“We will be unwavering in our fight,” he says. Students like Mora, he adds, give him the courage to keep fighting every day So says he and his team at the Undocumented Student Program will continue to be resolute in their belief and support of students, no matter the cost.
STORIES OF FOCUSED UNDISTRACTED INDIVIUALS TRIAL
Meanwhile, Mora awaits a trial before an immigration judge in San Francisco, scheduled for March, and continues to work toward securing legal citizenship by the time he graduates in 2019. He has decided to pursue a career as an immigration judge, with the goal of reforming immigration policy to help undocumented immigrants secure legal status in the U.S.
We will be unwavering in our fight… and keep moving forward with love over fear.Īnd he won’t stop there. “Immigration isn’t just an immigrant issue it’s a human issue.”
“Our students need other people to step up and to really push for immigration reform that upholds their dignity, their sense of being human and their sense of community,” Says So. But he adds, in today’s political climate, resilience isn’t enough. Undocumented immigrants like Mora, So says, learn from an early age that they have to find a kind of inner resilience to navigate through challenges of being on the outer margins of society. He seems comfortable with who he is and has the air of a leader, someone who will stay true to himself no matter the hardship. He seems undistracted, focused on the moment and conversation he’s having. His gait is unhurried and his smile is wide. Meng So, the director of the Undocumented Student Program, which serves the campus’s nearly 500 undocumented students, describes Mora as “a bottle of optimism and positive energy mixed with Red Bull.”Īt 20 years old, Mora has an easy way about him. It’s something that has inspired him to become an outspoken advocate for the undocumented community at UC Berkeley and across the nation.
STORIES OF FOCUSED UNDISTRACTED INDIVIUALS HOW TO
Mora says his mother, a doctor and a missionary, taught him how to express himself in a way that encourages people to listen - not with anger, but with a kind of peaceful strength. So she got two six-month visas and they moved to California, first to Los Angeles, then settling in San Diego. She also had cancer and knew she could get better treatment in the U.S. She wanted her only son to be able to grow up and pursue an education without the daily threat of violence. Meng So (left), director of the Undocumented Student Program on campus, describes Mora as “a bottle of optimism and positive energy mixed with Red Bull.” (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)Īfter Mora was robbed at gunpoint a second time, when he was 10, his mother decided it was time to leave Ecuador. Mora believes it’s his responsibility to help people understand that immigration isn’t going away - our country was built, and continues to function, because of immigrants.
We’re just humans, like Americans, trying to achieve a better life. “My detainment has motivated me in a way to get my message out there - that this is what immigration really looks like. “I believe everything happens for a reason,” he says. 17 with the help of Berkeley’s Undocumented Student Program and an outpouring of support from campus advocacy groups and top state leaders.īack on campus, Mora says that despite all of the anti-immigration rhetoric that continues to intensify with the Trump administration and the controversy that has surrounded his detainment and release, he feels stronger and more focused than ever. We all have dreams.īeing able to remain calm in a crisis, says Mora, now a third-year political science major at UC Berkeley, is what helped him get through nearly three weeks of detention by U.S.
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