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Immigrants in the Time of Racial Unrest

Positively Filipino web magazine hosts an online conversation between activist and writer Jose Antonio Vargas and immigration lawyer Lourdes Tancinco on the challenges facing immigrants as the United States meets headwinds of heightened racial intolerance and the deadly COVID-19 global pandemic.

Vargas and Tancinco will discuss the prospects for DACA dreamers and other Trump immigration policies. Topics will include green cards issued abroad, working visas, and foreign students stranded by the virus. The discussion will be moderated by Rene Ciria-Cruz, the U.S. Bureau Chief of INQUIRER.net and an editor at Positively Filipino.

Save the date and register here. The convo is the latest in a series of panel discussions hosted by Positively Filipino to bring to the fore issues on "Racism and the Filipino-American." In the U.S., the talk will air on Monday, August 10, 6 p.m. U.S. PDT (8 p.m. U.S. CDT, 9 p.m. U.S. EDT). In the Philippines, the talk is scheduled for Tuesday August 11, 9 a.m.

Positively Filipino shares news articles, features, editorials, blogs and videos are for Filipinos who may be temporarily working abroad to support families back home or have set roots and reinvented lives in adopted countries the world over.  By chronicling the experience of the global Filipino in all its complexity, it keeps expatriates in touch with political, economic and cultural developments in the homeland.

About the Panelists

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the non-profit media and culture organization Define American, named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company. His best-selling memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published by HarperCollins in 2018. Most recently, he co-produced Heidi Schreck’s acclaimed Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me, which was nominated for two 2019 Tony awards, including “Best Play.”

In 2011, the New York Times Magazine published a groundbreaking essay he wrote in which he revealed and chronicled his life in America as an undocumented immigrant. A year later, he appeared on the cover of TIME magazine worldwide with fellow undocumented immigrants as part of a follow-up cover story he wrote. He then produced and directed Documented, an autobiographical documentary feature film that aired on CNN and received a 2015 NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Documentary. Also in 2015, MTV aired White People, an Emmy-nominated television special he produced and directed on what it means to be young and white in a demographically-changing America.

Lourdes Santos Tancinco is the principal at Tancinco Law Offices, APC, a full-service law firm providing expertise in the field of immigration matters. Ms. Tancinco was admitted to the California State Bar in 1993; she is also admitted to practice in the United States District Court, Northern District of California, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She was Congressional Liaison for AILA Northern California Chapter in 2003 and was a panelist on the Great Moments in Immigration History in 2002 on the issue of Filipino World War II Veterans. She is an active member of the State Bar of California, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bar Association and the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California.

She is the Chair and founding member of the San Francisco Veterans Equity Center, a not-for-profit advocacy organization established to provide a clearinghouse for Filipino World War II veterans issues. From1994 up to the present she is the supervising attorney for the Fil-Am Veterans Legal Clinic where she provides pro bono services to elderly seniors mostly war veterans in San Francisco. Ms. Tancinco also serves in various capacities in other community based organizations including the Filipino American Development Foundation, the Bayanihan Community Center, the Alexis Apartments of St. Patrick’s Parish in San Francisco, and the National Network for Veterans Equity. In recognition of her achievements, Ms. Tancinco has received numerous awards including the Award of Excellence from the Minority Bar Coalition, the Tessie Paredes Civil Rights Award from Filipinos for Affirmative Action (FAA), Outstanding Alumna Award from the University of the Philippines Alumni Association of San Francisco, and the Jose Rizal Social Justice Award presented by the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California.

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