Photograph by Lydialyle Gibson
“I’m really here today, not just as the president of Harvard, but also as the child of immigrants,” Lawrence Bacow said Friday, joining nearly a dozen other speakers—including U.S. senators Ed Markey (Massachusetts) and Angus King (Maine), and Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley—taking part in a New England-focused virtual summit to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. Several hundred listeners logged on to hear testimony from elected officials, businesspeople, activists, DACA recipients, and essential workers. Nirva Sajous, an undocumented immigrant from Haiti with temporary protected status who is a health-care worker at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at an assisted-living senior center, talked about the extra stress and insecurity that the pandemic has added to her life. Javier Juarez, a DACA recipient, spoke about his journey from Lima, Peru, to college at Brown University and a job at an advocacy organization for immigrants and refugees.