a news release. This legislation would secure a legal, and reliable, workforce for all of agriculture.

Along with the impact on farm work and the nations food supply, labor shortages are a contributing factor to widespread inflation, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has called for an increase in legal immigration to help solve the problem.

Chamber-proposed solutions include permanent legal protections for immigrants that now have Temporary Protected Status, agricultural workers and young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents, known as Dreamers.

This is not just big business looking for cheap labor. Polls have consistently shown that most Americans support legal immigration, yet elected representatives just as consistently have failed to enact comprehensive reform.

The political realities ensure that will not change anytime soon, but the Houses bipartisan support of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act shows that modest steps are possible.

This legislation is only a small piece of the larger immigration puzzle, but its positive impact on the lives of immigrants and the U.S. economy should push the Senate to ensure that it falls into place.

See more here:
Other Papers Say: Legal immigration reform is key - The Columbian

Sherry Robinson| All She Wrote

Rebecca Dow, Republican candidate for governor, wrote recently, There is a lot of rhetoric thrown around when it comes to securing our border…

Rhetoric is a nice word for whats being thrown around, and Dow did her own throwing recently in a newspaper op ed when she said the president and the governor opened our border, ended the previous administrations remain-in-Mexico policy and stopped building the wall.

The open-border accusation is often heard on the far right, but its not heard anywhere else. Thats a problem for Dow who would need votes from Democrats and Independents to win in November.

And its false, according to PolitiFact, a service of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit school for journalists.

I would argue that the open-border myth is insulting to our border personnel who are doing their jobs 24/7. The vast majority of enforcement encounters result in people being turned away at the border.

President Biden continued Title 42, a Trump policy of refusing entry to most border crossers to curb the spread of COVID-19, according to PolitiFact, although its exempting children who arrive alone, as well as some families. On Dec. 2, the administration re-implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols, known as Remain in Mexico,which requires asylum seekers without proper documentation to wait in Mexico for their immigration court date.

Which is why immigrant advocates are complaining about thousands of asylum seekers stuck in dangerous Mexican border towns.

The administration has tried to back away from Title 42, but court actions so far are preserving it as a tool for immigration control. Which, in an election year, is fine with some Democrats.

Dow and three fellow candidates want the governor to send National Guard troops to the border, as Texas and Arizona have done. Candidate Greg Zanetti has not. The retired brigadier general of the New Mexico Army National Guard told the Albuquerque Journal the others dont understand the complexities of deploying the Guard on the border.

The National Guard cant be used for immigration enforcement. So in Texas and Arizona, theyve been helping for a few years. Assigned to keep watch in Texas, they lacked night-vision goggles so they stared into the darkness until they fell asleep, according to widespread media reports. They also built fence and clerked. In Arizona they cleaned stables sheltering the Border Patrols horses and maintained the patrols vehicles.

In March 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called 10,000 troops for Operation Lone Star and authorized them to arrest anyone breaking Texas laws. Both the Army Times and Stars and Stripes reported that troops lacked equipment, didnt get paid for months, and had little to do. The state packed 36 troops into windowless trailers. Alcohol and drug abuse became so widespread that senior officers resorted to breathalyzers. The army saw upwards of 1,200 legal actions for everything from sexual assault and manslaughter to property loss.

State taxpayers pay the tab because their governors ordered the troops. In Texas the budget for border security spiraled from about $800 million in 2020 and 2021 to more than $2.9 billion in 2022 and 2023.

The cost alone should give us pause, but remember that National Guard members have jobs and lives. If a governor calls them to do busy work, someones kids are without a parent and someones employer and co-workers must fill the void.

So where are all these people supposedly streaming across the border?

The Associated Press reported that immigration tapered off during the Trump administration and nearly stopped for 18 months during the pandemic, exacerbating the current labor shortage. This isnt news to farmers and employers.

Title 42 is a finger in the dike, but its no solution. That would require our congresspersons to sit down, hear each other, hear the public, compromise, and produce new law, as we elected them to do.

The rest is here:
To debate immigration reform, let's start with the truth - Carlsbad Current Argus

Around 100,000 undocumented immigrants will graduate high school in 2022 without a shot at work permits, the first time in a decade that a majority of so-called Dreamers will not be eligible.

Most undocumented 2022 graduates have not been in the country long enough to be covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era policy that was the focus of attacks and litigation during the Trump administration. Immigrants covered by DACA are known as Dreamers.

DACA was put in place as a temporary stopgap in 2012, giving the right to work and study, and deferral from potential deportation, to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors before 2007.

According to a new report by FWD.us, a tech industry-linked immigration advocacy group, U.S. high schools this spring will grant diplomas to 100,000 young undocumented immigrants.

Only a quarter of 2022 undocumented graduates would be eligible for DACA, making it the first graduating class since the policys been in place to have a majority of post-DACA undocumented graduates.

But the federal government is only allowed to process DACA renewals because of a court ruling, meaning even Dreamers who arrived before 2007 and are technically eligible for DACA cannot sign onto the program.

As the DACA eligibility date fades into the past, upcoming high school classes will have a higher number of post-DACA graduates; more than 600,000 undocumented students are currently enrolled in K-12 schools in the United States, according to FWD.us data.

Of those 600,000, only about 21,000 are already enrolled in the program and potentially eligible for renewals, according to government data.

The post-DACA Dreamers face different challenges depending on their state of residence.

According to the study, around 43,000 Dreamers in the class of 2022 live in the 28 states that dont provide in-state tuition for undocumented students, meaning theyll be barred from working legally and will have to pay full tuition to attend state schools.

I am a part of the generation of Dreamers that have been left out of the DACA program because I arrived in the U.S after 2007. Graduating from high school as an undocumented student was extremely daunting and heartbreaking, said Karen Nuez Sifuentes, program and engagement coordinator at ConVivir Colorado, a leadership program for immigrant students.

I was accepted to the school of my dreams but was unable to attend because I did not qualify for financial aid due to my status, added Nuez.

While Nuez did graduate college at MCU Denver, she was unable to continue a career in science because she could not work at federally funded labs.

Nuezs experience is typical of Dreamers who lack DACA protections.

Barred from working or for the most part from adjusting their immigrant status, non-DACA Dreamers must seek out work in places that dont require work authorization or find ways to pay tuition in the hope that DACA protections will be extended in the future.

But DACA is buried under a pile of legal action stemming from the Trump administrations efforts to end the policy, and legislation on the matter is unlikely, at least in the short term.

The federal government is currently prohibited by a court ruling from extending DACA to new beneficiaries, and the entire program could be struck down by the courts.

Still, amid record low unemployment and a continued sense of public sympathy for Dreamers, advocates are pushing Congress to tackle the low hanging fruit in immigration, including DACA and backlogs for certain work visa holders and their families.

Last month, a bipartisan group led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) started immigration reform talks to gauge a path forward for a series of targeted House-passed immigration reform bills.

Continue reading here:
Around 100,000 Dreamers to graduate without shot at work permits - The Hill

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GONZALES, Calif. It looks like a century-old picture of farming in California: a few dozen Mexican men on their knees, plucking radishes from the ground, tying them into bundles. But the crews on Sabor Farms radish patch, about a mile south of the Salinas River, represent the cutting edge of change, a revolution in how America pulls food from the land.

For starters, the young men on their knees are working alongside technology unseen even 10 years ago. Crouched behind what looks like a tractor retrofitted with a packing plant, they place bunches of radishes on a conveyor belt within arms reach, which carries them through a cold wash and delivers them to be packed into crates and delivered for distribution in a refrigerated truck.

The other change is more subtle, but no less revolutionary. None of the workers are in the United States illegally.

Both of these transformations are driven by the same dynamic: the decline in the supply of young illegal immigrants from Mexico, the backbone of the work force picking Californias crops since the 1960s.

The new demographic reality has sent farmers scrambling to bring in more highly paid foreign workers on temporary guest-worker visas, experiment with automation wherever they can and even replace crops with less labor-intensive alternatives.

Back in the day, you had people galore, said Vanessa Quinlan, director of human resources at Sabor Farms. These days, not so much: Some 90 percent of Sabors harvest workers come from Mexico on temporary visas, said Jess Quinlan, the farms president and Ms. Quinlans husband. We needed to make sure we had bodies available when the crop is ready, he said.

For all the anxiety over the latest surge in immigration, Mexicans who constitute most of the unauthorized immigrants in the United States and most of the farmworkers in California are not coming in the numbers they once did.

There are a variety of reasons: The aging of Mexicos population slimmed the cohort of potential migrants. Mexicos relative stability after the financial crises of the 1980s and 1990s reduced the pressures for them to leave, while the collapse of the housing bubble in the United States slashed demand for their work north of the border. Stricter border enforcement by the United States, notably during the Trump administration, has further dented the flow.

The Mexican migration wave to the United States has now crested, the economists Gordon Hanson and Craig McIntosh wrote.

As a consequence, the total population of unauthorized immigrants in the United States peaked in 2007 and has declined slightly since then. California felt it first. From 2010 to 2018, the unauthorized immigrant population in the state declined by some 10 percent, to 2.6 million. And the dwindling flow sharply reduced the supply of young workers to till fields and harvest crops on the cheap.

The state reports that from 2010 to 2020, the average number of workers on California farms declined to 150,000 from 170,000. The number of undocumented immigrant workers declined even faster. The Labor Departments most recent National Agricultural Workers Survey reports that in 2017 and 2018, unauthorized immigrants accounted for only 36 percent of crop workers hired by California farms. That was down from 66 percent, according to the surveys performed 10 years earlier.

The immigrant work force has also aged. In 2017 and 2018, the average crop worker hired locally on a California farm was 43, according to the survey, eight years older than in the surveys performed from 2007 to 2009. The share of workers under the age of 25 dropped to 7 percent from a quarter.

Desperate to find an alternative, farms turned to a tool they had largely shunned for years: the H-2A visa, which allows them to import workers for a few months of the year.

The visa was created during the immigration reform of 1986 as a concession to farmers who complained that the legalization of millions of unauthorized immigrants would deprive them of their labor force, as newly legalized workers would seek better jobs outside agriculture.

But farmers found the H-2A process too expensive. Under the rules, they had to provide H-2A workers with housing, transportation to the fields and even meals. And they had to pay them the so-called adverse effect wage rate, calculated by the Agriculture Department to ensure they didnt undercut the wages of domestic workers.

May 27, 2022, 3:14 p.m. ET

It remained cheaper and easier for farmers to hire the younger immigrants who kept on coming illegally across the border. (Employers must demand documents proving workers eligibility to work, but these are fairly easy to fake.)

That is no longer the case. There are some 35,000 workers on H-2A visas across California, 14 times as many as in 2007. During the harvest they crowd the low-end motels dotting Californias farm towns. A 1,200-bed housing facility exclusive to H-2A workers just opened in Salinas. In King City, some 50 miles south, a former tomato processing shed was retrofitted to house them.

In the United States we have an aging and settled illegal work force, said Philip Martin, an expert on farm labor and migration at the University of California, Davis. The fresh blood are the H-2As.

Immigrant guest workers are unlikely to fill the labor hole on Americas farms, though. For starters, they are costlier than the largely unauthorized workers they are replacing. The adverse effect wage rate in California this year is $17.51, well above the $15 minimum wage that farmers must pay workers hired locally.

So farmers are also looking elsewhere. We are living on borrowed time, said Dave Puglia, president and chief executive of Western Growers, the lobby group for farmers in the West. I want half the produce harvest mechanized in 10 years. Theres no other solution.

Produce that is hardy or doesnt need to look pretty is largely harvested mechanically already, from processed tomatoes and wine grapes to mixed salad greens and tree nuts. Sabor Farms has been using machines to harvest salad mix for decades.

Processed food is mostly automated, said Walt Duflock, who runs Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology in Salinas, a point for tech entrepreneurs to meet farmers. Now the effort is on the fresh side.

Apples are being grown on trellises for easy harvesting. Scientists have developed genetically modified high rise broccoli with long stems to be harvested mechanically. Pruning and trimming of trees and vines is increasingly automated. Lasers have been brought into fields for weeding. Biodegradable plant tape packed with seeds and nutrients can now be germinated in nurseries and transplanted with enormous machines that just unspool the tape into the field.

A few rows down from the crew harvesting radish bunches at Sabor Farms patch, the Quinlans are running a fancy automatic radish harvester they bought from the Netherlands. Operated by three workers, it plucks individual radishes from the ground and spews them into crates in a truck driving by its side.

And yet automation has limits. Harvesting produce that cant be bruised or butchered by a robot remains a challenge. A survey by the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology found that about two-thirds of growers of specialty crops like fresh fruits, vegetables and nuts have invested in automation over the last three years. Still, they expect that only about 20 percent of the lettuce, apple and broccoli harvest and none of the strawberry harvest will be automated by 2025.

Some crops are unlikely to survive. Acreage devoted to crops like bell peppers, broccoli and fresh tomatoes is declining. And foreign suppliers are picking up much of the slack. Fresh and frozen fruit and vegetable imports almost doubled over the last five years, to $31 billion in 2021.

Consider asparagus, a particularly labor-intensive crop. Only 4,000 acres of it were harvested across the state in 2020, down from 37,000 two decades earlier. The state minimum wage of $15, added to the new requirement to pay overtime after 40 hours a week, is squeezing it further after growers in the Mexican state of Sinaloa where workers make some $330 a month increased the asparagus acreage almost threefold over 15 years, to 47,000 acres in 2020.

H-2A workers wont help fend off the cheaper Mexican asparagus. They are even more expensive than local workers, about half of whom are immigrants from earlier waves that gained legal status; about a third are undocumented. And capital is not rushing in to automate the crop.

There are no unicorns there, said Neill Callis, who manages the asparagus packing shed at the Turlock Fruit Company, which grows some 300 acres of asparagus in the San Joaquin Valley east of Salinas. You cant seduce a V.C. with the opportunity to solve a $2-per-carton problem for 50 million cartons, he said.

While Turlock has automated where it can, introducing a German machine to sort, trim and bunch spears in the packing shed, the harvest is still done by hand hunched workers walk up the rows stabbing at the spears with an 18-inch-long knife.

These days, Mr. Callis said, Turlock is hanging on to the asparagus crop mainly to ensure its labor supply. Providing jobs during the asparagus harvest from February to May helps the farm hang on to its regular workers 240 in the field and about 180 in the shed it co-owns with another farm for the critical summer harvest of 3,500 acres of melons.

Losing its source of cheap illegal immigrant workers will change California. Other employers heavily reliant on cheap labor like builders, landscapers, restaurants and hotels will have to adjust.

Paradoxically, the changes raking across Californias fields seem to threaten the undocumented local work force farmers once relied on. Ancelmo Zamudio from Chilapa, in Mexicos state of Guerrero, and Jos Luis Hernndez from Ejutla in Oaxaca crossed into the United States when they were barely in their teens, over 15 years ago. Now they live in Stockton, working mostly on the vineyards in Lodi and Napa.

They were building a life in the United States. They brought their wives with them; had children; hoped that they might be able to legalize their status somehow, perhaps through another shot at immigration reform like the one of 1986.

Things to them look decidedly cloudier. We used to prune the leaves on the vine with our hands, but they brought in the robots last year, Mr. Zamudio complained. They said it was because there were no people.

Mr. Hernndez grumbles about H-2A workers, who earn more even if they have less experience, and dont have to pay rent or support a family. He worries about rising rents pushed higher by new arrivals from the Bay Area. The rule compelling farmers to pay overtime after 40 hours of work per week is costing him money, he complains, because farmers slashed overtime and cut his workweek from six days to five.

He worries about the future. It scares me that they are coming with H-2As and also with robots, he said. Thats going to take us down.

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Illegal Immigration Is Down, Changing the Face of California Farms - The New York Times