Lack of proper documentation, monetary and psychological costs of being detained, and geographic and social isolation are just some the problems facing unauthorized workers in the United States.

So said Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program (CFP), in a plenary session March 5 at the Africana Studies and Research Center that was part of the three-day conference, "Youth, Identities and Transnational Flows."

The conference, which had many sponsors including the Latin American Studies Program, Latino Studies Program and Cornell Farmworker Program, included a Visual Identities Project, dance and musical performances, scholarly panels, round-table discussions, and working groups, with a particular focus on community outreach and the role of scholarship in activism.

The CFP, noted Dudley, a professor of development sociology, sponsors workshops in which students and faculty team up with unauthorized workers to inform them of their rights in case they are detained. CFP also collaborates with the Legal Aid Society and Cornell Law School on their Upstate Immigration Project to assist people in assigning guardianship and power of attorney.

"[Farmworkers] have insufficient knowledge to navigate the legal system, but moreover, there are few attorneys who can support them in this case," she said.

Dudley stressed the importance of information in helping migrant farmworkers; her organization, she said, tries to address these "critical needs" through education, research and extension. Students in the Cornell Farmworker Program develop ongoing relationships with farmworkers to attend these needs.

Enrique Morones, a human rights activist and founder of Border Angels in 1986, who also spoke at the session, said that his organization has similar goals. The program also seeks to prevent the deaths of Mexicans illegally en route to the United States by stationing volunteers in high-risk areas of the desert and mountains. The volunteers assist immigrants who might otherwise be detained or become ill while traveling.

Morones said that California's Proposition 187 and Operation Gatekeeper in the early 1990s were two factors that led to an expansion of Border Angels. Proposition 187 sought to create a citizen-screening program to block illegal immigrants from access to public services. It was later ruled unconstitutional.

Operation Gatekeeper involved building a wall between the United States and the northwest corner of Mexico to keep immigrants out. Morones highlighted the irony of building the wall just a few years after Americans urged the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Morones relayed the old tale of the boy who was trying to save starfish stranded by low tide by throwing them back into the ocean. His father told him he could not possibly help all the starfish, to which the boy replied that it made a difference to at least one.

"That's why we voted for Barack Obama," Morones said. "That hope keeps us alive and keeps us moving forward."

He emphasized the "power of one" -- the role of individuals in sparking change in America, no matter how small.

"This country of laws has also had child labor, women couldn't vote, slavery: those were laws of the land," Morones said. "We need to change the laws, and that change begins with you."

Olivia Fecteau '11 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.