August 16, 2007
Rising senior has unique perspective on New Haven immigrant issues
By Claire Gould
Heather Munro ´08 describes the day
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
agents arrested 31 people in a raid targeting
illegal immigrants as a "crazy day" in the New
Haven Legal Assistance Association where she
interned this summer.
"Driving to work, people saw vans from
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
all over the city. ICE knocked down doors and
took parents away from children," she said.
"We represent a lot of undocumented
immigrants and we didn´t know if any of our
clients had been taken or not."
Munro, a cultural anthropology major and
Holleran Center for Community Action and
Public Policy (PICA) scholar, was one of many
people in New Haven who demonstrated in
protest of the arrests and in support of a new
program passed by the city that would provide
all residents with a municipal identification
card, regardless of immigration status. The
cards grant the city´s sizable undocumented
population the rights to open bank accounts and
get married, among other social and legal
privileges that they can´t obtain without valid
identification.
Munro´s support for the measure comes not
only from working with immigrants on a daily
basis in her internship, but also from personal
experience. Although she was raised in the
predominately white suburban town of Bethany,
Conn., Munro participated in Project Choice, an
integration program that allowed her to spend
two years attending Wilbur Cross High School
in New Haven, which is less than eight percent
white. There, she saw first-hand the challenges
that immigrants face on a daily basis.
"One of my closest friends at Cross was an
undocumented immigrant," she said. "Her life
was doubly or triply as complicated as mine."
The PICA program also helped Munro
developed her personal views on the issues that
affect immigrants and taught her about the laws
and policies behind immigration. She says the
program provided her with skills like public
speaking, research, and conflict resolution,
which are necessary to successfully assist
immigrants in meaningful ways through law and
special programs.
At the Legal Assistance Association, which
creates resource programs for immigrants and
their families, Munro, who speaks French,
Mandarin Chinese, some German and some
Moroccan Arabic, writes and translates
brochures into immigrants´ native languages to
help them better understand the resources
available to them. These brochures cover
diverse topics such as how to find English tutors
and how to cope with issues like bullying. She
also works on immigration cases.
After graduation, Munro hopes to work for a
non-governmental organization and attend
graduate school. This fall she will be House
Fellow of Knowlton, Connecticut College´s
international house, where her interests in
foreign cultures, travel, languages and
immigration will "mutually nurture each other."