Dear members of the Berkeley community,
As many of you know, the undocumented student community here at Berkeley has been traumatized by both the malicious anti-immigrant rhetoric during the election campaign and,most importantly, the election outcome itself. To quote one of our undocumented students: ”Since the election, my world has been turned upside down in all aspects of life. I’m scared and worried my family won’t be here tomorrow. With the uncertainty, how can I be expected to focus on anything else?”
A group of us including faculty, staff and students has been meeting to determine how our community might best respond to this existential threat to the very existence of an important segment of UC Berkeley. These undocumented students, currently 478 in number, are in urgent need of augmented legal consultation, financial support and mental health support.
Many of my colleagues have asked what they might possibly do to support our undocumented students. There is one way in which all of us can help, namely by contributing to the “Undocumented Student Fund”; which has been established to support our undocumented community for both the near and long term. For those of you would like to contribute on-line the URL is:
https://give.berkeley.edu/egiving/index.cfm?fund=FU1208000
You can make a one-time gift, set up a pledge, or set up recurring giving. If you prefer to send a check, it should be made payable to the UC Berkeley Foundation with a notation for the Undocumented Student Fund (FU1208000) and can be sent to or dropped off at:
University of California Berkeley
University Development and Alumni Relations-- Gift Operations
2080 Addison Street #4200
Berkeley, CA 94720-4200
What level of donation is appropriate? - - whatever you can afford, of course. However, one of our colleagues has suggested the following as a guideline. We are told that the new administration intends to reduce the marginal tax rate from 39.5% to 35%. Many of us have pledged to contribute any consequent tax savings to social justice causes threatened by the new administration. We can think of no cause more worthy than that of our undocumented students. We hope that you share our view.
With warm regards,
Yours sincerely,
Bob Birgeneau
Silverman Professor of Physics, MSE and Public Policy