Q&A with Immigration Attorney Anthony Rodriguez Yao
Helena McGinley, News Copy Editor, conducted an interview with guest speaker Anthony Rodriguez Yao on Oct. 10
Q: Why is Latino Heritage Month important to you?
A: The cool part about it is that it starts Sept. 15 and it goes to Oct. 15. And [something] that is significant to me [is] the fact that it is a lot of the countries’ independence sort of fell around that time. It's a good reminder that the United States is part of a larger continent. And there's a lot of culture… We all come here and find a home and we bring our culture with us. I think we enrich America's overall culture and I think an acknowledgement of that goes a long way.
Q: What are you going to be going over in the presentation?
A: They really wanted me to… touch on my background as a Latino immigrant and how that informed what I eventually chose as my career. So that's a little bit of what I'm going to get into about how being an immigrant because I was born in Mexico City, arriving here and to a country that was technically not mine. But the country adopted me and gave me so much… It gave me a great education, great public schools, much like this one. I went to a public college… And so I felt that when choosing my career, I needed to do something that would enrich the state of California and bring justice to the state of California. As you will see, my career has [changed] ... I've been an attorney since 2016, so it's been a while. I haven't had one job, I've had many different jobs. But there is a theme, and that's part of what I'm going to talk about… Not everyone here is going to go into law, but everyone here should have a theme on what their career is going to be. And the sooner you figure that out, the better.
Q: What do you hope the biggest takeaway is that people get from what you're talking about?
A: I think that there's a lot of chapters in the American story, and that even though we're not all the same, that America at its best is a collection of ideas. It's not necessarily that we all speak the same language, we all worship the same, we all think the same. But we all strive towards very, very lofty ideals that are interpreted by very flawed people. But if the only people interpreting and bringing about justice are all one culture, one race, one language, we leave a lot of people out.
