KTEM Interviews Jose Manuel Santoyo, Immigration Activist

Outside of the office-holding political engine, many young activists are adding their voices to the immigration debate. Called “dreamers” after the DREAM Act, many of these young adults and students have lived in the United States since they were in elementary school but are still waiting to be granted legal status.

KTEM interviewed Jose Manuel Santoyo, an honor student and undocumented activist, who works with the Texas Organizing Project, an organization working to empower low-income neighborhoods, about his take on the current immigration climate.

KTEM: What’s wrong with the current immigration system?

Santoyo: Private corporations lobby Congress to pass legislation that will fill up for-profit detention centers and increase border militarization. Turning the border into a war zone without a war. Under President Obama’s administration over 2 million families have been separated, over 5000 US citizen children in foster care, and 34,000 immigrants are held in detention centers across the U.S. every day. It cost tax payers on average about $23,000 dollars to deport 1 individual. We want the government to invest in education not private prisons.

KTEM: How would you like to see immigration reform developed in the next year?

Santoyo: I see Barton’s bill getting bipartisan support. The Democrats have to support it to win elections. The Republicans have to have a more moderate approach to immigration if they want to win the Presidency in 2016 and take back the senate in 2014.

KTEM: Why can’t undocumented immigrants “just go home”?

Santoyo: The U.S. is home, especially for dream kids. A parent’s action of crossing a border is a civic offence, same as getting a parking ticket. Not a misdemeanor or felony, or as Jeb Bush said it “an act of love" to give their children a better future.

KTEM: Why should the U.S. be open to immigration reform?

Santoyo: The U.S was founded on people who came for a better life, whether the border was the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean, a river, or a desert, everyone was once an immigrant that was seeking a better life. An estimated 2 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants came from overseas.

KTEM: What is your personal interest in immigration reform?

Santoyo: My family came in the country in 2001. We applied for residency and joined a hypothetical line of people that have done the same. The line isn’t moving. In 2012, my siblings and I were protected under DACA, but my mother is still undocumented. I want to be a citizen of the country that I grew up in and so does my family.

KTEM: What are Republicans and Democrats in Texas doing to work for change?

Santoyo: Joe Barton, our Rep will introduce a law next month. We will push for it. What are Democrats in Texas doing? Unfortunately, Democrats are using immigration as an issue to obtain the Latino vote and win elections. They are politicizing an issue.

KTEM: What is being done at a national level?

Santoyo: Nationally, we lobby congress regularly, we host actions, there is a group currently on hunger strike in front of the White House to pressure the president to stop deportations. After immigration reform died last year, we turned our attention on the president again and launched "Obama deports parents" campaign. Very similar to the 2012 "Obama deports DREAMers" campaign which won deferred action for childhood arrivals.

KTEM: Is it still feasible to expect a path to citizenship?

Santoyo: For dreamers, yes. If a "Dream act" bill were to pass, it would grant LPR status for Dreamers with the possibility of becoming Citizens after 5 years, which has been the established process for everyone that becomes a LPR. But for parents, if any type of legalization happens, it would not grant them a pathway to citizenship.