By Guillermo Camarillo, Communications Intern, Stanford in Government Program Recipient

To honor DACA’s fifth anniversary, the ACLU of Illinois is launching a storytelling project featuring DACA recipients. We hope that by telling these stories, we give agency to more people to tell their own story and challenge the harmful rhetoric coming from the Trump Administration. Here is one story: 

DIANA

After college, I want to attend law school. I wanted to practice immigration law, but it turns out that immigration defense doesn’t pay that well. Now I am trying to do some type of corporate law, but still plan to do pro-bono work. Right now, there is a big disfranchisement within the immigrant community, not just because of the Trump administration but also because of a bunch of lawyers that have taken advantage of this situation and charge enormous fees to immigrants fearing they might be targeted for deportation. I remember looking into DACA and talking with lawyers - they were going to charge me $2,000 just to fill out the forms. So the immigrant community does not necessarily feel trust in many lawyers. 

A significant reason I want to go to law school is to be able to change some of our country’s immigration laws. When a lot of people hear about immigration and DACA students, they ask “why don’t you just leave and come back legally?” They don’t understand the long process that goes with coming here. They don’t understand there’s a cap on the number of visas they issue every year. They don’t understand that certain things that go into the process itself that can take up anywhere between 3 to 10 years—all just to have documentation to come here or remain here legally.

When some people hear this, they say, “Well, that is the law.” Well luckily, we can change the law. To change people’s views on immigration, we have to change the immigration laws in the first place.

This letter originally appeared in the Rockford Register Star on August 10, 2017.

We are disappointed by a recent decision of the U.S. District Court that blocks some of the critical patient protections the General Assembly recently incorporated into the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. The amendment at issue ensures that when patients in Illinois go to their health care providers, they are given all of the information they need to make the best decisions for their own care, regardless of their provider’s religious beliefs.

We were the lead proponents in changing a decades-old statute that unfairly allowed health care providers to withhold care and even information from their patients if the health care provider objected on religious grounds. The law shielded providers from the legal consequences of their actions and need to be changed in the interest of patient safety and care.

Sadly, court challenges to the recent amendment mischaracterize its intent and application. The amendment is not about abortion — it is about the basic ethical obligations that doctors owe their patients. It is about protecting patients and ensuring they get information consistent with the standard of care that we all expect when we visit a doctor or a health care provider. The court’s decision blocking these critical patient protections brings religion into the exam room and leaves patients in the dark.

This is dangerous. There’s a reason that no major health care provider or organization opposed the amendment when it was before the General Assembly. We feel confident that as this litigation proceeds, the courts will see the importance of protecting Illinois patients and uphold the new law.

— Lorie Chaiten, director of the Women’s and Reproductive Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois