Caring Across Generations: Tending to our loved ones, workforce needs, and immigration system

Post by Shannon Erwin, State Policy Director, MIRA Coalition

Baltimore, MD - We are all close to someone in need of special care – an elderly parent, disabled friend or child with special needs. By 2050, nearly 30 million Americans will need some type of long-term home care. Yet, currently there are only 2 million home care workers providing this critical service. Immigrant women of color overwhelmingly make up the majority of home care workers. Our country’s increased demand for home care is inextricably tied to our obligation to treat these workers with dignity and to the urgent need to repair our broken immigration system.

On Sunday evening at NIIC, a panel of advocates showcased a recently launched national campaign called Caring Across Generations. The campaign brings together labor unions with senior, disability and youth organizations and others to respond to our nation’s increasing home care needs and to ensure that both consumers and providers of home care are treated well. Rooted, in the words of Sarita Gupta, Executive Director of Jobs for Justice and Co-Director of Caring Across Generations, on “the values of love, respect and human dignity,” the campaign pursues five goals:

• Create 2 million new, high-quality home care sector jobs.
• Improve the quality of existing as well as newly created home care jobs.
• Establish national training standards and career ladders to advancement for home care workers.
• Create a path by which immigrant care workers can achieve legal status.
• Support families to ensure affordable long-term care services are available for all who need them.

It was impossible not to be moved by the shared stories of immigrant home care workers and those for whom they cared. In a video shown prior to the discussion, an immigrant domestic worker named Maria explained her motivation for her work. She had heard that elderly people in the U.S. spent a lot of time alone, as their sons and daughters rarely live with them. Troubled by this idea, Maria decided to do something about it. She now provides care to elderly Americans and sings to them while she works.  

Antonia Peña, a Domestic Worker Organizer with CASA de Maryland and a panelist at the discussion, was brought to the U.S. from Columbia by diplomat employers and has performed care work since age 15. “It is important that we are seen as human beings, not machines, doing this work, and so important that we come together and work together,” she explained in Spanish.

Francisco López, Executive Director of CAUSA, Oregon’s immigrant rights organization and also a panelist, relayed the story of an El Salvadoran immigrant woman who cared for “Tom,” a severely autistic boy. She provided him consistent care and even taught him how to greet other people, while Tom would introduce her to others as his friend. That friendship was disrupted, tragically and most certainly traumatically, when she was deported.

Ai-Jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Co-Director of Caring Across Generations, crystallized what is most inspiring and hopeful about this campaign. It is a movement based on relationships of care and on values we all have in common: our sense of responsibility to our loved ones and elders, and our desire to offer real economic opportunity to the next generation. It is, in her words, “the perfect medicine for all the polarization.”

NIIC 2012 - Citizenship Boot Camp: Volunteer Training

Post by Jenny Seon, Korean Resource Center, September 23, 2012

Baltimore, MD - Being from a community-based organization in the Los Angeles area (Korean Resource Center), I have had to face the task of undertaking large projects with very little staff. 

Despite the lack of resources, we have been able to hold large Naturalization Workshops, and DACA Workshops because of volunteers. The training this morning was extremely insightful and helpful. 

Tamara R. Bloom, the legal coordinator at the City University of NY shared some GREAT training materials and suggestions on how to work with volunteers.

The Critical Connection: Education and Immigrant Integration

By: Nicholas V. Montalto, President, Diversity Dynamics LLC

One of the key tests of a successful immigrant integration strategy is the ability of educational institutions to provide equal opportunity to immigrants and to prepare them to participate fully in American life. Children of immigrants now comprise almost 25 percent of the K-12 student population in the United States. Much lower numbers participate in pre-school programs. Immigrants also comprise over 50 percent of adult education enrollment nation-wide.[i] They also attend our community colleges, universities, and graduate schools in growing numbers.

No matter the educational sector, the school experience of immigrants and their children has a profound impact on the future of American society. School failure leads to higher poverty rates, lower lifetime earnings, poorer health outcomes, weakened families, and gaping social divides. School success leads to a trained and productive work force, greater tax revenue, a more globally competitive economy, and a more just and harmonious society. Indeed, the continuation of the “American Dream” may depend on “getting education right.”

Although immigrants often have strong “social capital” assets -- giving them advantages that some native-born Americans may lack, immigrants also face certain risks that may hamper their educational progress. These include: lack of educational attainment and English proficiency among parents, lower participation rates in pre-school, the inability to master English prior to the third grade, lack of legal status, discrimination, poor performing schools, and reduced public investments in adult and workforce education.

We are already seeing the troubling consequences of these problems -- more pronounced with certain groups of immigrants:  lack of high school completion, poor academic preparation for college, declining enrollment in adult education programs, and higher unemployment rates, both at the lower and higher ends of the immigrant skills spectrum.

For all these reasons, the 2012 National Immigrant Integration Conference, to be held in Baltimore from September 22 to 25, will dive deep into the educational challenge, with particular attention to model policies, programs, and practices that are transforming the educational experience for immigrants. All five sessions in the “Education Track” span the continuum from pre-kindergarten to adult education, addressing critical issues from the perspective of practitioners, students, advocates and researchers.

One session will hone in on major federal educational policies and how they shape the educational landscape. Another session will focus on controversies surrounding student assessment. Topics will include the development of alternative performance-based assessments in K-12 settings, the implications of the new computer-based GED test, changes in the National Reporting System for adult education, and assessment in college and workforce settings. Looking beyond the classroom walls, another session will showcase promising practices for engaging parents and the larger community in the educational enterprise. This session will highlight the importance of effective partnerships to reinforce and support school efforts.

Educational advocacy will be covered in two workshops. The first will explore how undocumented students and their allies are fighting for equity and opportunity through the DREAM movement. The second will be a strategy session exploring opportunities to amplify the immigrant voice in educational advocacy, especially in the vital area of adult and workforce education.

Throughout American history, our school systems have played a major role in helping to integrate generations of immigrants. In today’s hyper-connected, knowledge-based, global economy, the bar has been raised, but educational institutions must continue to help immigrants achieve their dreams.

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[i] The most recent figures from the Department of Education (2009) indicate that ESL program participants constitute 44 percent of total adult education enrollment nation-wide. Although not reported separately, immigrants in adult basic education (ABE) classes – the other major component of Title II – push the total to more than 50 percent.

Improving the Ability of Immigrants to Achieve Economic Success: An Engine of Growth for the US

By: Margie McHugh, Co-Director National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, Migration Policy Institute and Chhandasi Pandya, Policy Analyst, Migration Policy Institute

The economic success of the United States is intimately tied to the well-being of its immigrants. While immigrants make up roughly 12 percent of the US population, they represent 16.5 percent of the labor force and nearly 17 percent of all new business owners in the U.S. As entrepreneurs and members of the high-, medium- and low-skilled labor force, immigrants create jobs and provide essential services in every area of the economy, from hospitality, to healthcare, and information technology.  As homeowners, consumers, and taxpayers, the foreign born spend money and help stimulate the economy.

Yet immigrants’ access to the information, services, and protections they need to secure their personal economic success does not always match the significance of their contributions to the economy. Important disparities in access and experiences between foreign and native-born individuals exist that can deter immigrants from making even greater contributions:

• Inadequate protection. Low-skilled immigrant workers in some sectors, especially the unauthorized and short-term guest workers, face harsh working conditions and are under threat by unscrupulous employers who wish to take advantage of them. Immigrant enforcement raids at worksites, wage theft, and labor trafficking are a part of the daily reality of many immigrant and guest workers.
• Disparate Earnings. Weekly earnings for foreign-born workers on average were 78 percent of earnings of native-born workers in 2011.
• Uneven access. For immigrant workers and immigrant small business owners, isolation from mainstream financial services has created disparities in access. The share of unbanked immigrants far outpaces the share of unbanked native born. Further, immigrant small business owners do not have access to reliable and responsible capital; despite this, immigrants start their own businesses at double the rate of the native born.
• Insufficient Capacity. Immigrant workers face difficulties obtaining the necessary language and workforce training needed to improve their job skills. Over-subscribed English language classes and underfunded workforce development programs that do not consistently provide contextualized learning have limited the upward mobility of significant portions of the immigrant labor force.
• Brain waste. Roughly 1.3 million college-educated immigrants are unemployed, employed at poverty-level wages in unskilled jobs, or significantly underemployed in semi-skilled jobs because their international training is not accepted or recognized in the United States.

Improvements in access to information and financial services, and the establishment of diverse and innovative partnerships at the federal, state, and local levels and with the private and non-profit sectors have the potential to boost immigrants’ economic success and smooth their integration into life in the United States.

Across the country, governmental and non-governmental organizations are working to narrow the gap between immigrants and the native born. Some are creating pathways to meaningful workforce skills and credentials or are taking action to improve immigrants’ wages, working conditions and economic protections. Others are working to advance the economic success of youth, helping immigrants keep and grow the money they earn, and accelerating the growth and success of immigrant-owned small businesses.  

For example, in New York City, the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families supports individuals seeking to become childcare providers by offering professional development services through grants, trainings and technical assistance in Spanish and/or English.  In addition, CHCF helps its clients – most of whom are low-income, Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrant women – develop their own bilingual programs through a bilingual Child Development Associate Credentialing Program. Spanish-speaking childcare providers represent the majority of all providers in New York City and their professional development and professionalization has direct benefits for themselves as well as the children they care for. With this idea in mind, CHCF’s programs have helped scores of Latino women obtain the training, credentials, and professional network they need to turn their informal jobs as childcare workers into formal businesses. 

At the 2012 National Immigrant Integration Conference from September 22-25 in Baltimore, a number of diverse actors from local government, and the nonprofit and private sectors will address current labor challenges and discuss strategies to assist newcomers in growing their skills, businesses, earnings and savings.

Improving immigrants’ labor force opportunities does more than just assist with their well-being and integration in the country – as we emerge from the Great Recession, such work reaps great dividends to the populace at large by revving the engine to economic success for the entire United States.

Beyond medals: What the Olympics can teach us about immigrant immigration

By Yves Gomes
National Immigrant Integration Conference participant, Frank Karel Fellow and MD DREAM intern at CASA de Maryland

Now that the stadium lights have dimmed, the media coverage has come to an end, and our Olympic athletes have returned home to their families and friends, I’ve had some time to reflect on what the games meant to me not just as an American, but also as a young immigrant. Cheering on our athletes this year, I felt more than just pride in them. I also felt pride that immigrants like me, and the children of immigrants like many of my friends, were a part of the team that so well represented America.

As U.S. athletes have won medal after medal, they’ve also served as a highly visible showcase of the strength of diversity in America. Nearly 40 members of the American Olympic delegation are immigrants, a 40 percent increase from the 2004 games in Athens. This year’s team reflects the reality of our nation and tells the story of our increasingly diverse future. More than 40 million immigrants now live in America, and the last decade showed record immigration rates, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.   

As our history in the games shows, immigrant integration isn’t a new story. Many of the world’s most famous athletes, like gymnastics superstars Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut and tennis champion Martina Navratilova, are now immigrants living in America. And this compelling narrative will only grow as the number of immigrants in America continues to rise.

As a young immigrant, I look up to these athletes that make our country proud.

Danell Leyva, for example, came to the U.S. with his mother as an undocumented toddler from Cuba and is now an Olympic gymnast. As a Cuban immigrant, from the day he arrived in America Leyva was on a path to citizenship under a longstanding Cuban immigration policy. Years later, we get to celebrate together as he won the bronze medal in the men’s gymnastics all-around.

For years, competitive and professional sports represent just one path for immigrant integration. But you don’t have to be an Olympic hopeful to want the opportunity to contribute to the U.S. community you call home.

Our country needs more and stronger paths to integration to provide all people with the opportunity to contribute to their fullest capacity to their families, jobs and communities.

Immigrant integration is a two-way process that benefits those who come to our country and the communities that receive and engage them. But this only happens when all immigrants are able to fully participate in the civic, commercial and community activities that define our country and that come through equitable access to government, financial, medical and educational institutions.

Today, one in eight people living in the United States is an immigrant. I’m proud to say that immigrants start businesses at nearly double the rate of entrepreneurs born here and make up 18 percent of all small business owners in the U.S. In a time of economic concern, we boost demand for local goods. (By 2015, Latinos and Asians, many of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants, will have a combined $2.275 trillion in purchasing power!)
 
Unfortunately, outside of the Olympic coverage of the last few weeks, the media conversation focuses too much on divisive and embattled immigration policy, often overlooking the achievements and contributions of immigrants like Leyva. It’s time to get beyond the border enforcement headlines and dive deep into the effort to diversify the “American Dream” by ensuring that immigrants and their families have the opportunity to become integral and inspiring members of their U.S. communities.

Our Olympic athletes — and many other immigrants — have achieved incredible success, but there’s still much work to be done. We need strong leadership and people who are committed to finding solutions and sharing best practices. This September 22-25 in Baltimore, Md., people from all over the country will come together at the fifth annual National Immigrant Integration Conference. They will work toward solutions that strengthen the pathways in place that offer immigrants the opportunity to be active participants in the communities they now call home. Every immigrant, and the child of every immigrant, deserves that chance to succeed.