According to the New York Times, there are around 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many of them driving — regardless of whether or not they are licensed. Which is a somewhat scary situation facing the rest of us out on the roads.
In response, a growing number of states (including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) have begun to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. According to the Seattle Times, as of last year all but two states — Arizona and Nebraska — had altered their laws to at least allow immigrants brought here as children to obtain driver’s licenses.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., told Andrea Billups of NewsMax, “It doesn’t given them any legal status, but by giving them a government-issued ID, it helps them imbed in society.”
As for the rest of the states who haven’t given driver’s license privileges to undocumented people yet, it might make financial sense to do so. According to Hispanically Speaking News, when the Massachusetts legislature was debating this idea in March, the head of the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles, Celia Blue, said licensing undocumented drivers “would generate nearly $15 million in state revenue through license fees and other charges, plus $7.5 million in renewal fees every five years.” Massachusetts state senator Joseph Vital said, “This isn’t to excuse the fact that they’re undocumented. But they’re on the roads. They’re driving. Many uninsured.”
When Colorado passed a law allowing for the licensing of undocumented immigrants last June, the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Jessie Ulibarri, said that law enforcement supported the legislation, according to Reuters. “Our roads will be safer when we can properly identify everyone who drives on them. We estimate that thousands more Colorado drivers will get insured because of this law.”
Sarah E. Hendricks of Drake University wrote in her April report “Living in Car Culture Without a License: The Ripple Effects of Withholding Driver’s Licenses from Unauthorized Immigrants,” published by the Immigration Policy Center, “States that do not offer driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants will limit the contributions that immigrant communities as a whole can potentially make, are likely to face negative economic and public safety consequences, and tend to fail in attempts to use such restrictive state-level policies to reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants.”
MORE: It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy is This Town Glad it Did
Tag: immigration
It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy, Is This Town Glad It Did
In the 1980’s, 25,000 Cambodian refugees poured into Lowell, Massachusetts, escaping the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, but putting pressure on Lowell’s public schools and social services. Former City Manager James Campbell told the Lowell Sun that accommodating the needs of so many poor and non-English-speaking people was a “logistical nightmare.” But boy is Lowell glad it welcomed them.
The city built more schools and implemented bilingual programs to educate the refugee children. In return, the Cambodians settled down in the community and thrived. Campbell said that today there are 350 Asian-owned businesses in Lowell that provide jobs to people of all ethnicities. The Cambodian community also started the annual Southeast Asian Water Festival, which has become a major event in Lowell, and have shared their culture with the town in countless other ways.
Over the next few months, Lowell is taking a moment to look back on its history with Cambodian immigrants, and reflect on the arrival of more recent immigrants from such places as Iraq and Burma, through a special exhibit, “Lowell: A City of Refugees, a Community of Citizens.”
Highlights of the exhibit include stories kids wrote and pictures they drew shortly after they arrived, about the atrocities they’d faced in Cambodia. One boy wrote about how when he was five, the Khmer Rouge tied up his sister in the woods and left her to die, until one soldier spared her. The exhibit is dedicated to Dorothea Tsapatsaris, a teacher who worked with many refugees in the 80’s and preserved their work, much of which tells the story of their daily lives in Cambodia.
An interactive map tracks the immigrants’ movements from Cambodia to refugee camps to Lowell, and the exhibit tells the story of the city’s history as it welcomed its newcomers. Referring to that massive ’80s influx of refugees, Dorothea’s husband George Tsapatsaris, who was the Superintendent of Schools back then, said, “We slowly began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and today the Cambodian population is an integral part of our community and our schools.”
Over the last two years, 400 new refugee children have come to Lowell, and because Lowell is learning from its own history of immigration through this exhibit, many see this as a sign that the cycle of American renewal in one city has begun again.
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One Author Believes the American Dream Is Available to Everyone
For Paul Hsu, the path from arriving in the United States with $500 in his pocket to becoming the successful entrepreneur he is today is a testament to the way America continues to be a land of promise.
“I am a first generation immigrant—I came to over to this great country from Taiwan in 1976 and my 40 years experience is living proof that America is truly a land of opportunity,” he told NationSwell during an interview about his book Guardians of the Dream: The Enduring Legacy of America’s Immigrants.
His first U.S. business, the military electronics company Manufacturing Technology Incorporated, grew to employ 450 people and bring in $60 million in annual revenue, and he went on to found data content provider and medical device manufacturer companies in a career that led to a presidential appointment with the Small Business Administration and a research fellowship with Harvard University.
It’s no wonder then, that when Hsu saw a banner proclaiming the American Dream dead at a San Diego parade six years ago, he felt inspired to prove the point wrong by telling his own story. The target audience for Guardians of the Dream is young people, Hsu said, as he wants them to understand that the American Dream is available to everyone—but it all depends on how hard you are willing to work for it.
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In a chapter titled “How America is Still the Innovation Nation,” Hsu outlines eight principles that have helped him do business with an innovation mindset, drawing on personal stories that convinced him of their importance. For example, he was asked to take over ActiGraph, the electronic medical device company, with little knowledge of the field. But instead of saying no, he paused and said he would think about it. “I took a small step forward. I agreed to listen. And the rest is history,” he writes.
He also emphasizes the importance of being bold and staying curious, explaining that he has learned most of what he knows through business experience, and by pushing himself, versus through his studies and Ph.D. in engineering management.
Building relationships and striving to understand what makes people tick is essential, he continues, explaining that “those of us in technical and technological fields can sometimes forget that what we do is really about serving people.” He outlines the importance of welcoming new ideas while also adhering to strong values. And he says to build wisely, drawing again on his own experience when he describes innovation as a process versus a destination.
“I’ve always built my companies slowly and was never in a rush to get big. Often when I talk to students or young engineers, they have stars in their eyes,” he says of people who hear about innovators making millions for inventing apps. “I had a firm principle of never moving beyond what I know we could produce.”
When NationSwell asked Hsu to define the American Dream, he broke it down into five elements: freedom, integrity, ingenuity, opportunity, and inclusion. Hsu referenced something former U.S. President Ronald Reagan once said about how living in France does not make you a Frenchman, living in Japan does not make you Japanese, but live in America, and you are an American.
The recipe for success in this mixing pot must include hard work and gratitude, Hsu emphasized. “Sometimes immigrants in a way are more successful because we never take anything for granted,” he said, describing the way he tried to instill these values in his kids, now entrepreneurs themselves, when he took them to see their mom working at Pizza Hut and had them learn small business lessons on a smaller scale by opening and operating a lemonade stand.
Hsu said he hopes his book, and the road map it provides for recognizing the American Dream in our own lives, will inspire any and all who read it to make something of this great opportunity America provides, “to become contributors to this society instead of burdens to this society.”
When Immigrant Families Struggle With Reunions, This Educator Can Help
Many of us can’t imagine what it would feel like to spend part of our childhoods away from our parents, and then move to a new country to live with our parents—perhaps without knowing them well.
But it was situation seen often by Robin Hamby, who works as a family partnership specialist for the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia. Hamby noticed there was a special set of problems facing immigrant families in this situation—kids who might have missed their former caregiver and home country struggled to adapt to their new surroundings, sometimes becoming defiant with their parents as a result. Meanwhile, parents sometimes didn’t know their kids as well as they would have liked.
To help alleviate this disconnect, Hamby and others created a “Reunification of Immigrant Families” program with resources for parents, teachers, and schools. The program offers lots of resources for teachers, such as summaries of research related to these types of families and seminars about how to help such kids in their classes. At the heart of Hamby’s efforts is the Parent Project, a series of classes in English and Spanish for parents whose kids are having difficulty adjusting to America.
A video interview (English starts at 2:53) with Miguel and Jessica, parents who’ve participated in the program, makes it clear how valuable these lessons are. “One of the things that I love about this program is the way it changed [my ability] to understand my kids,” Miguel said. “To listen to the words he was trying to express, to understand their feelings and to change the way I was listening to my kids.” His wife Jessica has been equally impressed with the program. “It’s been so much easier to set our expectations for our children, and learn their expectations for us,” she says. “They know the consequences now. They know that we love them. I think that we thought that they knew, but the program really teaches us to be more expressive and more affectionate with them, and to give them…active supervision so that they know that we are in control.”
Hamby’s work isn’t just getting praise from those involved with the program, though. She was recently honored by a Virginia nonprofit called SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) for the work she does to prevent child abuse and neglect. When accepting her honor, Hamby told the audience that, “Welcoming is not just a mat by the door, but an attitude that inspires feelings of safety and connection,” according to the Fairfax Times. Many immigrant families would probably agree with that—and they have Hamby to thank, among others, for smooth transitions as they reunite.
MORE: No Longer Afraid: A Young Immigrant Victim of the Aurora Theater Shootings Steps Out of the Shadows
Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Employing Immigrants?
You’ve heard of “brain drain,” the phenomenon of talented workers leaving their home countries for better jobs elsewhere. How about “brain waste”? That’s what’s happening in the United States: Skilled, educated immigrants, having arrived in this country ready to work, can’t find good jobs.
About 1.8 million of these “new Americans” are unemployed, underemployed in semi-skilled jobs or working as unskilled labor making poverty-level wages. On a purely economic level, that’s bad for both immigrants and the country: The U.S. is forfeiting billions of dollars in economic growth potential. Also, when immigrants with advanced degrees are properly employed, it boosts employment for their native U.S. counterparts too, according to a report by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and The Partnership for a New American Economy, a nonprofit group co-founded by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.
The employment of work-authorized, skilled immigrants is a potential boon for society in many other ways — but it’s an issue that often gets overlooked. So NationSwell convened an expert panel — including a policy analyst, an immigration integration reform advocate, a New York City economic development executive and an immigrant-services provider — to answer the question: Why should U.S. citizens care about immigrants’ employment, and what is being done — or should be done — about it?
MORE: Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Income Inequality?
Madeleine Sumption
Senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, D.C.
NationSwell: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Madeleine Sumption: The United States is the world’s most attractive destination for people with skills. But it also wastes these skills on an industrial scale. The Migration Policy Institute has estimated that 1.3 million college-educated immigrants are either unemployed or working in low-skilled jobs.
Skilled professionals working in low-skilled jobs forgo tens of thousands of dollars in income. For example, the average civil engineer earns almost $80,000 per year, the average lawyer $114,000, and the average physician $172,000. By contrast, low-skilled health aides earn just $21,000 and dishwashers about $18,000.
For U.S. employers, the failure to use immigrants’ skills to their full potential reduces the pool from which they can recruit, reducing productivity. U.S. consumers cannot benefit from the services these skilled workers might have provided — such as doctors’ visits or legal assistance. And taxpayers lose out as lower-earning immigrants pay fewer taxes and may even require welfare support.
NS: What should we do to fix the problem?
MS: Tackling brain waste is difficult. It requires persistence and political commitment, and the problem cannot be solved overnight. But policy options do exist.
Many foreign-trained immigrants have gaps in their skills and need support to improve their language skills, gain local work experience that helps employers understand their abilities, and navigate complicated licensing systems in regulated occupations like medicine or accounting.
Funding for pilot projects could help build the pool of promising models to reduce the costs of additional training and make it compatible with working immigrants’ busy timetables. Partnerships between community colleges, public employment services and employers can help to provide this assistance at greater scale. And finally, regulators responsible for licensing workers in professional occupations could do more to simplify the application process and assess skills more quickly, so that people trained abroad do not have to repeat years of education and training to demonstrate their skills.
Paul Feltman
Chair of the steering committee of IMPRINT, a coalition of organizations raising awareness about the talents and contributions of immigrant professionals
NS: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Paul Feltman: The promise of America is that we’re the land of opportunity. For immigrant professionals, that opportunity should include being able to work in the field for which they have already been educated. I’m talking about meeting the same high standards for professional licensing as American-born applicants. No special treatment.
If an immigrant engineer is driving a taxicab, and it’s not what he wants to do, that’s a loss for him but also for our entire economy. Research indicates that moving a talented person from a low-wage job into a professional-level position doesn’t just help that one person provide for her family. It helps the employer who needs her skills, the community where she pays taxes, and the region in which she lives.
The other reason Americans should care is that many skilled immigrants are Americans themselves. They have become naturalized U.S. citizens and are making a permanent home here, raising their children and becoming part of the American fabric. Their success is our success.
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NS: What should we do to fix the problem?
PF: For the United States to benefit from skilled immigrants, we need to make sure three things are happening:
1. Information. It can be really hard to find information explaining how an immigrant accountant or nurse gets licensed to practice in this country. But individual immigrants, nonprofit agencies and employers really need to know what the licensing pathways are. They need to know the various options for how internationally educated applicants can return to their professions, and how to overcome common barriers.
2. Connections. People have to be able to find this information, and employers and qualified jobseekers have to be able to find each other in the labor market.
3. Action. It’s not enough to have the information or the connection. You have to be able to act on it. Often, that means making sure that policymakers understand the issue so they can advocate for clearer, easier-to-understand pathways.
Our organization, IMPRINT, works on each of these three areas. Our focus is people who are already residents of the U.S. Our goal is to make sure that if, say, a Russian engineer wants to practice here, they can get the information they need and the connections to make that information useful. Above all, we want people to be equipped to take action. The U.S. prides itself on being a place where anything is possible. We work to make that promise real.
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Nikki Cicerani
President and CEO of Upwardly Global, a nonprofit organization that provides job-search training and connects partner companies with skilled, work-authorized immigrants
NS: Why should Americans care about immigrants’ employment?
Nikki Cicerani: We should care because these foreign-educated immigrants represent an available, highly motivated talent source. While companies consistently tell us they look everywhere for their talent, this is a pool they may be missing. Furthermore, employers that give skilled immigrants their first break in the U.S. tend to be rewarded with strong employee loyalty.
In jobs where they can put their skills and experience to work, immigrants earn more and spend more. They reduce their use of government benefits and instead provide tax revenue that can be staggeringly large. Only about a quarter of the people who come to our program are working. If we get 10 percent of the 1.8 million currently unemployed or underemployed skilled immigrants into jobs where they are earning an average annual salary of $35,000, we’re generating about $6.3 billion of taxable income in a single year.
There are also important intangibles: When an immigrant doesn’t have to work the night shift to support a family, then he or she is joining the PTA and becoming involved in his or her community. These secondary impacts improve the quality of life in our cities and neighborhoods.
You have to have smart integration policies commensurate with immigration policies in order to maximize the skills and experience that immigrants are bringing. That is our message.
NS: What are you doing to fix the problem?
NC: Upwardly Global is a direct services provider for immigrant economic integration. We aim to provide culturally specific training to make our job seekers the best candidates for the job. Once job seekers — who may have recently been doing janitorial work or driving a cab — obtain professional positions, we see very high retention rates a year later. Around 90 percent are still in those jobs a year later, or another in their professional field that pays at least as much.
We are also working towards increased awareness and advocacy. Much of the current discussion around immigration reform centers on the flow of workers into the country, but there’s very little policy that addresses how to integrate these individuals into American life once they’re here. There is an integration chapter in an immigration reform bill, but it is still largely weighted toward civic integration; we’re trying to be a voice for the importance of economic integration.
We don’t advocate changing professional standards, but rather increasing the quality and clarity of information and removing unnecessary burdens for those who are foreign-trained to become relicensed and to re-enter their fields — as well as creating support systems to smooth the transition.
Eric J. Gertler,
Executive vice president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit that promotes economic development
NS: Why should New Yorkers care about immigrants’ employment?
Eric J. Gertler: We estimate there more than 50,000 highly skilled immigrants who are either un- or underemployed who we believe could access better jobs and contribute to the key sectors of our local economy. There is a huge need for better integration, especially in the growth areas such as health care, accounting and STEM-related work.
Very simply, it’s very important to ensure that we’re creating economic opportunity for all New Yorkers because that helps to create a greater New York for everyone. Also, from a demand side, employers are looking for skilled individuals to help them grow their companies.
Obviously this is an issue of concern to many urban areas where there has been substantial immigration. The number of foreign-born New Yorkers is at an all-time high — more than 3 million — more than 37 percent of our total, which itself is close to the peak percentage reached in 1910, when 40 percent of the city’s population was born elsewhere. [By contrast, there are 40 million foreign-born in the U.S. but this is just 7 percent of the total U.S. population, down from a peak in 1940.] In the absence of leadership at a federal level — cities need to act.
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NS: What are you doing to fix the problem?
EG: In 2012 we started a pilot project called Immigrant Bridge to better integrate these skilled immigrants, which we think is the first of its kind in the country to address workforce and financial barriers to gaining employment. There are two components. The first is workforce development, where we offer soft skills training, English as a second language lessons, interview practice opportunities or job search assistance. Through three social services organizations we have engaged more than 500 [immigrants] so far, and 90 have already found jobs in their area of professional training.
The second part is a subsidized loan program [offered through Amalgamated Bank], which can help qualified job seekers with expenses that often hold them back from pursuing jobs at higher wages, such as child care, rent, more training or to get licensed. Our focus is always on the job.
EDC has invested $1.5 million for the entire program. We are tracking the data, but anecdotally we know that our program is important and that individuals are using our program successfully. We’re pleased with the results to date, but given the small sample size, we still need to gather more data to figure out the best way to expand its impact. A lot of these programs are really new; we are testing new concepts. We are really trying to be very careful to learn and measure.
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In a Bold Move, Chicago Gives DREAMers a Shot at Summer Jobs
Who knows how long congress will continue to drag its feet on immigration reform, but luckily for immigrants across the country, local and state governments have decided they can’t wait.
From coast to coast, Americans are implementing their own reforms, including offering in-state tuition to immigrants, making it easier for them to get a bank account, or even passing their own (non-enforceable) immigration laws. The latest effort in this grassroots immigration reform effort comes from Chicago, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on April 11 that 23,000 city positions will be open to immigrants who were brought here as children.
These immigrants, known as DREAMers for the long-delayed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act that would provide them with a path to citizenship and access to higher education if it ever passes, can now apply for 30 mayor’s office fellowships, 500 city internships, and 22,000 jobs in the city’s summer jobs program: One Summer Chicago. To qualify, applicants must have been brought to the United States as children, have lived here for five years, and kept out of trouble with the law. The city will publicize the opportunities in neighborhoods with high percentages of immigrants.
“Chicago is a city that was built by immigrants, and I am committed to ensuring that DREAMers have the same opportunities offered by the city to all of Chicago’s youth,” Emanuel said, according to Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business. “We will open doors to support talented young people.”
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Can an Influx of Immigrants Bolster Michigan’s Economy?
Why are people so resistant to immigrants? After all, studies have shown that immigrants stabilize neighborhoods, and their presence correlates with a reduction of crime. Additionally, they are more than twice as likely to start their own business as people born in the United States, according to a study by the University of North Carolina. And a study in Michigan by the Immigration Policy Center suggested immigrants are six times more likely to start high-tech companies than native-born people are.
All of this is why Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder believes that an influx of talented immigrants could help reinvigorate his state. So he asked the federal government if Michigan could create its own visa program for immigrants who have the means to invest $500,000 to $1 million in starting job-creating businesses.
In April, the federal government approved the plan. Snyder told of Gary Heinlein of the Detroit News that the move is “an important step in helping harness top talent and international direct investment into the state to continue and accelerate Michigan’s comeback. Our state needs outstanding talent to help drive the new economy. Immigrants are net job creators.”
Michigan will open a regional center for EB-5 visas, an “immigrant investor” program that was implemented with the 1990 immigration act. Those who have a plan for a business that will employ 10 or more people in Michigan can apply for permanent residence. (Their family can also apply.) Projects that target areas with high unemployment will be have priority, and given that there 433 neighborhoods in the state with an unemployment rate one-and-a-half times greater than the national average, there are plenty of communities to choose from.
Snyder is putting a lot of energy behind his plan to welcome immigrants to Michigan to help his state economically. He’s also created a Michigan Office for New Americans, plus he delivered two other immigrant-related proposals during his State of the State speech in January. He’s hoping these new Americans will bring renewed energy and ideas that can return Michigan’s economy to its former powerhouse status.
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The Surprisingly Easy Way to Make People More Tolerant
No longer do Latino immigrants remain living in border states and other places where there are long-established Hispanic communities. But while they are successful in finding jobs in the Midwest and the South, they encounter another problem when arriving in these geographic areas: housing segregation.
According to one study, this segregation happens particularly within suburban and rural areas. And another study suggests that hate crimes against Hispanics rise whenever there is an increase in Hispanic immigration. Most of these crimes are reported in places where Latinos are new to the area, as there are few hate crimes in long-established Hispanic communities. The Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Latinos who think discrimination against Hispanics is a major problem in America is increasing, with 61 percent of Latinos saying so in 2010, compared to 47 percent in 2002.
Ryan D. Enos of Harvard University set out to find out why some Americans have negative biases against Latinos. He identified nine commuter rail stations in the Boston area used almost exclusively by white passengers. Then he randomly selected a few of the stations to receive an intervention — two Latino people talking to each other in Spanish while waiting on the platform for the train for two weeks. After that, he surveyed people at each of the stations about their attitudes toward immigration. His findings? He discovered that those who had stood near the Spanish-speaking passengers demonstrated increasingly negative attitudes toward immigration — despite the fact that the Spanish speakers were not aggressive and did not act in an abnormal fashion.
But, he also found that the longer white people were exposed to the Spanish speakers, the less “exclusionary” their attitudes became. When he surveyed people after just three days of exposure to the Spanish speakers, he found them to be much more exclusionary than when he interviewed people after spending ten days near the Spanish speakers on the platform.
Enos’s findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mirror those of a recent Oxford study published in the same journal that found people with racist attitudes become less so when they simply see people of another race in their neighborhood over an extended period of time. Those with exclusionary attitudes don’t even need to interact with those of another race. To become more tolerant, all they need is to go about their daily business in close proximity with those of different ethnicities. Professor Miles Hewstone, the director of the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict told Sarah Knapton of The Telegraph, “If two white people with identical views went to live in different postcodes for a year, the person in the neighborhood with more mixing between ethnic groups would likely leave more tolerant.”
Racism and discrimination against Latinos hasn’t ended yet in America, but by 2043, when the U.S. Census has projected that whites will no longer be in the majority in America, it could ebb, just by virtue of increasingly mixed neighborhoods.
MORE: Latino Families Were Hit Hard by the Recession. Here’s How They’re Fighting Back.
This Medical School Is Training Doctors in Compassion
Many immigrants arrive in America desperate to escape persecution and torture in their home countries. The U.S. grants asylum to immigrants who apply for it within one year of their arrival and can prove that they suffered persecution based on race, religion, political beliefs, nationality, or belonging to a social group. Proving this is the trick, however, and most immigrants who arrive traumatized, suffering from PTSD or depression, don’t have the resources to pay for a medical evaluation to prove their ordeal.
That’s where medical students at the Weill Cornell Medical College step in, providing free medical evaluations to asylum seekers. It’s the first student-run clinic of its kind, a partnership with the non-profit Physicians for Human Rights. As Carmen Stellar, the clinic’s director of organizational operations and a second-year medical student, explains to the New York Daily News, “having a medical affidavit as part of their case triples the likelihood of their being granted asylum.”
Under the direction of professors, the medical students meet with about 60 immigrants a year seeking asylum. They perform examinations, looking for physical or psychological evidence to prove the immigrants’ claims in court. The medical students look for scars from torture, female genital mutilation, or psychological distress, assuring that the evidence matches the immigrant’s story. So far, the clinic has met with 117 asylum seekers from 40 countries. All of the immigrants they’ve worked with who have taken their claims to court—34 so far—have been granted asylum or legal protection.
Alejandro Lopez, in his third year of medical school, is the clinic’s executive director. He recalled the first asylum seeker he met with, a gay man from Nigeria government officials persecuted because of his sexual orientation, even killing his mother. “He received asylum. So that’s extremely satisfying,” Lopez says. “You feel like you actually did something to impact someone’s life.” With programs like this one training compassionate doctors, this is just the first of many lives Lopez and his colleagues will impact.
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Here’s a Smart Solution That Stops Immigrants From Being Robbery Victims
The recession and subsequent nosedive of the stock market during the late 2000s probably had you wishing that you had stashed all your money under the mattress instead of in mutual funds and stocks. But carrying your cash around or hiding it in your home isn’t safe, as immigrants who often lack access to traditional banking services know all to well.
Adrian Mendez of the Trenton, New Jersey Police Department told Carlos Avila of The Trentonian that keeping money at home or in a pocket turns immigrants into “walking ATMs,” frequent victims of robbery and violence. On March 30, Sergeant Mendez presented the Trenton police department’s plan to help keep non-U.S. citizens safe from robbery at a community meeting. One of the department’s key plans? Asking local banks (serving areas where many immigrants live) to open savings accounts for people — even if they can’t document their immigration status.
So far, TD Bank and Santander Bank have agreed: Anyone with either a Social Security Number or an Individual Tax Identification Number (which is issued by the IRS) to open an account. Immigrants who work but do not have legal status in the United States often receive an ITIN.
Alba Lopez, who leads a women’s group at the church where Mendez spoke said, “I think this is a very helpful gesture by the TPD [Trenton Police Department], because many of our congregants fear the police and don’t report crimes. This goes a long way to helping build good relationships between our community and the police.”
Mendez added that the police department is “interested in educating the Hispanic community about their rights and responsibilities.”
While Congress continues to debate federal immigration reform, this local connection between immigrants and financial institutions is just the kind of grassroots immigration advocacy that we like to see.
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