Transcript

Johnathan Stein I'm Jonathan Stein and this is Talk Policy. Hi Jasmine, how are you?

Jasmine Jones I'm well thanks for asking Jonathan how are you.

Jonathan I'm good, I'm good. So for this interview, I spoke to a Goldman school student named Vlad Stoicescu Ghica. He's a loud, proud Daca recipient. He's undocumented, brought to the United States by his mom as a child and he's spent his life fighting for his place in this country.

Jasmine That seems super relevant right now especially with all the conversations around DACA.

Jonathan Yeah. He's lived the experience of an undocumented young person his entire life. He was warned that one experience with the police could tear him apart from his mom. His mom was an attorney and an aide in the Romanian parliament. And when they arrived here, all of those opportunities disappeared. She was a maid, she was a vendor on the Santa Monica Pier and so on. It's a powerful story. I think it'll feel familiar to a lot of our listeners who come from immigrant families.

Jasmine It sounds like a real scary kind of experience and it sounds like Vlad is living out his mom's hopes and dreams.

Jonathan Yeah I think that's right. He he has a different experience from a lot of folks who are DACA recipients. First of all, he's Romanian, I mean, of Romanian descent. And I think when people typically think of a DACA recipient, they don't think of someone who's of Romanian descent. We get into the demographics of the young undocumented population a little bit. And second, he was at the center of a bunch of student activism as an undergrad at UCLA to make the U.S. a more supportive place for undocumented students. Today, the UC is actually leading among campuses nationally in making their campuses a place where on documents students can thrive, and they were pushed in that leadership role by students.

Jasmine This is real in students like Vlad and many others, it takes real courage to fight for what you believe in. Epecially when doing so, it forces you to admit publicly that you're undocumented.

Jonathan Yeah it's dangerous. It's inspiring. His story is inspiring. I'm excited for you to hear this. Let's go to Vlad.

Thanks for joining us, Vlad

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Thank you for having me.

Johnathan So tell me a little bit about the Romania of your childhood was like growing up. was like.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica I saw a country that was getting back on its feet. I think that's maybe the best way to put it. I grew up as one of the very few children in my neighborhood, in my area that I knew of, that came from a single parent household.

Jonathan And what was your mom doing? How was her work?

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica My grandfather had been an attorney and then my mom kind of grew up and followed in his footsteps. She went to law school, she became an attorney and at that time she was working for the Romanian parliament as a legislative aide.

Jonathan Your mom came to the U.S. with the promise of work, right?

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Yeah. That's correct. So like I said, my my mom did have an education at the time and she was working for the government and in doing some of that work. And through that work, she did meet individuals from firms here in the United States who were, at the time,  seemed very impressed with her and who offered her an opportunity saying, "if you're ever thinking of moving, we have positions. We could use you, we could use your expertise and your knowledge." So, that was the offer and the promise that she should come work for them.

Spencer Yeah, and what became of that promise?

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Unfortunately what ultimately happened is that at first in 2001, she traveled to the US on her own in the hopes of beginning work with these companies, with one particular company, securing a work visa and being able to establish a bit of a life here. They let her on for several months based on her accounts I obviously wasn't there personally but to the point where she realized that there really wasn't this intention to keep her on permanently and you know they they hadn't gone through the proper channels to petition or file anything which was unfortunate. But given that we had family here and she was already present here she thought OK well maybe this company won't hire me but I can find something else. And she tried with another company and she went to work with them and that was a really interesting arrangement from the story that she told me because they would have people and kind of communal housing that was overseen by the employer and then they would go to work for that same employer. And he was also the person who was promising them the ability to petition for a visa and all these other things.

Jonathan The expectation still happens from immigrant communities all over the country today.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Absolutely, because as it turns out, that person never really applied or had any intention. He was just exploiting them and that was another bad situation that she thought, "I can't be here this isn't right I need to pull myself out of here.".

Jonathan And when did you come over?

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica So I came on a visitor's visa in 2002 and I started living with one of my aunts who was here.

Jonathan And when did you become undocumented, and when did you realize you were undocumented?

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Yeah. So like I said, my mom eventually left that job and I moved in together with her. We moved into an apartment in West L.A. and I think my visa was probably good for another six to eight months, which is typically the duration for most of these. And around 10 years old, it expired. My mom being very aware of what that meant at the time, was open and honest with me about it. And she told me, "look, this is the situation now. You need to be very careful, I'm still trying to figure things out. But if something happens, they can take you away from me and it'll kind of destroy our lives. So don't get into trouble, be careful around police, or anything like that, don't really tell anyone what your status is, or what's going on." So that was the first time I was really educated on it.

Jonathan And out of that situation you ended up going to UCLA, you got DACA to normalize your status somewhat. The Trump administration has recently said that they're going to rollback DACA. There was then supposedly an agreement between President Trump, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to preserve DACA in exchange for increased spending on immigration enforcement. The Trump administration later said that there was no such deal. How has your life changed in this current era, in particula? I mean since the Trumo election and since this new turbulence with DACA.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Yeah. So I'll lead by saying that my DACA is set to expire in December of 2018. So it's in that window where I couldn't renew quite, but I was fortunate enough to still have it for a small period of time. And I think, just in terms of personnel changes, it came at a time when I was attempting to do something new and to start this new program at Goldman as a incoming first year. And it's made it difficult when you're someone who wants to pursue a professional degree. To work in the public sector, to then all of a sudden your only route to that is now cut off because it's a lot more difficult to be able to enter into a nonprofit or a government job where there has to be a high level of accountability and personal responsibility and you don't have access to identification or documentation or anything like that. So I think it's definitely making me have to rethink future plans and career choices. And just on a personal level, it's a little bit of a blow, emotionally and psychologically, to have to receive that just as you're starting to make an effort and you feel like "OK my feet are finally set and I'm beginning what I've always wanted to do."

Jonathan In the past, when you at UCLA for example... I was part of the student leadership when I was at UC Berkeley and I saw so many students who were undocumented, or maybe the first in their family to go to college, or sort of pursuing their college education during what was a difficult period in their life for one reason or another. A lot of them found an outlet for that through activism. They're working to make their campus a better place and they're working to make the UC a better place. And one area where that seems so true, and I was experiencing this from a remove–I am a U.S. citizen and so I didn't experience any of this firsthand–but the undocumented students were such unbelievably effective advocates for themselves and pushed the UC system to become a more welcoming place for undocumented students. A place where actually undocumented students were given the room and the resources they needed to thrive. And that was because of student activism, because students pushed the UC to be leaders on undocumented student issues and on DACA. You were part of that activism when you were at UCLA. Talk about the way students led, but also talk about how it sort of it was maybe a catharsis for you to be able to sort of take action and be effective on an issue important to you.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Sure. And I think you definitely hit the nail on the head because it wasn't just the cathartic aspect of it but really it was the survival aspect of it that fueled the work which then became this very personalized issue that would motivate you in everything that you did. So when I came to UCLA in 2011, that was pre-DACA, pre- California Dream Act, pre-the appointment of Janet Napolitano as UC president, and it was a very different time period. I think there were some key allies in the University of California that were working hard to support students, but a lot of the work was student driven. All of the workshops on how to pursue higher education, on how to organize and fundraise, on how to advocate and share your stories. Everything was student driven at the time. And it was done by my fellow undergraduates, by maybe a couple of alumni and graduate students, and every week we would have a general body meeting, where there would be an opportunity to go speak at a high school and give a workshop or, "we are organizing a conference this month, come help us do planning," or, "oh there's going to be a rally or a protest that we're doing in a couple of weeks, come join the planning committee for that." It was constantly working on something in an effort to create resources for ourselves, or to share what we had learned with the community at large. So when the time came in 2013 that we saw Janet Napolitano enter in as president the UC system. I think students were a little outraged because a lot of us had put in so much work and so much of our selves and our time into changing the shape of the university so that it's receptive to undocumented students.

Jonathan And by way of context, Napolitano had been the head of DHS, under President Obama, and the architect of immigration policy that had led to hundreds of thousands of deportations, more deportations under President Obama than any previous president. Many many more under President Obama than any previous president, and a lot of U.S. students ,I think rightfully, saw Napolitano as responsible for that immigration policy.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Yeah, that's that's absolutely correct. And you know, students across all nine campuses decided, "well, this can't be right. We cannot be allowing this to happen without our input or our perspective, given everything that we've done up until this point." So they started organizing, and you started to see a lot of protests against the regents' decision to vote her in. And at the time, it kind of became a movement on two fronts. One was essentially calling for her removal or for a review of the entire process and the other was securing a meeting with her and with representation of the UC system to say, "look, we have a big issue with the way this happened, but you have an opportunity here to do things right and to build on all the work that we've laid the foundation for." And eventually, we did get that meeting. Undocumented students and the current student region at the time...There was a group of us, I want to say maybe 15 people from all the campuses combined, that met with her on her second day in office. The only other person she'd met with before us was Governor Jerry Brown. So it was very notable at the time. And we came to our offices in Oakland, we sat down and we presented a list of demands and calls to action on behalf of students. And those included the creation of an undocumented student resource center on all the campuses, the implementation of support funding in terms of financial aid for undocumented students, the creation of opportunities for work service partnerships with financial aid departments across all the campuses, because not everyone was necessarily DACA eligible at the time, and even this idea of a sanctuary campus, coming out in very boldly and clearly stating that the U.S. would protect students in case of the worst. And those are difficult conversations because there were people in that room, with her, that had their parents deported under her program. And then they were there to to negotiate and educate her. So it was very tense at the beginning, and full disclosure, I was on the Board of Regents as the student region when Napolitano was selected. So I had a hand in that process and it was my successor, Cynthia Flores, who was the student regent you mentioned who part of those meetings, helped lead along with you and others on making real change. The students were effective. Napolitano has done more for undocumented students than any previous UC president before her. The UC, under her leadership, is now suing the federal government in order to maintain DACA. The protection of undocumented students has become a systemwide priority. It is a real night and day difference today versus prior to 2013 and, in large part, I think that's due to student activism from leaders like yourselves who forced the UC to make this a priority.

Jonathan You talked earlier about how you're just beginning your professional life and losing DACA was such a blow at that time. At a moment like that, is there a way in which you see your opportunities at Goldman, to study, to deepen your knowledge and to become a new leader, in a new way, in a new field perhaps, as a repeat of your work at UCLA where you face this challenge and were able to work through it through activism and leadership.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Certainly. So when I first applied to Goldman, and even during my time at UCLA, I think immigration and issues that affect low income communities have always been a guiding beacon for me because I've had just very real-lived personal experiences struggling with that growing up and my own undocumented status. So, coming to the program here, one, it being the best program in the country for public policy. It being the number one program in the country, it was going to provide this opportunity for me to learn from a network with some of the most educated and skilled policy people in the country which, in and of itself is huge. I was going to be able to develop my personal skills and my ability to be a leader and an advocate in these fields in ways that I couldn't really find anywhere else. So that was the huge impetus to be here. And the other front is obviously when you get a degree from a place like a Goldman School of Public Policy, that you're then able to really walk into so many different offices and apply for a job. Places that have high levels of impact like the state government, like local governments, private firms that work closely with these affected populations that I mentioned earlier, a nonprofit firm–so, it was going to open a lot of doors for me. And I think in that respect, many of those doors would still stay open. But obviously, my personal challenges are something that I'm going to find that I'll have to find a work-around for. I still think that I would be in a much stronger position as somebody who walks out of here with a master's degree in public policy and even my degree at UCLA and these years of experience organizing and working towards solutions to these goals, than say somebody like my mother who, even though she came here with an education and had to start from essentially nothing, knew nobody and she just knew that she had to survive and take care of her child. So in that respect, I think it would still help me a lot. And it would put me in a position that many others who have had this experience of having to live as an undocumented person in the United States don't necessarily have the opportunity to be.

Jonathan We need more leaders and decision makers in our public policy fields who have lived the policy fields themselves, if you know what I mean. And so, I and the Goldman community wish you the best of luck with all of that. Vlad, thank you so much for being with us today.

Vlad Stoicescu Ghica Thank you so much for having me. I was happy to come on.

Jonathan Talk Policy to Me is a production of the UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans.

For show notes, visit us at talkpolicytome.org Music heard on today's episode is by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Talk policy to me's executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. The fabulous Alyssa John Perry is our producer and engineer. I'm Jonathan Stein with Jasmine Jones.