What is the ODA Visa Justice Program?
Otros Dreams en Acción (ODA) is a grassroots organization by and for people that have been affected by the experiences of deportation and forced return in México. ODA looks to focus on translocal spaces for mobility justice and dignified return through radical creativity, mutual support and collective care.
In the process of soliciting a nonimmigrant (B1/B2) visa, the people who have been deported or forced to return are disproportionately affected. These processes criminalize our previous experiences residing undocumented in the United States and our right to have family ties and communities there.
Visa Justice is a collective action in ODA that since 2016 has accompanied our deported and forcibly returned community in the fight for the right to mobility by obtaining nonimmigrant (B1/B2) visas. In this way, we make visible and denounce the criminalization based on racial profiling that our community faces when trying to access their right to mobility.
This year, those of us who obtained a visa through the Visa Justice Program will travel to the US with an advocacy campaign to position our demand for fair mobility for our deported and forcibly returned community.
To move is to occupy spaces. When we occupy spaces, we gain visibility, we connect the microphone.
At Visa Justice 2023 we demand:
PEOPLE need mobility!
This year, Visa Justice’s focus is on community-led narratives, our artistic approaches and how through cultural power and the knowledge that comes from the community that lacks mobility, we are demanding for fair freedom of movement for the deported and returned population. Breaking away from the limitations of immobility can be a first step to liberating both physically and emotionally.
For this we have two complementary demands for the U.S. Department of State that we will send through a memorandum:
Carry out the necessary guidelines and reforms to establish that having lived in the US and having family networks there is NOT a reason in itself to deny a nonimmigrant visa.
Carry out the necessary guidelines and reforms to encourage consular officials to positively weigh an individual’s family network in the United States & any inability for family to otherwise reunite as a factor in deciding whether to recommend a waiver of any applicable ground of inadmissibility.
We ask you politicians, decision makers, academics, artists and community there in the United States:
Our stories cross.
Our bodies, when?
Visa justice now!
The deported/returned community must be part of the conversation about mobility justice both in Mexico and the US, this is a translocal struggle.
Here’s how you can help:
Social Media
Join our campaign launch!
We need your support to amplify our demands and reach the right audiences in the U.S. On Monday, November 27 at 3 pm, we will share our official Visa Justice video on all our social media platforms. And we want to ask you to support us in sharing it on your networks as well.
Here’s a caption that you can use and modify.
You can also use the campaign profile and cover photo.
Help us send our demands
Use your social networks as a tool to share our demands. Help us amplify our voice!
Here is the Social Media Kit with messages, images, and tags that you can share on the social media platforms of your collective, organization, etc. Please do not forget to tag us! We are on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Public intervention
Our stories, experiences and our voices exist in the neighborhoods, on the streets both here and there! We will make our demands visible in the public space as well. This is a translocal action, here we leave you some stickers and postcards, you can download them, print them and support us in amplifying our narratives in your spaces.
Visa Justice Public Activities Itinerary
Are you in Washington DC or NYC? Join us! We will have forums, round tables, screenings of the documentary El Digno Retorno, the staging of Pocho Sonnet, an exhibition, among other activities where we will position our narratives for fair mobility. Be part of these conversations, download the itinerary and flyers.
