June 11, 2004

Background on Immigrant-Led, Community-Based Organizations

Confronted by the structural lack of economic opportunity in their countries of origin, immigrants from throughout Mexico and Central America continue to arrive in the United States in record numbers. Recent census data suggests that about 50% of the total U.S. Latino population was born outside the United States. Over the past decade, as this percentage has risen, many new organizations have formed within immigrant communities. These organizations have diverse expressions. Some of them provide legal and educational services to newly arrived immigrant communities, others have a more civic or cultural bent, others work to protect immigrants' rights, and still others emerged in the wake of natural disasters in their countries of origin to funnel charitable donations to the affected region. This rich tapestry of community-based organizations has a profound impact on integrating immigrants into local community life. However, on a national level, organized immigrant voices are still largely absent from policy debates.

Immigration patterns reflect the paradox of current global models of economic integration that simultaneously diminish opportunities for sustainable livelihoods in developing countries while perpetuating a need for cheap labor in developed countries. As they work to build their communities here in the United States, Latino immigrants continue to care about and support communities in their countries of origin. This cross-border emphasis on local community development--both in the U.S. and in the country of origin--gives Latino immigrant leaders a uniquely transnational perspective on policy issues such as immigration, trade, and economic development.

On January 7, President Bush announced the proposal known as "Just and Secure Immigration Reform for Temporary Migrant Workers." Although the announcement helped spur a national debate on immigration, it fell short of addressing the larger policy issues surrounding immigration reform. In his speech to the nation, the president acknowledged that the current system has failed and requires profound reform. But his proposal for a temporary worker program offered a partial solution at best. Rather than confronting the underlying challenges of bringing undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and managing immigration flows, the president's proposal focused only on mechanisms for integrating temporary immigrant workers into the U.S. work force.

Latino Immigrants Emerge on the National Scene Following President Bush's announcement, many local immigrant-led organizations began a grassroots organizing effort to convene a "Latino and Caribbean Immigrant Community Summit" in Washington, D.C. The event aimed to analyze the significance of the announcement made by President Bush, to define a common immigration policy agenda, and to begin to articulate a national advocacy plan. On February 9-10, 60 immigrant leaders from 12 different U.S. metropolitan areas who represented more than 100,000 immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, gathered in Washington, D.C. This unprecedented event was organized by a group of volunteers from community-based groups around the country. The convergence was all the more remarkable because it took place with very little outside funding. Most of the participating organizations dipped into already-stretched budgets or into their members´ own pockets to pay travel and lodging expenses for the meeting.

Many immigrant community organizations, for example, Mexican hometown associations and garifuna groups from Central America, draw their strength from a strong sense of local or ethnic identity. These organizations typically tackle a wide range of issues affecting their respective communities. While absentee voting galvanizes interest in some Mexican immigrant associations, access to Temporary Protected Status is of particular concern for Central American immigrants.

However, immigrant communities also share common experiences that can serve as building blocks for a common policy agenda. Since the post-Cold War period, most immigrants from Latin America have come in search of economic opportunity. They confront the same obsolete and inefficient immigration system. Regardless of their geographic origin, most immigrant communities share frustrations with long delays in the immigration process, barriers to exercising political power, family separation, and abuse of newer immigrants in the work place. They also share a strong concern over the impact of global economic and trade policies in their communities "back home."

For the February Summit, a multi-national organizing team worked hard to structure the event to call attention to areas of convergence, while recognizing the specific concerns of particular immigrant communities and celebrating their direct activities.

Ground Gained in the Summit In the intense two-day meeting, Latino immigrant leaders heard from policy experts and held discussions on a variety of immigration related topics and legislative proposals. On February 10th the coalition produced a joint declaration outlining minimum demands for concrete and comprehensive immigration reform.

The group of organizations that met in Washington, D.C. hopes to seize the opportunity to expand this new advocacy movement. Participants returned home with a renewed commitment to educate, organize, and mobilize their communities toward the long-term goal of comprehensive immigration reform.

The organizing continues: Latino immigrant leaders met for a second summit, May 2-4 in Washington D.C., in a meeting that nearly doubled the size of the first. The group met with Bush Administration officials to ask about immigration reform and called on political parties to back up their promises with immediate concrete actions.

The upcoming U.S. national elections lend urgency to this process. A prevalent myth is that immigrants are not worth targeting for civic empowerment, because they cannot vote. In fact, naturalized U.S. citizens represented 36 percent of the total Latino voting population in the 2000 census, with the trend toward increasing numbers of immigrant voters. In general, naturalized citizens vote in much higher percentages than U.S.-born members of the same ethnic group. However, it is also true that eligible Latino voters cast ballots in relatively lower percentages than other ethnic groups. Newspapers touted Latino voter participation in the recent California recall election as the "best yet", when barely 18 percent of registered Latino voters actually made it to the polls.

Latino immigrant leaders realize that, if they are to be taken seriously, they must not only ensure that their members and constituencies register to vote, but they also must mobilize the immigrant vote in November. By holding a series of local forums where they can share the goals of the summit declaration, these leaders aim to bridge the information gap between national policy initiatives and local immigrant constituencies, and to help local organizations strategize and plan activities to promote civic participation. During March and April, immigrant groups met in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Oakland. These meetings identified local fundraising strategies, and helped to design a national campaign that links local organizations in a national effort. The postcard campaign, aimed at the Bush Administration and the Kerry campaign, asks elected officials, "¿Qué Pasa? (What's happening?) on immigration reform." The campaign was launched at the second Washington summit in May.

The Washington summits provided a seminal opportunity for a broad group of Latino and Caribbean immigrant community leaders to discuss national public policy affecting their communities. It also offered an unprecedented opportunity for Latino immigrant activists and community leaders from different cities and regions to meet each other. In some cases, the national meetings brought together participants who lived and worked in the same city but had never met previously. Aside from the commitment made by these leaders to continue collaborating at a local level, participants agreed to reach out to other local actors, including religious and church-based networks, local businesses and chambers of commerce, state and municipal government officials, unions and labor-based sectors, and other civil society organizations.

A key challenge for this emerging Latino immigrant advocacy initiative will be to obtain financial resources for the local and nationally coordinated activities proposed in February. Immigrant-led organizations receive a much smaller slice of donor funding than their numbers would suggest. Both private and public donors seem reluctant to support immigrant organizations for national policy advocacy. Several participants have already designed innovative community fundraising efforts and have moved forward with integrated informational and resource-development campaigns on such hot-button issues as driver's licenses for immigrants and undocumented workers' rights. However, before the current initiative can develop into a fully realized national constituency-based movement, long-term financial support must be secured for several critical coordination and dissemination activities, and for education and follow-up in local member organizations.

Local Global Linkages The Latino and Caribbean immigrant summit has the potential to be a first step in constructing a bottom-up coalition of organized Latino immigrants. It is estimated that 77% of all undocumented workers in the United States come from Mexico and Central America, making the issue of immigration a regional problem. Through family remittances, which came to nearly 40 billion dollars last year, Central American and Mexican immigrants make substantial contributions to the economies of their countries of origin. The summits initially responded to potential changes in national U.S. immigration policy, but also brought together a powerful transnational community that continues to work to affect change across borders.

Immigrants are beginning to exercise their rights and leverage not only in the United States but in their countries of origin, where they are working to secure the right to vote as displaced citizens, to improve local infrastructure, and to invest in development projects. In the United States, Latino immigrants have already begun to pressure state and local officials to accept consular identification cards as a valid form of identification and to push for the right to have state-sanctioned driver's license. On a regional scale, immigrants are becoming more involved in questioning current integration models, particularly trade agreements such as the recently negotiated Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

The response of the Mexican government to the Bush announcement shows that Mexican immigrants have already begun to play a role in Mexico on the immigration reform issue. The Fox administration at first embraced the Bush initiative as a positive move toward resolving the immigration problem. But after immigrants voiced serious concerns about the Bush proposal in the media on both sides of the border, the Fox administration downplayed its enthusiasm for the vision outlined by President Bush and reaffirmed its commitment to seek reforms that guarantee Mexicans a dignified migrant and immigrant experience. In this case, it is clear that immigrants have a distinct set of interests that may conflict both with the governments of their home countries and with the direction taken by U.S. policymakers. This dynamic reality opens the door for immigrants to forge their experiences into forward-looking policy proposals--with a transnational twist.

Source - http://www.americaspolicy.org/