Hi! My name is Elisabeth Burns, and I am currently a second year student at the Ohio State University majoring in Comparative Studies with a specialization in Comparative Cultural Studies and minors in Spanish and Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies. I first met Dr. Borland, one of the co-coordinators of this amazing field school, my first semester here at the university in my Honors Folklore class, and when she came to talk to my class last semester about not only her career but the opportunity she was offering students to get more exposure to border issues and the way Ohio plays a part in these issues, I knew immediately I needed to to be part of it.

The first time that the process of immigration sort of hit home for me is when I first heard of some transnational adoptees being deported because of errors in their citizenship papers that were made by their adoptive parents or the agencies that their parents had worked with. For the United States government to ignore the life that people had built here and the fact that many of the transnational adoptees being deported had grown up and only ever know the United States made me, as a transnational adoptee who has never once worried about my naturalized US citizenship, scared because of how easy it was for these people's lives to be irrevocably damaged. And although I stay up to date with current events as much as I can and talk about things such as the corruption in the immigration system, racism, and other systems of oppression that can make themselves seen in the United States, for some reason before this moment issues of immigration felt detached from me. I had felt frustrated and defeated by the atrocities ICE had been committing and the horrors people were experiencing near our Southern Border, but because of the media only focusing on the ways in which states like Texas and California play a part in the issue of the border I had never really felt as though they were affecting large communities here in Ohio. So while I feel as though I had base knowledge about immigration, the corruption within the system of immigration, the treatment of undocumented immigrants and the actions of ICE, and how immigration was being used as a hot topic, political weapon, I didn't know close to enough about the issue and how Ohio plays a part in immigration before going through this field school.

This field school has given me so much information that I never had before about the process of immigration in the United States and the corruption that doesn't get covered by the news outlets, but it has also given me the opportunity to hear from and speak to so many amazing people from non profit directors to upstanding community leaders trying to make a positive impact on others to asylum seekers to immigrants to undocumented individuals and each of them has their own story and has been able to give me new perspectives on immigration. I've been able to see and talk to members of the strong immigrant communities here in Ohio that I hadn't known about before these trips and I've gotten to see such vulnerability displayed by these people who are willing to share their stories in hopes of making a difference, that I want to relay their stories to others and be the voice for those who felt as though they didn't have one, so that together we can all enact the change that needs to happen within the US immigration system.

And I feel as though it's important to note that while some of the people we talked to feel invisible and have been been victims of circumstances either in their home country that made them turn to the United States or victims of the cruelties of not only the US immigration system but the racial realities here in the US, they are not only victims. It becomes easy to fall into the trap of advocating for people that we see only as victims without ever having spoken to those that we fight for or knowing the full extent of their experiences and this field school gave me the opportunity to see how even I had fallen into this trap of only seeing victims and using pity as an approach rather than empathy and understanding when talking about why change needs to happen. And the communities that we saw amplified the point that they aren't just victims as they were ones that come together, become support systems for one another, and they're made up of just people. People who treasure the community they've been able to build so it's important to see them as community members and as people to not invalidate what they worked towards and to acknowledge what they have and risk everyday by going to work or just existing here in the United States.

I would also like to acknowledge the privilege that I have in never having to worry about my status, the status of my community members, and having been part of a middle-class White family in Ohio. Not only that but my privilege as a college student who had the opportunity provided for me to meet with so many people because there are many who don't have the same opportunities as I do to go to school or have the resources that I do in order to better my activism and grow my wealth of knowledge. It is my hope that through making the information that Allison and I took in during the trip accessible through this website that others can become more aware of what's happening both within Ohio and on a larger scale of the United States and even globally and that with this information they can inform others and start making a change in their own ways. I strongly believe that through educating others not just about the process of immigration but the human experiences of those that we spoke to can lead to a collective change in both how we, as a collective whole approach immigration, and in the immigration system itself as we work together to make a change. I also hope that people will now know where to reach out and where they can focus their efforts in immigration by us being able to talk about the several efforts of several non-profits and community organizations that are helping immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented individuals here in Ohio.

Lastly I would just like to thank Dr. Katherine Borland and Dr. Stephanie Aubry for organizing this whole trip for us and continuing their work in activism surrounding the border by planning to hold this class again in the future and making efforts even outside of this course to educating others about the border. I would like to thank the people who took the time to speak to us about either the work that they are doing, their experiences, or both for doing that and for doing work to make a positive change in Ohio.