Touch of Nature Environmental Center recently issued the following announcement.
An Illinois lecturer received a Fulbright scholarship to contribute to a film called “Humanizing Deportation” after dating an illegal alien, according to a Tuesday report.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale English lecturer Mary Kate Varnau will spend six months in Mexico, interviewing deported illegal aliens for a film that will be featured on a site hosted by the University of California, Davis.
“They are fleeing violence and poverty,” Varnau said, describing crime cartels that extorted money from a Mexican woman and her family, who were trying to run a tortilla stand. “What’s happening at the border with people crossing illegally and people being held in immigration detention centers, sometimes as long as a year and a half, is real in the United States. There are so many facets to the situation, it’s very complicated. And there is no simple fix for immigration reform.”
The lecturer first became interested in the struggles of illegal aliens when she dated one as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. The man did not speak English and Varnau did not know what happened to him after he got into a car accident.
Varnau’s trip to Mexico will also be funded by the University of Texas – El Paso, as well as the Mexican Autonomous University of Juarez and the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana.
In addition to “Humanizing Deportation,” the lecturer will be working on “Coyote,” a novel depicting a war between Mexico and the United States in which the protagonist illegally transfers children from immigration detention centers to foster homes.
“The question is, how can we help each other when the problems are so big, seemingly insurmountable?” Varnau said. “My book is a fantasy – a ‘what if I could help in an immediate and tangible way’ story.”
The lecturer did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Original source can be found here.
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