Ravi Ragbir is ready for a fight. For the past two decades, the Trinidadian immigrant has been living in bureaucratic limbo and now, is even more unsure whether he will be able to remain living in the U.S. with his American wife and child.
“Imagine that you can be ripped apart from your children and families without their input. Don’t think that because it’s not your fault, your children won’t feel abandoned. Your children will feel abandoned,” Ragbir says, which is what many immigrant parents and children feel under the current tide of immigration enforcement.
Even though the stakes are seemingly higher than ever under the Trump administration, it wasn’t necessarily any easier for immigrants under the tenure of President Obama, who was coined the “deporter-in-chief” by UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), the nation’s largest Latino advocacy group.
Ragbir, who came to the U.S. in 1991 under a visitor’s visa and received a green card in 1994, is the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City. The nonprofit organization provides non-U.S. citizens support and protection via its unique accompaniment program, which pairs immigrants with American citizens that attend legal proceedings with them.
The group’s consulting and outreach services and community events reach 700,000 immigrants and their family members, a hefty number for a small office based inside a church in Manhattan’s West Village.
“Because we’re an all-volunteer and pro se legal force, the number of people really goes beyond our capacity, but we can handle it by the way we manage the program,” says Ragbir, explaining that he personally trained many of the staff and volunteers on everything he knew.
“I had to download my brain completely. In case something happened to me, this place needed to be self-sufficient,” he says.
Religious leaders and elected officials often participate in the accompaniment program, standing in solidarity with immigrants when they go to naturalization interviews or check-ins with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
“Imagine you have a pastor watching,” Ragbir says. “It changes the whole process. It’s more working within the system so they aren’t deporting the person.”
In March 2017, Ragbir participated in the accompaniment program himself. Since his 2001 conviction for wire fraud, he’s been fighting a deportation order and is mandated to meet with immigration officials annually. Sen. Gustavo Rivera, City Councilmembers Jumaane Williams and Ydanis Rodriguez, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other religious leaders stood alongside Ragbir during his yearly check-in, where it was determined that he could stay in the country for another year.
“I have you guys, and you are all here for me. But imagine those who do not,” he said to a crowd of supporters before his meeting that day. “We need to protect them, we need to protect each other.”
Tag: immigration
3 Ways to Make Life Better for Working Parents and Undocumented Immigrants
In the United States, there are almost 210,000 childcare workers helping to raise our nation’s youth. Of those, about 24 percent are undocumented workers and employed illegally — making them vulnerable to low pay, workplace abuse and an inability to seek out care if hurt on the job.
Officially, a family can sponsor a caregiver for a green card, which allows the person to live and work in the U.S. But the aging American immigration system has gotten in the way, leaving behind a broken process in which domestic caregivers who do seek citizenship almost always get rejected.
Watch the video above to learn about three solutions for modernizing the system for today’s workforce.
Homepage image courtesy of Leslie White
MORE: Alleviating Obstacles to Sponsorship
Alleviating Obstacles to Sponsorship
Officially, a family can sponsor the person who helps raise their children for a green card, which allows that person to live and work in the United States. But the aging American immigration system has gotten in the way, resulting in a broken process in which domestic caregivers who do seek citizenship almost always get rejected.
New York City immigration attorney Charles Goldsmith says that if someone approaches his office seeking to sponsor the person watching their child, nine times out of 10 he doesn’t take the case because “it’ll go nowhere.”
As a result, the vast majority of these workers are employed illegally, making them vulnerable to low pay, workplace abuse and an inability to seek out care if hurt on the job. Families that hire undocumented immigrants are also committing tax fraud if they pay under the table.
“It’s a burden for parents,” says Marcia Hall, president of the International Nannies Association. “There are so many families that don’t understand [the laws] and how they can get in trouble if they don’t abide by them.”
Conservative lawmakers believe the answer to this situation is to focus solely on American workers. But many immigration experts say the system must be modernized for today’s workforce.
Make it more affordable
In general, people who want to sponsor a domestic worker shell out $5,000 to $10,000 — a hefty burden to many.
There are costly legal and governmental fees, plus the law requires parents to advertise in a newspaper (which can cost hundreds of dollars) to prove their child’s caregiver has distinct abilities that no other American worker has. “Advertising in print newspapers is utterly obsolete and passe,” says James Pittman, a Philadelphia-based immigration lawyer.
And what if a family and their childcare provider wanted to share the fees? Immigrants can reduce the costs by applying for a financial hardship waiver, but there’s little to help available for working parents.
Expedite the application process
Normally, it takes about eight months for the U.S. Department of Labor to process the first round (of at least three) of a childcare provider’s paperwork. During that time period, the babysitter’s 6-month tourist visa (if she had one) will expire forcing her to return home. “Many families find that domestic worker who takes care of their children and wants them to become part of the family, only to find out there really is no way to do it,” says Jackie Vimo, an economic justice policy analyst with the National Immigration Law Center.
Modify the existing H-2B program
Each year, 66,000 H-2B visas are available to non-agricultural workers without a secondary or professional degree. They usually go to seasonal employees at resorts and sometimes to landscapers or fishermen. People can stay on the visa for 12 months and are eligible for two one-year extensions, but experts say that more should be made available — primarily because of the need for immigrants within our economy. “They’re the ones who are helping take care of our children and allowing for American women to work,” says Goldsmith.
Consider paying taxes
Many undocumented caregivers came to the United States decades ago. Some overstayed their visas, others never had them — but they were almost always in search of a better and safer life. Under current law, undocumented immigrants who have paid taxes and have proven good moral character for 10 years, plus have a legal parent, spouse or child who would “suffer extreme or unusual hardship” as a result of her deportation, can petition for legal status under section 240A(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Admittedly, no one would endorse or wish hardship on a loved one for the sake of legal residence. But paying taxes and contributing to the American Social Security system might give more political support in Washington, D.C. for a pathway to legal status for undocumented workers.
MORE: What to Do During ICE Stops
What to Do During ICE Stops
President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security are strictly enforcing immigration laws. Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly recently said, “There will be no, repeat no, mass deportations,” but by law, anyone living in the United States without permission, is at risk. Even a clean criminal record doesn’t ensure protection.
“There’s effectively no prioritization,” says Andre Segura, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants Rights Project. “We’re going to see people who would not normally be detained, be detained.” Only DACA recipients (illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and were given work permits under a 2012 Obama administration program) are excluded.
If you witness immigration officers questioning someone, or are stopped yourself, here’s what to do:
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Additional reporting by Hallie Steiner
On #DayWithoutImmigrants, Check Out These NationSwell Must-Reads
Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Employing Immigrants?
Those in the know explain why hiring skilled, educated newcomers helps the country’s economy and the fabric of society in ways you might not have considered.
The American Dream Isn’t Dead. This Is How Immigrant Families Are Achieving It
Vocational training comes full circle at the Instituto del Progreso Latino, where MacArthur Fellow Juan Salgado pioneers a sustainable approach to rising above poverty.
How Nashville Is Training a New Generation of Leaders from Its Immigrant Communities, Citiscope
A free, one-of-a-kind leadership program gives new Americans insight into how local government works.
Beyond Big Unions: How One Labor-Rights Advocate Envisions the Future for Workers
Carmen Rojas’s parents immigrated to the U.S. as teenagers. Her father drove trucks, and her mother filed papers at a bank. Neither had finished middle school. A generation later, their daughter had graduated with a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and traveled to Venezuela on a Fulbright scholarship. Today, Rojas heads The Workers Lab, a Bay Area accelerator that backs early-stage, labor-focused ventures. When Rojas thinks about her family’s upward mobility, she’s both pleased and disturbed: “It kills me to imagine that I might be part of the last generation in this country to benefit from an economy and a government that saw opportunity as core to its existence,” she says.
“We have a reached a moment where we can no longer deliver on the promise of what work is,” says Rojas over lunch at a Thai restaurant in midtown Manhattan. To live in New York City, for example, even a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t cover the expenses of raising two kids: At minimum, each parent needs to earn $18.97 hourly to adequately support their family. Yet only a tenth of American workers are unionized, about half of what it was in 1983. “The 20th-century labor movement as we imagined it — the labor union, collective bargaining — is no longer in a position to protect and create opportunity for the vast majority of workers.”
Those shortcomings have led people to second-guess traditional institutions, as the rise of Donald Trump suggests. Capitalizing on the hot-button issue of income inequality highlighted by Occupy Wall Street and Fight for 15, The Workers Lab is trying to reimagine what the future could be. “That’s why we exist,” Rojas tells NationSwell, “to jump-start the next-generation workers’ movement.” She shared five current initiatives that illustrate what that future might look like.
1. CLEAN Carwash Campaign, California
Cooperatives place businesses back in the hands of workers, where they share in profits and decision-making. They can be a tool for advancement, nurturing professional skills among blue-collar laborers. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which fought legal battles on behalf of Los Angeles’s largely undocumented force of carwasheros, tested whether they could open a worker-owned car wash in South L.A. The model has prompted Rojas to start looking for opportunities elsewhere, including a farm in the Coachella Valley. If that co-op, owned by 7,500 workers, actually gets off the ground, it will be the largest in the country. No small feat for an industry that’s known for some of the worst working conditions in this country, says Rojas. “This farm conversion — and the fact that we’re even talking about cooperatives outside of Vermont or Maine — is awesome.”
2. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida
With the rise of the conscious consumer — the person who reads labels and researches brands online — certification has become one of the easiest ways to push businesses into compliance. In South Florida, which produces most of the nation’s tomato supply during winter, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers created a powerful set of standards for tomato-pickers to ensure they get paid on time, have a voice in the workplace, aren’t subjugated to sexual harassment, and can safely submit complaints without retaliation. They then brought these guidelines straight to buyers like McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Taco Bell and Pizza Hut’s owner), rather than the farms’ managers. Fast-food companies and supermarkets agreed to buy tomatoes only from companies that met certifications, forcing the industry as a whole to catch up. “The coalition was so good at creating the standard,” says Rojas.
3. Worker Defense Project, Texas
With just two OSHA inspectors for the entire state, Texas’s construction sites might as well be unregulated, says Rojas. “Employers aren’t required to pay workers’ compensation, and Texas has the highest rate of mortality in construction in the whole country.” For five years, the Worker Defense Project, an immigrant workers’ rights organization, had been advocating for policy change. They won concessions from some high-profile projects, but the sector as a whole wouldn’t budge. So rather than shaming those who wouldn’t get on board, the group launched its Build It Better campaign, which offered incentives instead. “Their idea was to create a certification for developers’ construction projects,” explains Rojas. For adding on-site monitors and training, the Workers Defense Project in turn would work to fast-track permits and reduce the insurance rate. As Rojas points out, “If people aren’t dying on your projects because they’re being trained, then you don’t need as much insurance.”
4. Coworker, District of Columbia
Rojas is still trying to figure out if digital tools are simply an offshoot of old-school worker organizing or something different entirely. But she is clear about which online project is her current favorite: Coworker, which is a petitioning platform that allows disparate workers to make collective grievances about hyper-specific issues known to employers, without the huge undertaking of forming a union. “For instance, they have 25,000 Starbucks baristas who have all signed different types of petitions and that Starbucks has responded to,” Rojas says of Coworker’s impact. “Often, there is no way for you as a barista in one of hundreds of stores in Manhattan to unify your voice with other baristas around scheduling, wages or appearance. Coworker created that way.”
5. Universal Basic Income, California
While the movement toward a universal basic income has yet to be realized (aside from a small pilot project in Oakland), Rojas is intrigued by the idea. Advocating this policy, which guarantees every family a minimum wage regardless of whether they work, might have gotten you laughed out of a room as a “crazy communist” in the past, but it’s now gaining traction. “The appeal of a basic income — a kind of Social Security for everyone — is easy to understand,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote this summer. “It’s easy to administer; it avoids the paternalism of social-welfare programs that tell people what they can and cannot buy with the money they’re given; and, if it’s truly universal, it could help destigmatize government assistance.” Adds Rojas, “I’m interested in what it means for somebody who has spent his entire life in the labor movement to imagine non-labor institution solutions for the issues facing workers.”
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
A Problematic Industry Joins the Climate Change Movement, Much-Needed Health Care Reaches the Latino Community and More
U.S. Agricultural Secretary Thinks Farmers Can Help Solve Global Warming, Scientific American
Those that work the land inflict some of the worst harm on it. But as a recent report reveals, members of the agriculture community — farmers, ranchers, foresters — are beginning to change their planet-damaging ways. As they reform what they grow and how they grow it means that farmers soon could cease being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas pollution.
Students Fill a Gap in Mental Health Care for Immigrants, NPR
For immigrants in need of mental health care, a lack of documentation or insurance often means illnesses remain untreated. Across the nation, understaffed health clinics and universities are joining forces to improve access to services for depression, anxiety and more. Through these partnerships, Master’s and Ph.D. students play a vital role in treating mental illness in the Latino community.
Vermont Becomes First State to Require Drug Makers to Justify Price Hikes, STAT News
Last year, the pharmaceutical industry got a bad rap when Martin Shkreli hiked up the price of an HIV drug by more than 5,000 percent. In response, the Green Mountain state passed a law holding drug companies accountable for price increases. Could this move stunt medical innovation or will it protect citizens from unreasonable costs?
As Extreme Poverty Increases Nationwide, This Texas County Finds the Secret to Drastically Reduce It
It’s rarely quiet in the Indian Hills colonia in Hidalgo County, Texas. Cars speed through on shoddily paved roads, blasting reggaeton, a type of music rooted in Latin and Caribbean culture; children kick rubber balls in pickup soccer games, while their parents — home from mowing lawns in McAllen, constructing houses in Pharr or picking tomatoes and onions in Edinburg — hang on the fences, gossiping. From rundown vans, men peddle popsicles, bread, corn, chiles, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos — anything, really, says Lourdes Salinas, a community organizer who has lived in the colonias (a term used for the spontaneous settlements on the U.S.-Mexico border that often lack basic infrastructure) for 22 years. “If you live in a colonia, the families are very low-income. Their houses need repairs…and most of the colonias, they need streets and lights. Around mine, they get inundated with water” that floods homes when it rains, she explains.
In southern Texas, where nearly 2,300 colonias dot the arid landscape surrounding the Rio Grande River before it spills into the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 400,000 residents — largely Hispanic — call these barrios home. About two-thirds are American-born citizens that subside on low-wage work. (Nationally, 34.8 percent of residents live in poverty.) Others are undocumented immigrants, who, having successfully crossed one border, don’t risk their chances driving north past dozens of interior checkpoints. Lacking money or papers, colonia residents build their own homes themselves (often without electricity or plumbing), raising a roof where their family first arrived in this country.
Outside of city limits, these areas of concentrated poverty resemble neighborhoods in a developing country. Paul Jargowsky, a public policy professor at Rutgers, refers to them as the “architecture of segregation,” a trend he’s seen explode nationally in American suburbs and among racial minorities. “After the dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000, there was a sense that cities were ‘back,’ and that the era of urban decay — marked by riots, violent crime, and abandonment — was drawing to a close. Unfortunately, despite the relative lack of public notice or awareness, poverty has re-concentrated, he says. Families living in these slums must cope not only with their own financial hardship, but with all the social problems destitution brings: poor health, crime and limited educational and employment opportunities.
In 2000, McAllen, Texas, the largest city in Hidalgo County, had the highest concentration of Hispanic poverty in the country, with 61.4 percent of Latinos living in squalor. But through ambitious affordable housing programs, led by municipal government and a local nonprofit, the community has been able to break up these dense, distressed areas by reducing the number of Hispanics living in them by 10 percent, while the rest of the country saw a sharp increase. (Detroit’s rates, for example, jumped from 8.8 percent of Hispanics living in ghettoes to 51.1 percent over the same period; Milwaukee, too, skyrocketed from 5.3 percent to 43.2 percent.)
“To me, we have one of the most successful low-income housing programs in the country,” Mayor Jim Darling tells NationSwell. “It is a testament to the great American Dream of home ownership and how much that means to them.”
Hidalgo County’s colonias began to pop up in the 1950s, when farmers sold barren land to developers. Many quickly subdivided the unincorporated land into small lots and offered them to recent immigrants. (Often, they were sold through a “contract for deed” where developers offered comparatively low monthly rates, but would only turn over the deed when it had been paid in full. If a family fell behind, they lost the property and had no paperwork to show for it.) Frequently, homes were built piecemeal, adding rooms whenever a resident had some extra cash on hand.
For a time, McAllen focused on renovating the existing homes. Starting in 1976, a group of businessmen got together to eliminate outhouses in the area and hook up homes to sewers. By the mid-1980s, however, one mayor got fed up. “We don’t have to be repairing houses that are going to be falling down in two years,” Darling, the former city attorney who once provided legal advice for the housing program, recalls his predecessor saying.
The city’s affordable housing program looks different than the ones you’d find in urban areas where demand for prime lots is so high that policymakers can attach requirements (such as designating units for low-income residents) to large developments. In McAllen, low demand creates the opposite market dynamic: land is so cheap that the city can buy up undeveloped lots, hold the mortgages and offer them to residents most in need. So far, the plan has built more than 2,700 homes in the area, primarily available to those who had lived or worked in McAllen for two years; leveraging public capital with private banks has generated nearly $40 million in home loans. (A voucher program provides a rent subsidy for 150 apartment units is also available to residents.)
Program recipients are unique: The ideal customer is the person that “nobody else will lend to,” Darling says. Unlike a bank representative who’s following a given formula to determine whether or not an applicant should receive a loan, the city offers extra leeway to poor immigrant families, knowing their income isn’t consistent. It adds food stamps and other welfare to income calculations, for instance, and it knows that families may disappear for two or three months, picking crops up north, before returning to catch up on their loan responsibilities.
This same population is the main beneficiary of Proyecto Azteca, a nonprofit based in San Juan (a couple miles east of McAllen) that builds new, wood-framed homes for residents of the colonias. Residents are given 40-year mortgages at zero interest, as long as they contribute 150 towards the building of their own home (to learn valuable construction skills) or in community service. Since 1991, only a handful of Proyecto homes have been foreclosed on. The high success rate explains why 4,000 families are on its waiting list.
Both the City of McAllen and Proyecto Azteca have thought carefully about where to place this new construction. There’s an argument that slums must be broken up by redistributing the population, moving poor families into middle-class neighborhoods to add diversity. But there’s also something to be said for building a model three-bedroom home in the middle of the colonias, uplifting the community. So new housing is constructed in both locations.
While the situation is improving, McAllen has experienced its share of recent crises: drought (which set back Hidalgo County farmers and migrant laborers), rain (that flooded the colonias and displaced residents) and the child migrant crisis of 2014, where tens of thousands of youngsters fleeing violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, waded across the Rio Grande, seeking asylum. Add those occurrences to the region’s persistent poverty and Mayor Darling has a full plate of work. “They’re all opportunities,” is how he puts it, a chance to show off his hometown and find ways to improve it. “I don’t worry about legacies or anything else. What I would like to see is that, instead of working apart and against each other, we worked a lot more with each other for the betterment of our communities. If anything, I’ve tried to do that. That’s been a challenge,” he says, but challenges haven’t stopped him before.
Meet the Doctors Building an Innovative, Holistic Bridge to Healthy Living
What if you were able to cure a disease before someone even caught it? Now imagine doing that on a larger scale — for an entire community of people who lack access to medical resources, including basic supplies like bandages for even the most minor of injuries. What would health care look like if you could eliminate the problem at its source?
Dr. Steve Larson, co-founder of the nonprofit medical clinic Puentes de Salud, or “Bridges of Health,” believes he has the answer. For the past decade, he’s been using a holistic approach that includes medical care, education classes and social services to solve the healthcare woes of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latino immigrant population. “The answer is not waiting for the next trauma,” says Larson. “The answer is to keep it from ever happening.”
Watch the video above to see how Puentes de Salud partners with local health organizations, medical schools and private donors to provide its patients comprehensive treatment.
How New Americans are Shoring Up America’s Economy
Walk down Main Street in your community and it’s likely that you’ll pass by a lot of immigrant-owned businesses.
In the new report “Bringing Vitality to Main Street,” the Council of the Americas and the Fiscal Policy Institute find that between 2000 and 2013, immigrant-owned businesses were responsible for all the net growth in Main Street businesses — from restaurants to hairdressers to auto body shops — throughout the U.S. and in 31 of the largest 50 cities in the country.
Immigrants own 53 percent of America’s grocery stores, 45 percent of its nail salons and 38 percent of its restaurants. Overall, immigrants own 28 percent of the Main Street businesses in America, even though they only comprise 16 percent of country’s population.
The authors of the report included businesses owned by both documented and undocumented immigrants in the study, zeroing in on three areas where vibrant immigrant communities have revitalized neighborhoods and cities: Philadelphia, Nashville and the Twin Cities.
Jennifer Rodriguez, executive director of Philadelphia’s Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Cultural Affairs, tells NBC News that the report, “really tells a story of how hard-working they are and how they are contributors to our city, how they helped bring back neighborhoods that have been in decline.”
In addition to contributing to business growth, immigrants seem to be shoring up the housing market as well. Gillian B. White writes for National Journal that while millennials have so far proven to be less likely than previous generations to purchase real estate, buying a house is still a key goal for many immigrants. In fact, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, immigrants are responsible for 27.5 percent of the growth in homeownership over the past 20 years. Unlike their millennial counterparts from non-immigrant families, the children of immigrants account for the largest increase in the growth of households headed by people under age 30.
As Rodriguez says, “I often say that what is good for immigrants is good for everyone.”
MORE: To Fix A Neighborhood, Invite A Newcomer