Travis County Commissioners Court
May 4, 2010,
Item 25
25. receive briefing from the immigrant services network of austin.
>> good afternoon.
>> good afternoon, judge, commissioners, sherri flemming executive manager for the travis county health and human services and veterans service. we have with us today members of the immigrant services network. they are here to give you an update on what they have been doing. one of the activities of your health and human services department where resources are possible we -- we like to provide technical assistance and support to community based groups that are looking for new and innovative ways to address the populations that are a part of our mission. and so certainly the immigrant services network office fits into that category. so they have planning support from mr. rachel
>> [indiscernible] from our research and planning area and we have been working with them for many years now. so i'll have each of them introduce themselves and then they will move into their presentation.
>> okay.
>> my name is thomas
>> [indiscernible] i'm an immigration specialist here in austin.
>> my name is myle broccoli hickey, yes, that's my name, i'm with english at work.
>> my name is
>> [indiscernible] with caritas of austin.
>> and i am the co-chair of the immigrant services network, which we call isna, i will be taking you through the presentation this afternoon.
>> welcome to all of you. isna first began several years ago as kind of a loose group of people of providers in town who wanted to get together to discuss immigrant issues and they wanted to network. in 2006 and 2007 travis county health and human services research and planning department put together the immigrant assessment. which was a pretty comprehensive snapshot of austin's immigrant community at the time. and out of that assessment came a conference that was held at st. edward's university and the -- an actual booklet that's called the immigrant assessment. one of the things that providers who were both involved in the assessment and who learned about the information, that travis county put together, said what they wanted to more than anything else come together and know about what other providers were doing, in order to -- to collaborate and reach out to the community better. so isna came together as sort of a form make network in 2007. we've had staff support from health and human services from research and planning since then. we absolutely could not have done all of the things that we're going to -- all of the work that we're going to share with you today without the help of rachel here. we want to thank the got that -- thank the county for that support. here is our mission. i believe you have the presentation. okay. i just wants to highlight that we are -- want to highlight that we are a diverse network. we're going to share the list of members with you in a second. our goal is to coordinate efforts, increase public awareness and inform policy. our vision is to promote the success and well-being of immigrants in order to secure the long term prosperity of the entire community. we are a group of stakeholders who believe that in order for the whole community to be safe and secure and strong, we need to take care of our most vulnerable and our more diverse population. that's why we're working for immigrant issues in town. here's our values platform. i want to emphasize the process that went into create thing list of values. we came together for a retreat in 2008 and discussed what we our shared values would be as a group of stakeholders. so the question was what are the values to organization like catholic charities and safe place and the workers defense project and the sheriff's office could all agree on? so here they are that we share information. we represent a stronger broader voice on immigrant issues. it's very important to us that we're neutral and non-political. and we want to serve immigrants regardless of their immigration status. we see our role in the communities as being a neutral convener. i want to emphasize the fact that we are non-political. we do have members who do advocacy work on the part of austin's immigrants. but we want it to be a place that fosters discussion and education about our immigrant community. we also wanted to be inclusive in membership. we wanted to have an inclusive membership agreement and in our scope. so we have members addressing immigrant issues from language to safety to finance to employment. again a diverse membership and group -- really wide scope of issues that we cover. here's our list of members. just a couple include the austin public library, tom's law office, the literacy coalition, safe place, the sheriff's office, member agencies are those organizations that have signed membership agreements on file with us. we also have other contributors who are very active in our discussions who contribute a lot. those include austin police department, compass bank, the consulate of mexico, et cetera. so we have got in total maybe up to 50 different organizations at any given time that are participating in committees, coming to meetings, acting as resources for isna. so i want to share with you some of the work products and accomplishments over the last three years, our accomplishments over the last three years since the publication of the immigrant assessment. one of the things that i'm most proud of is the fact take we are a coalition that not only come together for covering vacation and dialogue -- conversation and dialogue but we have actual products that we are going to distribute that are manifestations of our mission statement. that's what i'm going to share with you right now. first we have the immigrant services resource directory. there are a lot of different resource directories floating around, as immigrant providers sometimes it's been difficult, we would go to a number of different sources to find the information that we need. but isna compiled all of the -- a list of all of the service providers in town that have services available to immigrants. this project grew directly out of the service coordination component of our mission statement. member agencies felt to build on the existing service directories in the community we needed a more targeted approach. and i'll tell you that at the end of our presentation, we're going to leave you copies of each of these products that i'm going over. the next product is the same favorite planning tool kit. addressing a variety of things for families to prepare themselves. the impetus for this project was the increasing number of high profile immigration raids around the country. several years ago. they were very publicized in the media and we felt that -- that there were -- well, it was obvious that there was significant negative impacts for families and children of detained individuals as well as lasting devastating impacts on communities when these raids too place. so we -- took place, so we decided to take a preventive approach and present a tool kit for emergency preparedness. this will help families in case one or both parents are detained, it will help families prepare and respond. but also a useful product in case there's any other type of emergency that happens where a family needs to mobilize. for example, if there's a hurricane, or a fire, in the apartment building or something like that. again we'll have a copy of this to share with you. the welcoming initiative is based on a model that came out of tennessee. it's a tool kit for speaking ambassadors, the purpose is to change public dialogue and opinion about immigrants in austin through public education. so there's a presentation that's trained ambassadors take with them to church communities to schools, anyplace that is welcoming of this information. and they talk about immigrants and their contributions to the community, just try to have a more balanced discussion. than what is sometimes out there. i think they have trained over 30 individuals at this point. with the welcoming initiative. the legal services work group, have a group of legal service providers that are coming together every couple of months. we have noticed that legislative monitoring over the past couple of years have taught us if federal immigration policy were to change in the future, there would be significant impacts at the local level, particularly if undocumented immigrants gain a pathway to legal status, there would be a huge spike in demand that would overwhelm the current capacity of service providers, so this work group is looking at what the capacity currently is, how to respond in case of any -- any potential immigration reform. then lastly, we have -- we're putting together our newest project is the immigrant public safety training. which is a public safety training developed between isna and the austin police department. one of the recurring themes in our work is to address immigration issues at the intersection of law enforcement and immigration at the local level. social service providers have fears and misunderstandings around the role of law enforcement as well as higher risk of victimization. at the same time law enforcement is finding it difficult to reach out to the immigrant community because of these fears, there's such important information that law enforcement needs to get out to immigrants about their rights and responsibilities when it comes to law enforcement. so we have started this perhaps between isna and the austin police department to put together this training that can go into agencies and talk to immigrants about their rights and responsibilities. that was started just this spring. in addition to those projects that i just mentioned, we have sponsored several conversations on timely and topical issues. these are moderated discussions. and they have included the -- the topics like legislative monitoring where we had speakers from the civil liberties union and texas county -- council on family violence come to talk about what was going on during the last session. during the last legislative session. with immigrants, public safety and law enforcement, again that's a really important, critical intersection that needs addressing. we had chief acevedo come as well as a lieutenant from the sheriff's office to talk about the challenges they find in working with this community and how they could -- how service providers could help them address those challenges. and then we had guests from u.s. -- from immigration and customs enforcement, citizenship, talk about their goals, processes and challenges of working with our immigrant community. we want to invite you to visit the isna website isnaustin.org, where you can down load electronic copies of all of these products, the tool kit, service directory, also see a list of our members and a lot of other wonderful resources are up there. just a little bit about what we're working towards in the future. we want to distribute those publications we have already completed. we want to complete the immigrant public service training and get that out into the community, we want to continue the legal services work group, continue the education round tables and of course we need to continue to monitor emerging issues. needs will certainly arise that we have to address. the president, of course, has pledged to address comprehensive immigration reform. but at the same time we have the law that was just passed in arizona. so i think that we find ourselves at a pretty critical juncture right now and isna is primed to address those issues and to -- to handle the challenges as we go forward. so here are the things that we want to leave you with at the end of this presentation. we live in a community where 18% of our residents, nearly one in five is an immigrant. they are so integrated in every part of our life that immigrant issues span a wide variety of concerns, which is one of the reasons we are so proud of our diversity? the coalition, network. we continue our efforts hope that the county will continue to support them to ensure these residents and neighbors of ours will continue to have good safety nets. isna has been a good investment of human resources in our opinion. we offer a platform to build on in addressing the changing needs of our community concerning immigrant issues. we again want to thank, very thankful for the support of the county, particularly research and planning. from health and human services. it's been very valuable. i think that -- a lot of the times when coalitions happen, there's a lot of discussion and not much comes out of it, but again thanks to -- thanks to rachel's support, the support of the department, we have really i think created a lot of tools that the community will be able to use. lastly, local government is often at the intersection of federal policy and local resident needs. when you as our elected officials find yourselves faced with these needs, when these come to your attention, we really would hope that you would look to us, look to isna as experts and as resources when it comes to the immigrant community. with our inclusive non-political convener role, we can offer knowledge and expertise as well as a connection to the immigrant community. we would invite you to attend any of our meetings that happen the first wednesday of the month. we have a meeting tomorrow. there is also the isna website and my contact information is right here. thank you very much.
>> would you mind giving that website address so anyone listening today may be able to tune into what we're talking about per se.
>> yes, the immigrant services network is isnaustin.org.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> questions or comments.
>> i would like to know with regard to the arizona example, is there anything that you all think we should be mindful of in this next legislative session? because the arizona example is troubling and i remain concerned that immigration status is mischaracterized as always a criminal issue, which it actually is most often not. it's a civil circumstance. so i wanted to see if there was -- if there was anything -- any advice that you can give us with regard to being mindful through this next legislative session.
>> i believe as senator burman a republican from east texas has already proposed a similar law in the state of texas, but the governor and the majority of the house of representatives come out and said that they don't think that that climate is -- for that is ripe in the state of texas.
>> excellent news, thank you.
>> great news, that is great news. as for the future of immigration law, one can only hope, you know, that the fire that started in arizona burns all the way to washington and we have something to legalize these people and put them on the tax rolls and put them on the voting rolls eventually. put them on a path to resident ailian status. unfortunately all too often they are mischaracterized as free loaders who just come and don't do anything, but i think we all know someone who has had somebody or knows somebody who has worked for them who isn't legal and i know in my practice i meet people from all walks of life and from all positions in government. who just want to do the right thing and they want to help that worker. but it's almost unrealistic to expect for congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform to fix immigration laws that have been bandaged, you know, that have had bandaged repairs for the last 20 years. i really pray for a dream act because i hate to see kids who have been here through 20 years, no their own, nowhere to go and work.
>> so much investment in your society only to have your society reject you.
>> that's correct.
>> i think the other thing that will be important that's an immediate need is to make sure that our immigrant community does have a good relationship with local law enforcement, that they have certain rights if they're stopped. that they can trust the police if they witness a crime, if they are a victim of a crime. that's going to be even more important now that that is not going to be the case for people in arizona.
>> thank you.
>> 18% represents the percentage of immigrants in travis county total? legal, non-legal, otherwise?
>> yep.
>> what's that percentage nationwide? in the u.s.?
>> it's higher here, right?
>> i would have to look at it up.
>> that's what i would think. in the united states you are looking at six or seven states and in other parts of the country it's probably less than a percent would be, i guess.
>> maybe but there are certain states where the immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than it is here. states that don't have the services, but you are right. texas is right up there.
>> but if we run across immigrants who really are in need of assistance, we should contact isna, the leadership at that time, and hopefully get some assistance for that person.
>> sure.
>> doesn't come up every day, but about once or twice a year i have somebody in need of a whole lot more expertise than i possess. does legal services still -- legal aid i guess we would call them. do they still represent immigrants on various legal matters?
>> i think they have some congressional proper prohibitios on what immigrants they can represent. i think they can represent legal immigrants in certain -- certain causes of action.
>> okay.
>>
>> [indiscernible] can represent some
>> [indiscernible] cases.
>> right. the american gate ways, formerly known as
>> [indiscernible] and catholic charity and icos are the three main non-profit organizations who can handle u visas, which are victims of domestic violence, victims of any kind of violent crime here -- when you don't know the legal status of the perpetrator. t visas the victims of trafficking. and
>> [indiscernible] cases. unfortunately such demand travis county and a.p.d. victims services have done such a good job of educating the victims that they are overwhelmed. that those two organizations have a six-month backlog on who they can help. the victims can't -- they are encouraged to cooperate. but they can't get that, you know, service for free. or even at a low cost.
>> the last couple of examples that i can think of were immigrants here on education visas. and they really wanted to work. they wanted to know whether they would violate terms and conditions if they obtained employment, started working, drawing income. i didn't know what to tell them. generally my inclination would be certainly we would want you to work if you can.
>> yes, sir.
>> but to get the answer to that question, would isna be who i would contact and say -- refer this person, maybe?
>> sure. i think so.
>> uh-huh.
>> is there a telephone number there? i know you give me the website. is there a telephone number associated -- for those persons that may not have computers or have access to computers.
>> sure. i can give you my telephone number.
>> okay.
>> so that would be 512-585-1600.
>> we don't have a paid staff so we are available primarily through the e-mail address and the phone number of whoever is the chairman of the organization.
>> i understand.
>>
>> [indiscernible] contact health and human services, one of the roles that we play in the community is to provide appropriate referrals to services either within our organization or with our community partners. so anyone who would need information about this presentation today or immigration issues in general 854-4100, let us know what the nature of their concern is and we will refer them to the appropriate partners.
>> okay. thank you.
>> may i add one thing? i would encourage all of you all to look at this directory. this is one of the publications that -- we have gone through 500 copies of this. i mean the immigration judges have taken them all to san antonio contact officers have taken them and we distributed them all here. schools are asking if they can print up 50 copies or 100 copies and as the repository, the inventory is down to maybe 40 or 50, we are trying to put into this every immigrant services provider that we can track down, you know, in travis county. at no cost to the taxpayer.
>> available in spanish?
>> no, ma'am, it is not.
>> that's one of the needs that we have is help translating. all of the products that we have into other languages.
>> do we have
>> [indiscernible] for health and human services.
>> we have access to the online versions, but we have been having the conversation in copies.
>> i would think that --
>> stay tuned. i would think that -- that with a number of -- a number of travis county residents, who speak primarily spanish, we would be able to get a spanish version, that may do a good job for ms. flemming, who is probably looking for another assignment out of health and human services.
>> i will say we are translating the safety planning tool kit into spanish because that is a product that we want immigrant families to have themselves. the service directory is targeted at providers. so i think that there's not as much urgency with that product because it's for people who will be working with immigrants.
>> do you have any idea what the percentage is for illegal immigrants within that 18%? is there break down of ethnicity within that 18%?
>> of what percent are undocument ed?
>> yes.
>> of that total?
>> yes.
>> i don't have that information. but we can get it for you.
>> okay. because, you know, we said 18% of -- of, you know, like one in five ratio, but of that what is the ethnicity of that 18%, undocumented.
>> ethnicity?
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> immigration
>> [indiscernible]
>> i saw a few minutes ago in the information that you gave us. it had the percentages.
>> oh, yes. uh-huh.
>> yeah. the community is that what it is, demographic profile that we sent ahead, yeah.
>> so were you all involved in the -- in the census count initiative?
>> uh-huh.
>> the last month or two?
>> yes.
>> were you?
>> absolutely.
>> good. well, for those of us who have been wondering what we do for ingrants in our community -- immigrants in our community, this has been very informative. in terms of where we go next, i appreciate you sharing it with us, also. any other questions or comments? from the court?
>> thank y'all.
>> thank you.
>> thank you for coming by. stay close with ms. flemming there. she's a person of numerous resources.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, May 4, 2010 1:50 PM
