Fighting Anti-immigrant, Anti-Family and Anti-community Polity and Policies

With the federal government turning away from building communities toward disrupting communities, families, and focusing on detaining and deporting immigrants whether or not they have long histories of contributing to this country, WKF, like others, has been forced to revisit its immigrant rights focus. While our priorities have not changed, we have strengthened our focus on immigrant voice, defending the rights of oppressed and minority individuals, and reinforcing access to US social, economic and occupational opportunities. We have extended our funding to include modest support for legal support and help to unaccompanied Central American minors and their families for integrating youth into community life. We continue to support the crucial work of the National Immigration Law Center and the Immigrant Legal Sources Center at the national level and in local communities. We will continue to support efforts to oppose malicious and dysfunctional administration actions seeking to eliminate due legal process for immigrants such as expanded use of expedited removal, illegal detentions of DACA recipients, and expanded “collateral arrests” of long-time settled immigrants.

The Marathon of Ongoing Efforts to Integrate Immigrants who Lack Legal Status into U.S. Life

Immigrants bring to the U.S. new riches in the form of cultural knowledge, enthusiasm, novel insights, creativity, and know-how in drawing on social capital to collectively better community life.

Integrating immigrants into community life is crucial for the well-being of American society. Exclusion of undocumented immigrants from access to educational opportunities, access to affordable health services, and participation in civic life, compromises America's alleged commitment to democracy and jeopardizes our collective well-being as part of an 21st century global society and economy.

We are working on practical strategies to move forward toward social, economic, and political equity for all and focusing, first and foremost, on the well-being of undocumented immigrants who are systematically excluded. In the increasingly hostile ramp-up of Trump administration efforts to detain, deport, demean, and disadvantage immigrants, we support community efforts to defend immigrants’ rights and acknowledge their contributions and rights as neighbors and community members.

IMMIGRATION POLICY REFORM - It is now 30 years since the 1986 passage of IRCA provided an opportunity for 2.7 million immigrants living and working in the U.S. to move forward with their lives. But since then there has been no way, even for long-time settled immigrants lacking legal status to gain an equal footing, or for them and their families to participate fully in the life of their communities. President Obama committed his administration to work vigorously to pass immigration reform legislation but his efforts failed. His administration’s alternatives have had mixed success. DACA has now provided more than 800,000 immigrant youth and young adults with freedom from deportation but efforts to provide relief to 4 million undocumented immigrant parents were blocked; and now the 45th president is doing all he can to reverse any gains made. We believe it’s important to hold fast to the dream of comprehensive legalization for the millions of immigrants in our communities who still lack legal status.

In light of the troubled political landscape in Congress, states and municipalities have begun a range of promising initiatives to do what they can to provide undocumented youth with access to college education and to integrate all immigrants into community life. However, the Federal attitude and policies are intrusive; and with deportations and negative narrative increasing, we have to see what we can do to reinforce a positive rule of law and create space.

Immigration reform legislation needs to be created and passed which provides currently undocumented immigrants legal status and a pathway to citizenship, so they can fulfill their dreams and so the United States can fully benefit from their skills and energy. This may not happen for years, but to achieve the goal we know it’s crucial to keep on pushing forward.

FOLLOWING THROUGH ON POLICY REFORM - We have carefully followed the dedicated efforts by immigration reform advocates over the years and have now collaborated for 7 years in support of a wide range of immigrant-oriented service programs and policy research. We believe our most valuable contribution in the next several years will be to support (and advocate for):

• A workable practical framework for immigrants to actually secure legal status and citizenship
• Strategic action to assure that the promised "pathway to citizenship" is one which assures that immigrants have a fair chance to affect community decision-making and shape civic life.
• Fostering the community collaboration between public institutions such as schools, municipal and county government, and grassroots community organizations that will be required to assure immigrants equitable access to social programs and equitable representation in civic life.

IMPROVE CENSUS COUNT OF IMMIGRANTS AND OTHERS – A key element of immigrant inclusion is for the communities they live in to receive adequate funding for health, education, food security, and housing, community development, and other social programs. Overcoming more than half a century of systematic differential undercount of minorities and immigrants in Census 2020 is a practical priority We are working energetically to implement strategies so communities with dense concentrations of immigrants in low-income neighborhoods will receive their fair share of funding. and so equal community voice. We are dismayed by the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress minority voters’ rights and understand that draconian budget cuts in Census Bureau funding are another strand in a strategy to make current political inequities more severe. We are focusing on proactive efforts local communities can undertake to counter Census Bureau budget cuts with social capital—mobilizing ordinary people in local communities to work toward the fairest, most accurate possible decennial census in 2020.