On Thursday and Friday, February 16–17, several US business locations closed to recognize the nation’s first “Day Without Immigrants,” and several classrooms emptied, as students walked out to join the protests, the New York Times reports.
Other students wanted to join but didn’t, we learn from Francisco Acuna, a student reporter for Sahuaro High School in Tucson, Arizona.
“I wanted to skip school to join in the protest, but my parents wouldn’t let me,” he quoted one student as saying in The Paper Cut. “The school felt extremely empty that day. I would say a good third to a fourth of the students were absent.”
- Effect of immigration on the US economy, from the Wharton Business School
Maybe a third to a fourth of students in Phoenix skipped school, according to reports in The Arizona Republic, in order to demonstrate the importance of immigrants to society, even as the Trump administration pursues changes to immigration enforcement and a travel ban.
16 students showed up out of 32 students #DayWithoutImmigrants pic.twitter.com/9ZOdfv1NgV
— Ivette Godinez (@iggodinez15) February 16, 2017
Ms Godinez, a senior at Mesa High School, tweeted a video of what went on in one fairly empty classroom on the Day of Immigrants.
“We are one world and we are borderless. … And for those that don’t know that, you do now,” the Baltimore Sun quoted Maria Gabriela Aldana Enriquez as saying during a Day Without Immigrants march in one Baltimore neighborhood.
