By Journalist Rose DeWeese (OSU)
The “Becoming American” Senate Bill OU 006 presented by representative Garcia seeks to provide a new subdivision of the public defender’s office to legally advise immigrants who have paid taxes via ID number. Senator Garcia immigrated to America herself six years ago. She believes in the American dream and believes everyone deserves representation.
When asked if she expected to receive as much support for the bill as she did she responded,
“I did not. Since it was an immigration bill, I was really not expecting the Senate to support it as much as they did. I thought they were gonna be like oh my gosh undocumented immigrants it’s not happening. This, no.”
“So when I received so much support from the Senate I was really shocked because it made me believe that maybe even though we are in a State that is so republican the youth it’s like they understand the issue and they want to help others. It’s not so much about partisan lines.”
When asked what made her decide that creating a new subdivision of the public defender’s office was the solution to easing the naturalization process Garicia said, “Okay so this was quite a difficult thing to come up with because I wanted to help. It’s like maybe they are not representing the clients in court but they are giving that advice so the best way to have something already built off lawyers that understand the law, that was the first step and I thought like well most people in removal proceedings they have committed felonies and crimes so they will like be in the public defender’s office.”
“So I was like why don’t we create a subsection in the civil matters addition that will talk about immigration. So that was how that idea came up. It was not originally it was going to create like a whole different like thing and then after running it with their OU delegation they were like but why don’t you do this and I was like oh my gosh! I said okay,” (Garcia) Garcia’s “Becoming American” OU Bill 006 passed in both the senate and the house.