ICE agents arrested Ann Lawani, a nurse and professor who has lived in Lodi for the last 13 years, during a “targeted enforcement operation” in September
I have no idea how it is possible for somebody who’s in the country illegally and has had a final order of removal since the Obama administration to keep working as a professor. When I was hired at my university, I was told very directly by the university’s immigration office that it was up to me to find a lawyer, pay the lawyer, and get a green card on time if I wanted to continue in my employment after the NAFTA visa that the university had gotten for me ran out.
“Don’t worry about paperwork and this expensive, complicated legal process because you can always work for us as an illegal,” was never suggested. Forget professorships. We don’t even start the paperwork for hiring for the smallest, most insignificant positions until people provide the paperwork attesting to their legal status in the country. My department pays for obligatory background checks for every employee that we attempt to hire. We couldn’t offer such a contract even if we really wanted to, because there is no pathway in the system to do that. If we don’t upload the files containing the valid visa or a green card, we can’t click “Send.”
We once had a person who did try to mislead us about their immigration status, and this is exactly what happened: no paperwork, no clicking on “send.”
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